pits.  Frost is of rare occurrence in winter, and rain is infrequent at any season; the sun soon burns up the scanty herbage which the spring showers have encouraged, but fleshy plants successfully resist its heat, such as the common salsola, the salsola soda, the pallasia, a small mimosa, and a species of very fragrant wormwood, forming together a vari-coloured vegetation which gives shelter to the ostrich and the wild ass, and affords the flocks of the nomads a grateful pasturage when the autumn has set in.  The Euphrates bounds these solitudes, but without watering them.  The river flows, as far as the eye can see, between two ranges of rock or bare hills, at the foot of which a narrow strip of alluvial soil supports rows of date-palms intermingled here and there with poplars, sumachs, and willows.  Wherever there is a break in the two cliffs, or where they recede from the river, a series of shadufs takes possession of the bank, and every inch of the soil is brought under cultivation.  The aspect of the country remains unchanged as far as the embouchure of the Khabur; but there a black alluvial soil replaces the saliferous clay, and if only the water were to remain on the land in sufficient quantity, the country would be unrivalled in the world for the abundance and variety of its crops.

[Illustration:  036.jpg THE BANKS OF THE EUPHRATES AT ZULEIBEH]

     Drawn by Boudier, from the plate in Chesney.

The fields, which are regularly sown in the neighbourhood of the small towns, yield magnificent harvests of wheat and barley:  while in the prairie-land beyond the cultivated ground the grass grows so high that it comes up to the horses’ girths.  In some places the meadows are so covered with varieties of flowers, growing in dense masses, that the effect produced is that of a variegated carpet; dogs sent in among them in search of game, emerge covered with red, blue, and yellow pollen.  This fragrant prairie-land is the delight of bees, which produce excellent and abundant honey, while the vine and olive find there a congenial soil.  The population was unequally distributed in this region.  Some half-savage tribes were accustomed to wander over the plain, dwelling in tents, and supporting life by the chase and by the rearing of cattle; but the bulk of the inhabitants were concentrated around the affluents of the Euphrates and Tigris, or at the foot of the northern mountains wherever springs could be found, as in Assur, Singar, Nisibis, Tilli,* Kharranu, and in all the small fortified towns and nameless townlets whose ruins are scattered over the tract of country between the Khabur and the Balikh.  Kharranu, or Harran, stood, like an advance guard of Chaldaean civilization, near the frontiers of Syria and Asia Minor.** To the north it commanded the passes which opened on to the basins of the Upper Euphrates and Tigris; it protected the roads leading to the east and south-east in the direction of the table-land of Iran and the Persian Gulf, and it was the key to the route by which the commerce of Babylon reached the countries lying around the Mediterranean.  We have no means of knowing what affinities as regards origin or race connected it with Uru, but the same moon-god presided over the destinies of both towns, and the Sin of Harran enjoyed in very early times a renown nearly equal to that of his namesake.