limestone sides are furrowed by innumerable ravines, and have a dry and
parched appearance, being even in spring generally naked and without
vegetation. The sterility is most marked on the western flank, which
faces the hot rays of the afternoon sun; the eastern slope is
occasionally robed with a scanty covering of dwarf oak or stunted
brushwood. In the fat soil of the plains the rivers commonly run deep
and concealed from view, unless in the spring and the early summer, when
through the rains and the melting of the snows in the mountains they are
greatly swollen, and run bank full, or even overflow the level country.

The most important of these rivers are the following:--the Kurnib or
Eastern Khabour, which joins the Tigris in lat. 37° 12'; the Greater Zab
(Zab Ala), which washes the ruins of Nimrud, and enters the main stream
almost exactly in lat. 30°; the Lesser Zab (Zab Asfal), which effects
its junction about lat. 35° 15'; the Adhem, which is received a little
below Samarah, about lat. 34°; and the Diyaleh, which now joins below
Baghdad, but from which branches have sometimes entered the Tigris a
very little below the mouth of the Adhem. Of these streams the most
northern, the Khabour, runs chiefly in an untraversed country--the
district between Julamerik and the Tigris. It rises a little west of
Julamerik in one of the highest mountain districts of Kurdistan, and
runs with a general south-westerly course to its junction with another
large branch, which reaches it from the district immediately west of
Amadiyeh; it then flows due west, or a little north of west, to Zakko,
and, bending to the north after passing that place, flows once more in a
south-westerly direction until it reaches the Tigris. The direct
distance from its source to its embouchure is about 80 miles; but that
distance is more than doubled by its windings. It is a stream of
considerable size, broad and rapid; at many seasons not fordable at all,
and always forded with difficulty.