4 
PHYSICAL DECAY OF ROMAN PROVINCES. 
watercourses are gone, and tlie rivulets have ceased to exist as 
perennial currents, because the little water that finds its way 
into their old channels is evaporated by the droughts of sum¬ 
mer, or absorbed by the parched earth, before it readies the 
lowlands; the beds of the brooks have widened into broad 
expanses of pebbles and gravel, over which, though in the hot 
season passed dryshod, in winter sealike torrents thunder; 
the entrances of navigable streams are obstructed by sand¬ 
bars, and harbors, once marts of an extensive commerce, are 
shoaled by the deposits of the rivers at whose mouths they 
lie; the elevation of the beds of estuaries, and the conse¬ 
quently diminished velocity of the streams which flow into 
them, have converted thousands of leagues of shallow sea and 
fertile lowland into unproductive and miasmatic morasses. 
Besides the direct testimony of history to the ancient fer¬ 
tility of the regions to which I refer—Northern Africa, the 
greater Arabian peninsula, Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, and 
many other provinces of Asia Minor, Greece, Sicily, and parts 
of even Italy and Spain—the multitude and extent of yet 
remaining architectural ruins, and of decayed works of inter¬ 
nal improvement, show that at former epochs a dense popula¬ 
tion inhabited those now lonely districts. Such a population 
could have been sustained only by a productiveness of soil of 
which we at present discover but slender traces; and the 
abundance derived from that fertility serves to explain how 
large armies, like those of the ancient Persians, and of the Cru¬ 
saders and the Tartars in later ages, could, without an organ¬ 
ized commmissariat, secure adequate supplies in long marches 
through territories which, in our times, would scarcely afford 
forage for a single regiment. 
It appears, then, that the fairest and fruitfulest provinces 
of the Boman Empire, precisely that portion of terrestrial sur¬ 
face, in short, which, about the commencement of the Chris¬ 
tian era, was endowed with the greatest superiority of soil, 
climate, and position, which had been carried to the highest 
pitch of physical improvement, and which thus combined the 
natural and artificial conditions best fitting it for the habita- 
