"Tradition universally represents the earliest men descending, it is true, from the high table-lands of this continent; but it is in the low and fertile plains lying at their feet, with which we are already acquainted, that they unite themselves for the first time in natural bodies, in tribes, with fixed habitations, devoting themselves to husbandry, building cities, cultivating the arts,--in a word, forming well-regulated societies. The traditions of the Chinese place the first progenitors of that people on the high table-land, whence the great rivers flow: they mike them advance, station by station as far as the shores of the ocean. The people of the Brahmins come down from the regions of the Hindo-Khu, and from Cashmere, into the plains of the Indus and the Ganges; Assyria and Bactriana receive their inhabitants from the table-lands of Armenia and Persia. "These alluvial plains, watered by their twin rivers, were better formed than all other countries of the globe to render the first steps of man, an infant still, easy in the career of civilized life. A rich soil, on which overflowing rivers spread every year a fruitful loam, as in Egypt, and one where the plough is almost useless, so movable and so easily tilled is it, a warm climate, finally, secure to the inhabitants of these fortunate regions plentiful harvests in return for light labor. Nevertheless, the conflict with the river itself and with the desert,--which, on the banks of the Euphrates, as on those of the Nile and the Indus, is ever threatening to invade the cultivated lands,--the necessity of irrigation, the inconstancy of the seasons, keep forethought alive, and give birth to the useful arts and to the sciences of observation. The abundance of resources, the absence of every obstacle, of all separation between the different parts of these vast plains, allow the aggregation of a great number of men upon one and the same space, and facilitate the formation of those mighty primitive states which amaze us by the grandeur of their proportions. "Each of them finds upon its own soil all that is necessary for a brilliant exhibition of its resources. We see those nations come rapidly forward, and reach in the remotest antiquity a degree of culture of which the temples and the monuments of Egypt and of India, and the recently discovered palaces of Nineveh are living and glorious witnesses.