At intervals along these routes were also found commodious and cleanly-kept inns to give shelter to the traveler at night. Buddha, the great religious reformer of the Hindoos, commended the roads and mountain passes of the country to the care of the pious, and the Greek geographers speak with high praise of the excellence of the public highways of Hindostan. Among the Babylonians and Assyrians agriculture, trade and commerce flourished at an almost equally remote period. The ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia cultivated the soil with the aid of dikes and canals, and were experts in the manufacture of delicate fabrics, as linen, muslin and silk. To them is attributed the invention, or at least the perfection, of the cart, and the first use of domestic animals as beasts of burden. Their cities had well-built and commodious streets, and the roads which connected them with their dependencies aided to make them the busy marts of Southeastern Asia. During the later Babylonian Empire immense lakes were dug for retaining the water of the Euphrates, whence a net-work of canals distributed it over the plains to irrigate the land; and quays and breakwaters were constructed along the Persian Gulf for the encouragement of commerce. While highways among the Babylonians served the development of agriculture and the exchange of industrial commodities, they were constructed chiefly for strategic purposes by the more warlike Assyrians, whose many wars made a system of good roads a necessity. The Greek geographer Pausanias was shown a well-kept military road upon which Memnon was said to have marched with an Assyrian army from Susa to Troy to rescue King Priam. Traces of this road, called by the natives "Itaki Atabeck," may be seen to this day. The Phoenicians, who were the first of the great historic maritime nations of antiquity, occupied the narrow strip of territory between the mountains of Northern Palestine and the Mediterranean Sea. From their situation they learned to rely upon the sea as their principal highway. They transported to the islands of the Mediterranean as well as the coast of Northern Africa and Southern Europe heavy cargoes consisting of the product of their own skill and industry as well as of the manifold exports of the east. They sailed even beyond the "Pillars of Hercules" into the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. Through their hands "passed the gold and pearls of the east and the purple of Tyre, slaves, ivory, lion and panther skins from the interior of Africa, frankincense from Arabia, the linen of Egypt, the pottery and fine wares of Greece, the copper of Cyprus, the silver of Spain, tin from England, and iron from Elba."