and gardens contain not only the fruit-trees mentioned above, but also
the jujube, the cornel, the filbert, the medlar, the pistachio nut, the
pomegranate, and the fig. Away from the immediate vicinity of the rivers
and the towns, not a tree, scarcely a bush, is to be seen. The common
thorn is indeed tolerably abundant in a few places; but elsewhere the
tamarisk and a few other sapless shrubs are the only natural products of
this bare and arid region.

In remarkable contrast with the natural barrenness of this wide tract
are certain favored districts in Zagros and Azerbijan, where the herbage
is constant throughout the summer, and sometimes only too luxuriant.
Such are the rich and extensive grazing grounds of Khawah and Alishtar,
near Kermanshah, the pastures near Ojan and Marand, and the celebrated
Chowal Moghan or plain of Moghan, on the lower course of the Araxes
river, where the grass is said to grow sufficiently high to cover a
man on horseback. These, however, are rare exceptions to the general
character of the country, which is by nature unproductive, and scarcely
deserving even of the qualified encomium of Strabo.

Still Media, though deficient in natural products, is not ill adapted
for cultivation. The Zagros valleys and hillsides produce under a very
rude system of agriculture, besides the fruits already noticed, rice,
wheat, barley, millet, sesame, Indian corn, cotton, tobacco, mulberries,
cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, and the castor-oilplant. In Azerbijan the
soil is almost all cultivable, and if ploughed and sown will bring good
crops of the ordinary kinds of grain. Even on the side of the desert,
where Nature has shown herself most niggardly, and may seem perhaps to
deserve the reproach of Cicero, that she behaves as a step mother to
a man rather than as a mother, a certain amount of care and scientific
labor may render considerable tracts fairly productive. The only want