THE HUMAN SPECIES. 143 



tic Basin, the ridge in Wady Moosa was elevated, and the Jor- 

 dan, already insufficient to compensate for the evaporation, 

 could no longer flow to the Red Sea. There is, at least, a 

 certain affinity with Africa, in this region, supported by a pro- 

 portion of the local botany, and by the fish of the Lake of 

 Tiberias. The volcanic flues, branching off, pass through 

 Arabia, to Aden, and beneath the Red Sea ; and another, more 

 due west, communicates with Northern Africa, beyond the 

 Egyptian boundary, far into the interior. 



From Palestine and Syria, eastward, to the Indus, there are 

 only three rivers of importance that reach the sea. They al 

 unite into one channel, and although they drain an immense 

 surface, generally arid and sandy, and the Tigris, in particular 

 is swift, they have no period of inundation like the Nile, but 

 simply freshes in the spring ; and albeit they terminate at the 

 head of an enclosed gulf, they have not formed an extensive 

 delta. The high table land of Persia is estimated at little less 

 than 4000 feet above the sea, a most arid desert, but with rivers 

 from the north-eastward forming the fertile valley of the Hel- 

 mund, and terminating in Lake Aria or Zurra, anciently much 

 more extensive than the present, having ruins of vast cities in 

 the vicinity, unknown in history, and of the remotest period; 

 the cradle where Iranian power was nursed. From the social 

 systems first evolved on the Oxus and the Helmund, and 

 thence carried to the Tigris, Euphrates, and Choaspes, when 

 combined with those of Egypt and Palestine, the present relig- 

 ious, moral, and scientific state of the world is almost entirely 

 drawn. The fundamental principles relating to the highest 

 good, and the maxims of the greatest evil, emanated from 

 Western Asia, wherein the ancients used to comprehend the 

 Nile, as far up the course of the river as the Nubian frontier. 



