vii HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 245 



valley. Its abundant clay furnished the materials 

 for the masses of sun-dried and burnt bricks, the 

 remains of which, in the shape* of huge artificial 

 mounds, still testify to both the magnitude and the 

 industry of the population, thousands of years ago. 

 Good cement is plentiful, while the bitumen, which 

 wells from the rocks at Hit and elsewhere, not only 

 answers the same purpose, but is used to this day, 

 as it was in Hasisadra's time, to pay the inside 

 and the outside of boats. 



In the broad lower course of the Euphrates, the 

 stream rarely acquires a velocity of more than 

 three miles an hour, while the lower Tigris attains 

 double that rate in times of flood. The water of 

 both great rivers is mainly derived from the 

 northern and eastern highlands in Armenia and 

 in Kurdistan, and stands at its lowest level in 

 early autumn and in January. But when the 

 snows accumulated in the upper basins of the great 

 rivers, during the winter, melt under the hot sun- 

 shine of spring, they rapidly rise, 1 and at length 

 overflow their banks, covering the alluvial plain 

 with a vast inland sea, interrupted only by the 

 higher ridges and hummocks which form islands in 

 a seemingly boundless expanse of water. 



In the occurrence of these annual inundations 



1 In May 1849 the Tigris at Bagdad rose 22J feet 5 feet 

 above its usual rise and nearly swept away the town. In 1831 

 a similarly exceptional flood did immense damage, destroying 

 7000 houses. See Loftus, Chaldea and Susiana, p. 7. 



