to remain on the land in sufficient quantity, the country would be
unrivalled in the world for the abundance and variety of its crops.

[Illustration: 036.jpg THE BANKS OF THE EUPHRATES AT ZULEIBEH]

Drawn by Boudier, from the plate in Chesney.

The fields, which are regularly sown in the neighbourhood of the small
towns, yield magnificent harvests of wheat and barley: while in the
prairie-land beyond the cultivated ground the grass grows so high that
it comes up to the horses' girths. In some places the meadows are so
covered with varieties of flowers, growing in dense masses, that the
effect produced is that of a variegated carpet; dogs sent in among them
in search of game, emerge covered with red, blue, and yellow pollen.
This fragrant prairie-land is the delight of bees, which produce
excellent and abundant honey, while the vine and olive find there a
congenial soil. The population was unequally distributed in this region.
Some half-savage tribes were accustomed to wander over the plain,
dwelling in tents, and supporting life by the chase and by the rearing
of cattle; but the bulk of the inhabitants were concentrated around the
affluents of the Euphrates and Tigris, or at the foot of the northern
mountains wherever springs could be found, as in Assur, Singar, Nisibis,
Tilli,* Kharranu, and in all the small fortified towns and nameless
townlets whose ruins are scattered over the tract of country between the
Khabur and the Balikh. Kharranu, or Harran, stood, like an advance guard
of Chaldæan civilization, near the frontiers of Syria and Asia Minor.**
To the north it commanded the passes which opened on to the basins of
the Upper Euphrates and Tigris; it protected the roads leading to the
east and south-east in the direction of the table-land of Iran and the
Persian Gulf, and it was the key to the route by which the commerce of