Low inequalities,
elevations here and depressions there, diversify the surface of
the alluvial region. The latter are occupied by enormous
marshes, while the former support the permanent dwellings of the
present scanty and miserable population.
In antiquity, so long as the canalisation of the country was
properly carried out, the fertility of the alluvial plain
enabled great and prosperous nations to have their home in the
Euphrates valley. Its abundant clay furnished the materials for
the masses of sun-dried and burnt bricks, the remains of which,
in the shape of huge artificial mounds, still testify to both
the magnitude and the industry of the population, thousands of
years ago. Good cement is plentiful, while the bitumen, which
wells from the rocks at Hit and elsewhere, not only answers the
same purpose, but is used to this day, as it was in Hasisadra's
time, to pay the inside and the outside of boats.
In the broad lower course of the Euphrates, the stream rarely
acquires a velocity of more than three miles an hour, while the
lower Tigris attains double that rate in times of flood. The
water of both great rivers is mainly derived from the northern
and eastern highlands in Armenia and in Kurdistan, and stands at
its lowest level in early autumn and in January. But when the
snows accumulated in the upper basins of the great rivers,
during the winter, melt under the hot sunshine of spring, they
rapidly rise,<1> and at length overflow their banks, covering
the alluvial plain with a vast inland sea, interrupted only by
the higher ridges and hummocks which form islands in a seemingly
boundless expanse of water.
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