Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/84

 that Babylonia was once of extraordinary fertility we know from the statements of Herodotus, and it is possible that much of Palestine, now withering under the bane of Turkish despotism, might revive with better and wiser treatment.

Mr. Rich states that Babylonia "is not cultivated to above half the degree of which it is susceptible;" and General Chesney says "that those portions of Mesopotamia which are still cultivated, as the country about Hillah, show that the region has all the fertility ascribed to it by Herodotus."

But though the Jewish trade under Solomon had reached proportions so unusually large, these soon fell away and dwindled almost to nothing under his successors. With his death came wars and divisions; Jehoshaphat lost his ships at Ezion-geber, the Edomites revolted, the Syrians under Rezin seized the port, till at length it fell into the more powerful grasp of Tiglath Pileser, who thus finally destroyed the only maritime career in which the Jewish people had ever taken an active or successful part.

There is reason to believe that it was not many years before the time of David that the great cities of Mesopotamia, strictly so called, Babylon, and Nineveh, made themselves known as commercial entrepôts, for the storing of goods on their way from the East to the West; and that at first, and for a considerable period, Babylon was of the two the most