But it was in the main by land that Mesopotamia imported her raw material and exported her manufactures. There must have been continual intercourse by caravan between Assyria and the Indus valley. The route must have been by Cabul, Herat, the gates of the Caspian and Media.[460] Several passes led down to the Tigris valley from the plateau of Iran. Longer and more difficult roads brought Armenia and the Caucasus into relations with Nineveh; but, as Herodotus noticed, the rafts of inflated skins, or _keleks_ as they are now called, could be used to float the stones and metals, the leather and the wool of the hilly regions down to the Assyrian capital and the cities of Chaldæa. Timber also would come down with the stream. Towards the west the roads that crossed the fords of the Euphrates, either at Thapsacus, or higher up, at Karkhemish, put Assyria into communication with Asia Minor by the defiles of the Taurus, and with Upper Syria and Damascus by the desert and the oasis of Tadmor. It was by this latter route that the great ports on the Syrian coast received those draperies and carpets which Ezekiel was so careful to enumerate when he pictured the commerce of Tyre. Addressing that queen of the sea whose fall made him leap for joy, he cries: “Haran, and Canneh, and Eden, the merchants of Sheba, Asshur and Chilmad were thy merchants. These were thy merchants in all sorts of things, in blue clothes, and broidered work, and in chests of rich apparel, bound with cords, and made of cedar among thy merchandize.” [Illustration] CHAPTER V. COMPARISON BETWEEN EGYPT AND CHALDÆA. In the ages that rolled away before the commencement of the period that we call antiquity, the eastern world saw the birth of three great civilizations; the civilization of Egypt, the civilization of Chaldæa, and the civilization of China. All three are primitive in character. So far at least as we can judge, no other form of civilized life had preceded them in those countries; the past had left no examples to guide them on their way. In the valleys of the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Yang-tse-kiang, three natural theatres in which all was prepared for the work to be performed upon their stages, man emerged from barbarism much sooner than he did in any other part of Asia or Africa; he there formed organized societies whose beginnings are lost in so impenetrable a past that we have no little difficulty in deciding on which hearth the flame of civilized life was first kindled. Although these civilizations had each a physiognomy of its own, they had, nevertheless, more than one common feature. It would take too long to notice all the resemblances, but we may point out two by which the historian can hardly fail to be impressed as soon as the idea of making a comparison suggests itself to his mind.