It must not be supposed, because Nineveh and Babylon are the only cities made much mention of in Assyrian history, that none others of importance existed in the country around. On the contrary, again and again, in the course of his journeys, does Mr Layard speak of mounds of ruins, marking the site of what must once have been “large cities.” In truth, the valley-land of Mesopotamia, with its rich alluvial plains, intersected by the Tigris and Euphrates and their numerous tributaries, presented a vast surface, which at any moment the industry of man might convert into a garden. In remotest times, if in imagination we can recur to the period when first mankind began to settle on its plains, it must have presented a spectacle very much like that which now meets the eye—wide plains of fertile soil springing into verdure wherever it is touched by water, but desert almost everywhere for a great portion of the year. The latent fertility of the region was forthwith developed by the race who there took up their abode. The waters of the rivers were led over the flat plains in long canals, diffusing in all directions their irrigating streams, and causing the teeming soil, under the rays of a glowing and never-failing sun, to produce food in abundance for both man and beast. “A system of navigable canals, that may excite the admiration of even the modern engineer, connected together the Euphrates and Tigris. With a skill showing no common knowledge of the art of surveying, and of the principles of hydraulics, the Babylonians took advantage of the different levels in the plains, and of the periodical rises in the rivers, to complete the water-communication between all parts of the province, and to fertilise, by artificial irrigation, an otherwise barren and unproductive soil.”[146]