The Assyrians were not an agricultural people like the Babylonians. Nevertheless, the kings had their paradises or parks, and the wealthier classes their gardens or shrubberies. The garden was planted with trees rather than with flowers or herbs, and afforded a shady retreat during the summer months. Tiglath-Pileser I had even established a sort of botanical garden, in which he tried to acclimatise some of the trees he had met with in his campaigns. He tells us of it: 'As for the cedar, the _likkarin_ tree, and the almug, from the countries I have conquered, these trees, which none of the kings my fathers that were before me had planted, I took, and in the gardens of my land I planted, and by the name of garden I called them; whatsoever in my land there was not I took, and I established the gardens of Assyria.' The gardens were abundantly watered from the river or canal, by the side of which they were usually planted. Summer-houses were built in the midst of them, and as early as the time of Sennacherib we meet with a 'hanging garden,' grown on the roof of a building. Fishing was carried on with a line merely, and without a rod. The fisherman sat on the bank, or else swam in the water, supporting himself on an inflated skin. These inflated skins were largely used in warfare for conveying troops and animals across a stream. The chief officers, along with their chariots and commissariat, were ferried across in boats, but the soldiers had to strip, and with the help of the skins convey themselves, their arms, the horses, and other baggage to the opposite bank. At times a pontoon-bridge of boats was constructed, at other times the Assyrian army was fortunate enough to meet with bridges of stone or wood. In fact, such bridges existed on all the main roads which it traversed. Western Asia was more thickly populated then than is at present the case, and the roads were not only more numerous than they are to-day, but better kept. Hence the ease and rapidity with which large bodies of men were moved by the Assyrian kings from one part of Asia to another. Where a road did not already exist, it was made by the advancing army, timber being cleared and a highway thrown up for the purpose. As road-makers the Assyrians seem to have anticipated the Romans. Both their military and their trading instincts led them in this direction. It was only when they came to the water that their career was checked. Excellent as they were as soldiers, they never became sailors. The boats of the Tigris and Euphrates were either rafts or circular coracles of skins stretched on a wooden framework. When Sennacherib wished to attack the Chaldeans of Bit-Yagina in their place of refuge on the Persian Gulf, he had to transport Phœnicians from the west to build his galleys, and to navigate them afterwards. It was the Babylonians 'whose cry was in their ships;' the Assyrians fought and traded on shore.