mercury falls below freezing point, even in Babylonia. At day-break the waters of the marshes are sometimes covered with a
thin layer of ice, and the wind increases the effect of the low
temperature. Loftus tells us that he has seen the Arabs of his
escort fall benumbed from their saddles in the early morning.[1]
It is, then, upon the streams, and upon them alone, that the soil has to depend for its fertility; all those lands to which they never reach are doomed to barrenness and death. It is fortunate for the prosperity of the country through which they flow, that the Tigris and Euphrates swell and rise annually from their beds, not indeed like the Nile, almost on a stated day, but ever in the same season, about the commencement of spring. Without these periodical floods many parts of the plain of Mesopotamia would be beyond the reach of irrigation, but their regular occurrence allows water to be stored in sufficient quantities for use during the months of drought. To obtain the full advantage of this precious capital, the inhabitants must, however, take more care and expend more labour than is necessary in Egypt. The rise of the Euphrates and of the Tigris is neither so slow nor so regular as that of the Nile. The waters do not spread so gently over the soil, neither do they stay upon it so long;[2] since they have been abandoned to themselves as they are at present, a great part of them are lost, and, far from rendering a service to agriculture, they turn vast regions into dangerous hot-beds of infection.
It was to the west of the double basin that the untoward effects of the territorial conformation were chiefly felt. The valley of the Euphrates is not like that of the Nile, a canal hollowed out between two clearly marked banks. From the northern boundary of the alluvial plain to the southern, the slope is very slight, while from east to west, from the plains of Mesopotamia to the foot of the Arabian plateau, there is also an inclination. When the river is in flood the right bank no longer exists. Where it is
- ↑ Loftus, Susiana and Chaldæa, p. 73; Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, p. 146 (i. vol. 8vo. 1853).
- ↑ Herodotus, exaggerates this difference, but it is a real one. "The plant," he says, "is nourished and the ears formed by means of irrigation from the river. For this river does not, as in Egypt, overflow the cornlands of its own accord, but is spread over them by the hand or by the help of engines," i. 193. [Our quotations are from Prof. Rawlinson's Herodotus. (4 vols. 8vo. 1875; Murray); Ed] The inundations of the Tigris and Euphrates do not play so important a role in the lives of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, as that of the Nile in those of the Egyptians.
