The physiognomy of Mesopotamia has then been profoundly modified since the fall of the ancient civilization. By the indolence of man it has lost its adornments, or rather its vesture, in the ample drapery of waving palms and standing corn that excited the admiration of Herodotus.[27] But the general characteristics and leading contours of the landscape remain what they were. Restore in thought one of those Babylonian structures whose lofty ruins now serve as observatories for the explorer or passing traveller. Suppose yourself, in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, seated upon the summit of the temple of Bel, some hundred or hundred and twenty yards above the level of the plain. At such a height the smiling and picturesque details which were formerly so plentiful and are now so rare, would not be appreciated. The domed surfaces of the woods would seem flat, the varied cultivation, the changing colours of the fields and pastures would hardly be distinguished. You would be struck then, as you are struck to-day, by the extent and uniformity of the vast plain which stretches away to all the points of the compass. In Assyria, except towards the south where the two rivers begin to draw in towards each other, the plains are varied by gentle undulations. As the traveller approaches the northern and eastern frontiers, chains of hills, and even snowy peaks, loom before him. In Chaldaea there is nothing of the kind. The only accidents of the ground are those due to human industry; the dead level stretches away as far as the eye can follow it, and, like the sea, melts into the sky at the horizon. NOTES: [18] HERODOTUS, i. 193: He de ge ton Assurion huetai men oligoi. [19] LOFTUS, _Susiana and Chaldaea_, i. vol. 8vo. 1857, London, p. 73. [20] LOFTUS, _Susiana and Chaldaea_, p. 73; LAYARD, _Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon_, p. 146 (i. vol. 8vo. 1853). [21] HERODOTUS, exaggerates this difference, but it is a real one. "The plant," he says, "is nourished and the ears formed by means of irrigation from the river. For this river does not, as in Egypt, overflow the cornlands of its own accord, but is spread over them by the hand or by the help of engines," i. 193. [Our quotations are from Prof. Rawlinson's _Herodotus_ (4 vols. 8vo. 1875; Murray); Ed.] The inundations of the Tigris and Euphrates do not play so important a _role_ in the lives of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, as that of the Nile in those of the Egyptians. [22] LAYARD, _A Second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh_, plate 27 (London, oblong folio, 1853). [23] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, pp. 551-556; LOFTUS, _Chaldaea and Susiana_, chap. x. [24] LAYARD (_Discoveries_, pp. 467, 468 and 475) tells us what the Turks "have made of two of the finest rivers in the world, one of which is navigable for 850 miles from its mouth, and the other for 600 miles."