of any of the four Empires which preceded the Persian. To complete,
therefore, the geographical survey proper to our subject, it will be
necessary to give a sketch of the tracts in question. They will
fall naturally into three groups, an eastern, a north-western, and a
southwestern--the eastern extending from the skirts of Mount Zagros to
the Indian Desert, the north-western from the Caspian to the Propontis,
and the south-western from the borders of Palestine to the shores of the
Greater Syrtis.

Inside the Zagros and Elburz ranges, bounded on the north and west by
those mountain-lines, on the east by the ranges of Suliman and Hala, and
on the south by the coast-chain which runs from Persia Proper nearly
to the Indus, lies a vast tableland, from 3000 to 5000 feet above the
sea-level, known to modern geographers as the Great Plateau of Iran. Its
shape is an irregular rectangle, or trapezium, extending in its greatest
length, which is from west to east, no less than twenty degrees, or
above 1100 miles, while the breadth from north to south varies from
seven degrees, or 480 miles (which is its measure along the line of
Zagros), to ten degrees, or 690 miles, where it abuts upon the Indus
valley. The area of the tract is probably from 500,000 to 600,000 square
miles.

It is calculated that two thirds of this elevated region are absolutely
and entirely desert. The rivers which flow from the mountains
surrounding it are, with a single exception--that of the Etymandrus or
Helmend--insignificant, and their waters almost always lose themselves,
after a course proportioned to their volume, in the sands of the
interior. Only two, the Helmend and the river of Ghuzni, have even the
strength to form lakes; the others are absorbed by irrigation, or sucked
up by the desert. Occasionally a river, rising within the mountains,