vii HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 243 



compatible with such a flood as is described in 

 the Assyrian record. 



The scene of Hasisadra's adventure is laid in 

 the broad valley, six or seven hundred miles long, 

 and hardly anywhere less than a hundred miles 

 in width, which is traversed by the lower courses 

 of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, and which 

 is commonly known as the "Euphrates valley." 

 Rising, at the one end, into a hill country, which 

 gradually passes into the Alpine heights of 

 Armenia ; and, at the other, dipping beneath the 

 shallow waters of the head of the Persian Gulf, 

 which continues in the same direction, from 

 north-west to south-east, for some eight hundred 

 miles farther, the floor of the valley presents a 

 gradual slope, from eight hundred feet above the 

 sea level to the depths of the southern end of the 

 Persian Gulf. The boundary between sea and 

 land, formed by the extremest mudflats of the 

 delta of the two rivers, is but vaguely defined ; 

 and, year by year, it advances seaward. On the 

 north-eastern side, the western frontier ranges of 

 Persia rise abruptly to great heights; on the 

 south-western side, a more gradual ascent leads to 

 a table-land of less elevation, which, very broad 

 in the south, where it is occupied by the deserts 

 of Arabia and of Southern Syria, narrows, north- 

 wards, into the highlands of Palestine, and is con- 

 tinued by the ranges of the Lebanon, the Antileba- 

 non, and the Taurus, into the highlands of Armenia. 



