15 



with Ragles dealing with the most subtle questions of philoso- 

 phy, having a beneficent code of laws, and skilled in commerce 

 and manufactures, fifteen hundred years before Moses, and 

 more than three thousand years before the Christian era. The 

 antiquity of the people about the Ganges, is settled by astro- 

 nomical tables that admit of no mistake ; and equally well 

 settled is it that this people, who so flourished centuries before 

 the first grey dawn of civilization on Europe, and when 

 America was all unknown, made agriculture, carried to the 

 highest perfection, the basis of all their prosperity. These 

 nations have been invaded and plundered time and again, but 

 have as often renewed themselves from the cultivation of the 

 soil, and still have material and mental greatness. On the 

 other hand the nomadic tribes of Central Asia — the Huns, the 

 Monguls, and the Tartars, who have at diflferent times overrun 

 the world with their fierce warriors, have never been able to 

 form permanent empires. 



We come westward, and the same phenomena are presented. 

 Babylonia and Persia, Palestine and Egypt, have risen to 

 power and flourished long, when agriculture was the basis of 

 their civilization ; and they have passed away when that ceased 

 to be, or sunk equally with that. Before Greece had risen or 

 Rome dominated over the nations, the law of the Medes and 

 Persians controlled an empire equalling in grandeur any that 

 had gone before or has come since. It covered all of western 

 Asia and included 127 satraps who ruled in the name of one 

 great king. What was the foundation of that power is seen 

 by us in the remains of canals, and reservoirs and aqueducts 

 for irrigation ; for Babylonia, wrote Herodotus, more than 

 three thousand years ago, was chiefly watered by irrigation ; 

 and he declared it the most fruitful of all countries. For cen- 

 turies later, the elder Pliny said — " there is not a country in 

 all the East comparable to it in fertility." Some of the most 

 stupendous works that the intellect of man ever devised were 

 there constructed for the irrigation of the soil, in an almost 



