more remarkable than the striking difference between the appearance of
the same tract in Assyria at different seasons of the year. What at one
time is a garden, glowing with brilliant hues and heavy with luxuriant
pasture, on which the most numerous flocks can scarcely make any
sensible impression, at another is an absolute waste, frightful and
oppressive from its sterilityr.

If we seek the cause of this curious contrast, we shall find it in the
productive qualities of the soil, wherever there is sufficient moisture
to allow of their displaying themselves, combined with the fact, already
noticed, that the actual supply of water is deficient. Speaking
generally, we may say with truth, as was said by Herodotus more than two
thousand years ago--that "but little rain falls in Assyria," and, if
water is to be supplied in adequate quantity to the thirsty soil, it
must be derived from the rivers. In most parts of Assyria there are
occasional rains during the winter, and, in ordinary years, frequent
showers in early spring. The dependence of the present inhabitants both
for pasture and for grain is on these. There is scarcely any irrigation;
and though the soil is so productive that wherever the land is
cultivated, good crops are commonly obtained by means of the spring
rains, while elsewhere nature at once spontaneously robes herself in
verdure of the richest kind, yet no sooner does summer arrive than
barrenness is spread over the scene; the crops ripen and are gathered
in; "the grass withereth, the flower fadeth;" the delicate herbage of
the plains shrinks back and disappears; all around turns to a uniform
dull straw-color; nothing continues to live but what is coarse, dry,
and sapless; and so the land, which was lately an Eden, becomes a
desert.

Far different would be the aspect of the region were a due use made of