306 GEOLOGIES AND DELUGES 



through it, and thus shorten our route to India by a 

 thousand miles, farm it, and thus provide ourselves with 

 one of the richest granaries in the world. 



In a land so favoured, it is nothing wonderful that the 

 inhabitants teemed in millions, villages were everywhere 

 dotted about, and in their midst great and nourishing 

 cities arose Ur, the City of the Moon-good ; Erech, the 

 City of Books ; Nippur, and, most famous of all, proud 

 Babylon, "the Gate of God," which stood on the left 

 bank of the Euphrates, some 280 miles above its present 

 mouth (Fig. 94). 



In early times, probably about 2300 B.C., the Jews 

 left this beautiful land for some unknown reason, and 

 after various vicissitudes settled in Palestine. Another 

 branch of the Chaldean stock migrated in later times to 

 the northern part of the Tigris valley, where they built 

 many mighty cities, and founded the warlike kingdom of 

 Assyria. Of their cities it is sufficient to mention Assur, 

 which gave its name to the kingdom, and Nineveh, which 

 afterw r ards became the capital. 



The Mesopotamian plain, ow r ing to the way in which 

 it has been produced, is an almost dead flat, and offers no 

 natural elevations for building ; the Chaldees, therefore, 

 to raise the foundations of their palaces, temples, and 

 houses above the reach of floods and fever, and for better 

 defence against their enemies, constructed, with incredible 

 labour, great mounds, by piling together quantities of 

 sun-dried bricks and rubbish, and building round this 

 a thick wall of burnt bricks, well cemented together. 

 Some of these mounds, as that of Kojundjik at Nineveh, 

 are as much as 60 feet in height, and it has been com- 

 puted that this mound alone \vould have required the 

 labour of 20,000 men for six years in its construction. 

 But there was never any difficulty in obtaining all the 

 labour that was w r anted. Prisoners of war were compelled 



