4 PHYSICAL DECAY OF ROMAN EMPIRE. 
sea and fertile lowland into unproductive and miasmatic mo- 
rasses. 
Besides the direct testimony of history to the ancient fer- 
tility of the now exhausted regions to which I refer—Northern 
Africa, the greater Arabian peninsula, Syria, Mesopotamia, Ar- 
menia and many other provinces of Asia Minor, Greece, Sicily, 
and parts of even Italy and Spain—the multitude and extent 
of yet remaining architectural ruins, and of decayed works of 
internal improvement, show that at former epochs a dense pop- 
ulation inhabited those now lonely districts. Such a popula- 
tion could have been sustained only by a productiveness of soil 
of which we at present discover but slender traces; and the 
abundance derived from that fertility serves to explain how 
large armies, like those of the ancient Persians, and of the Cru- 
saders and the Tartars in later ages, could, without an organ- 
_ ized commissariat, secure adequate supplies in long marches 
through territories which, in our times, would scarcely afford 
forage for a single regiment. 
It appears then, that the fairest and fruitfulest provinces 
of the Roman Empire, precisely that portion of terrestrial sur- 
face, in short, which, about the commencement of the Chris- 
tian era, was endowed with the greatest superiority of soil, 
climate, and position, which had been carried to the highest 
pitch of physical improvement, and which thus combined the 
natural and artificial conditions best fitting it for the habita- 
tion and enjoyment of a dense and highly refined and cultivated 
population, are now completely exhausted of their fertility, or 
so diminished in productiveness, as, with the exception of a few 
favored oases that have escaped the general ruin, to be no 
longer capable of affording sustenance to civilized man. If to 
this realm of desolation we add the now wasted and solitary 
soils of Persia and the remoter East that once fed their millions 
with milk and honey, we shall see that a territory larger than 
all Europe, the abundance of which sustained in bygone centu- 
ries a population scarcely inferior to that of the whole Christian 
world at the present day, has been entirely withdrawn from 
