and have relapsed very generally into a nomadic or semi-nomadic condition.  The insecurity of property consequent upon bad government has in a great measure caused this change, which render; the bounty of Nature useless, and allows immense capabilities to run to waste.  The present condition of Babylonia gives a most imperfect idea of its former state, which must be estimated not from modern statistics, but from the accounts of ancient writers and the evidences which he country itself presents.  From them we conclude that this region was among the most productive upon the face of the earth, spontaneously producing some of the best gifts of God to man, and capable, under careful management, of being made one continuous garden.

CHAPTER III.

THE PEOPLE.

“A mighty nation, an ancient nation.”—­JEREM. v. 15.

That the great alluvial plain at the mouth of the Euphrates and Tigris was among the countries first occupied by man after the Deluge, is affirmed by Scripture, and generally allowed by writers upon ancient history.  Scripture places the original occupation at a time when language had not yet broken up into its different forms, and when, consequently, races, as we now understand the term, can scarcely have existed.  It is not, however, into the character of these primeval inhabitants that we have here to inquire, but into the ethnic affinities and characteristics of that race, whatever it was, which first established an important kingdom in the lower part of the plain—­a kingdom which eventually became an empire.  According to the ordinary theory, this race was Aramaic or Semitic.  “The name of Aramaeans, Syrians, or Assyrians,” says Niebuhr, “comprises the nations extending from the mouth of the Euphrates and Tigris to the Euxine, the river Halys, and Palestine.  They applied to themselves the name of Aram, and the Greeks called them Assyrians, which is the same as Syrians(?).  Within that great extent of country there existed, of course, various dialectic differences of language; and there can be little doubt but that in some places the nation was mixed with other races.”  The early inhabitants of Lower Mesopotamia, however, he considers to have been pure Aramaeans, closely akin to the Assyrians, from whom, indeed, he regards them as only separate politically.

Similar views are entertained by most modern writers.  Baron Bunsen, in one of his latest works, regards the fact as completely established by the results of recent researches in Babylonia.  Professor M. Muller, though expressing himself with more caution, inclines to the same conclusion.  Popular works, in the shape of Cyclopaedias and short general histories, diffuse the impression.  Hence a difficulty is felt with regard to the Scriptural statement concerning the first kingdom in these parts, which is expressly said to have been Cushite or Ethiopian.  “And Cush begat Nimrod: (he began to be a mighty