MESOPOTAMIA 305 



The people whom we find in possession at the dawn of 

 history were Semites, the parent stock from which the 

 Jews subsequently branched off; and one has but to 

 glance at their faces and forms, as portrayed in their 

 statues and pictures, to recognise the strong family like- 

 ness, while the emphasis with which muscular develop- 

 ment is expressed in parts of the human figure suggests 

 that the remarkable assertion, " The pride of a young 

 man is in his legs," was a Semitic opinion long before 

 the time of Solomon. 



Just as Egypt is the gift of the Nile, so is Mesopotamia 

 equally the gift of the Tigris and Euphrates, for it is 

 built up of the mud brought down from the mountains 

 by these two streams into the Persian gulf, which is 

 thus in process of obliteration. So long as the two great 

 rivers were not regulated, they produced terrible floods in 

 the wet season ; and one of the earliest works of the 

 Chaldeans was to control their flow by great dams, and 

 by diverting a part of their water into canals. These 

 canals covered the country like a network, and served 

 not merely to ease the rivers, but also to irrigate the 

 land, which, thus richly supplied by water, became, under 

 the hot sun, so fat and fruitful, that corn is said to have 

 borne three hundredfold. Groves of palms, orchards, 

 with grapes and many other luscious fruits, were culti- 

 vated, while the pastures supported abundant flocks and 

 herds. It was a true garden of Eden, and differed chiefly 

 from the biblical paradise, which Delitsch thinks was 

 actually situated within this garden, in the fact that even 

 here man had still to earn his bread in the sweat of his 

 brow. This the Turks, who now possess the country, 

 have no inclination to do, and consequently it is rapidly 

 returning to its primitive desolation. Were England as 

 enterprising as she was in the time of Elizabeth, we 

 should rent this land from the Porte, run a railway 



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