5. The Euphrates. The Euphrates is still a majestic stream, but wanders through a dreary solitude. its banks are hoary with reeds, and the gray osier willows are yet there on which the captives of Israel hung up their harp:, and, while Jerusalem was not, refused to be comforted. At that time its now broken hills were palaces; its long undulating mounds, streets; its vast soli tude was filled with the busy subjects of the proud mistress of the East. Now, 'wasted with misery,' her habitations arc not to be found, and, for her self, 'the worm is spread over her.' Strabo makes the Euphrates a stadium (P4(i feet) in breadth at Babylon; according to Ren nel it is about 40i English feet ; D'Anville re duces it to 33o; Rich, on the other hand, raises it to 450 feet ; its breadth, however, varies in its passage through the ruins. Rich ascertained its depth to be two and one-half fathoms, and that the current runs gently at the medium rate of about two knots an hour. The Euphrates is far less rapid than the Tigris. and rise: at an earlier period. \Vhen at its height—from the latter end of April to the latter end of June—it overflows the surrounding country, fills, without the aid of human labor, the canals dug for its reception, and facilitates agriculture in a surprising degree. The ruins of Babylon are then so inundated as to render many parts of them inaccessible. The water of the Euphrates is esteemed more salu brious than that of the Tigris. The course of the river through the site of Babylon is from north to south. Bricks and other fragments of buildings are frequently found in it by fishermen who ply on its waters. (See EUPHRATES.) 6. Fertility and Riches. During the three great empires of the East no tract of the whole appears to have been so reputed for fertility and riches as the district of Babylonia, which arose in the main from the proper management of the mighty river which flowed through it. Hcrodotus mentions that, when reduced to the rank of a province, it yielded a revenue to the kings of Per sia which comprised half their income. And the terms in which the Scriptures describe its nat ural as well as its acquired supremacy when it was the imperial city evidence the same facts. They call it 'Babylon, the glory of kingdoms; the beauty of the Chaldee excellency; the lady of kingdoms, given to pleasure; that dwelleth care lessly, and sayeth in her heart, I am, and there is none else beside me.' But now, in the expres sive and inimitable language of the same holy hook may it be said, 'She sits as a widow on the ground. There is no more a throne for thee, 0 daughter of the Chaldzeans!' As for the abundance of the country, it has vanished as clean away as if 'the bosom of desolation' had swept it from north to south ; the whole land, from the outskirts of Bagdad to the farthest reach of sight, lying a melancholy waste. The Babylonians were famous for the manufacture of cloth and carpets; they also excelled in making perfumes, in carving in wood and in working in precious stones. They were a commercial as well as a manufacturing people, and carried on a very ex tensive trade alike by land and by sea. Babylon was indeed a commercial depot between the East ern and the Western worlds (Ezek. xvii :4; Is.
7. Flora. It is commonly believed that wheat and barley arc indigenous to the plains of the Euphrates, and that thence, after a period of cul tivation, they spread westward over Syria and Egypt and on to Europe. If this be true, the land might well be expected to yield a good harvest of native cereals.
But the productivity of the land did not stop with the great cereals. The inhabitants had a wide range of vegetables for food, among which arc pumpkins, kidney beans, onions, vetches, egg plants, cucumbers, "gombo," lentils, chick-peas and beans.
Above the vegetables and cereals of the land rose its trees, of which the variety was great, both of those that yielded fruit and of those that added merely to the beauty of the land ; among these were the apple, fig, apricot, pistachio, vine, almond.
walnut, cypress, tamarisk, plane tree and acacia. But valuable and beautiful though they all were. none was equal in utility, in song, or in story to the palm. From the most ancient of days down to the present all the Orient has rung with the praises of the palm. In Babylon it found a suit able place for its development. It was cultivated with extreme care. Even in early times the proc ess of reproduction had been discovered, and was facilitated by shaking the dowers of the male palm over those of the female. From the prod ucts of this tree the peasantry were able almost to support life. The fruit was eaten both fresh and dry, forming in the latter case almost a sweet meat (Rogers, His. of Bab. and Assyr., vol. 1, pp. 282, 283).
8. Fauna. The lion (nisu, labbu) was a very common tenant of the reed beds between Arabia and Babylonia, and not only the panther (nintr11), the jackal (akhd, barbaru), the fox (se/ihu), and the wild boar (shakhd, daft), but especially the wild ox (reit-ante, Heb. Mr), frequently figure in the literature and the pictorial representations (c. g., on the oldest cylinder seals). Many spe cies of gazelles, antelopes and wild goats were found along the frontiers of the country. The horse (Heb. sist/) was unknown to the earliest settlers. The Sumerians called it 'ass of the East' or 'the mountain' (anshit kurra), just as by circumlocution they called the lion lig-magh, 'big dog.' The strictly domestic animals were the cow (a/tu), the sheep (shut, /ahru, and other words), the goat (inzu), the ass (inilrn, an incorrectly written form of hinth-te, Sumerian anshu), and tire dog (ka/bu). The elephant (1)11'0 of Meso potamia, the camel (gammalu) and the wild ass (burimu) of Arabia, were also known to the Babylonians. Such a word as gammalu shows by its very form (if it were a genuine Babylonian word it would be written gamin) that it has been borrowed from Arabia (F. Hommel, Hastings' Bib. Dict.).
The rivers swarmed with fish. In their slow flowing waters the barbel and carp grew to large size and were most highly esteemed. But the eel, murena, silurus and gurnard were also used for food and found in abundance.
By the waters and amid the great reeds which almost seemed to wall in the rivers were birds in extraordinary variety, among them pelicans, cranes, storks, herons, gulls, ducks, swans and geese. On land were found the ostrich, the bus tard, partridge, thrush, blackbird, ortolan, turtle dove and pigeon, together with birds of prey like eagles and hawks. At the present time a few snakes are found, of which only three varieties are known to be poisonous, but none of these are so dangerous as many found in adjoining lands.
Flocks pasture in meadows of coarse grasses; the Arabs' dusky encampments are met with here and there but, except on the banks of the Eu phrates, there are few remains of the date groves, the vineyards and the gardens which adorned the same land in the days of Artaxerxes, and still less of the population and labor which must have made a garden of such soil in the time of Nebuch adnezzar. The vegetation of these tracts is characterized by the usual saline plants, the river banks being fringed by shrubberies of tamarisk and acacia, and occasional groves of a poplar which has been mistaken for a willow : The weep ing willow (Salix Babylonica) is not met with in Babylonia. The solitary tree, 'of a species alto gether strange to this country (Heeren. Asiatic Nations, vol. ii, p. 158), which Rich calls lignum vitm, and which has been supposed to be a last remnant or offspring of the sloping or hanging gardens that appeared to Quintus Curtius like a forest, is in reality a tamarisk.