Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/264

252 This land is no other than the famous and once beautiful valley of Mesopotamia, through which the great Euphrates and arrow-swift Tigris flow to empty themselves into the Persian Gulf. Almost lost sight of for a while, interest in it was reawakened some seventy years ago by the investigations commenced by Mr. Rich, and followed up with such wonderful results by Botta, Place, Layard, George Smith, and others. Their discoveries have revealed to us in unexpected fullness the details of a complex and advanced civilization almost if not quite as ancient as the Egyptian, and far more profoundly interesting, for the ancient nations of Mesopotamia are the intellectual forefathers of the modern world. The learning of the Chaldees was the heritage of the Jews and Greeks; from these the torch was handed on to the Romans, and Jew and Greek and Roman inspired, and still inspire, for good and evil, the civilization of the nineteenth century. There is much more of the Chaldean in every one of us than we are given to imagine.

The people whom we find in possession at the dawn of history were Semites, the parent stock from which the Jews subsequently branched off; and one has but to glance at their faces and forms, as portrayed in their statues and pictures, to recognize the strong family likeness, while the emphasis with which muscular development is expressed in parts of the human figure suggests that the remarkable assertion, "The pride of a young man is in his legs," was a Semitic opinion long before the time of Solomon.

Just as Egypt is the gift of the Nile, so is Mesopotamia equally the gift of the Tigris and Euphrates, for it is built up of the mud brought down from the mountains by these two streams into the Persian Gulf, which is thus in process of obliteration. So long as the two great rivers were not regulated, they produced terrible floods in the wet season; and one of the earliest works of the Chaldeans was to control their flow by great dams, and by diverting a part of their water into canals. These canals covered the country like a network, and served not merely to ease the rivers, but also to irrigate the land, which, thus richly supplied by water, became, under the hot sun, so fat and fruitful that corn is said to have borne three hundred fold. Groves of palms, orchards, with grapes and many other luscious fruits, were cultivated, while the pastures supported abundant flocks and herds. It was a true garden of Eden, and differed chiefly from the biblical paradise, which Delitsch thinks was actually situated within this garden, in the fact that even here man had still to earn his bread in the sweat of his brow. This the Turks, who now possess the country, have no inclination to do, and consequently it is rapidly returning to its primitive desolation. Were England as enterprising as she was in the time of Elizabeth, we should rent this land from the Porte,