generally somewhat sterile, but containing a certain quantity of very,
fertile territory, more particularly in the Urumiyeh basin, and towards
the mouth of the river Araxes.

The boundaries of Media are given somewhat differently by different
writers, and no doubt they actually varied at different periods; but the
variations were not great, and the natural limits, on three sides at any
rate, may be laid down with tolerable precision. Towards the north the
boundary was at first the mountain chain closing in on that side the
Urumiyeh basin, after which it seems to have been held that the true
limit was the Araxes, to its entrance on the low country, and then the
mountain chain west and south of the Caspian. Westward, the line of
demarcation may be best regarded as, towards the south, running along
the centre of the Zagros region; and, above this, as formed by that
continuation of the Zagros chain which separates the Urumiyeh from
the Van basin. Eastward, the boundary was marked by the spur from the
Elburz, across which lay the pass known as the Pylse Caspise, and below
this by the great salt desert, whose western limit is nearly in the
same longitude. Towards the south there was no marked line or natural
boundary; and it is difficult to say with any exactness how much of the
great plateau belonged to Media and how much to Persia. Having regard,
however, to the situation of Hamadan, which, as the capital, should have
been tolerably central, and to the general account which historians and
geographers give of the size of Media, we may place the southern limit
with much probability about the line of the thirty-second parallel,
which is nearly the present boundary between Irak and Fars.

The shape of Media has been called a square; but it is rather a
long parallelogram, whose two principal sides face respectively the
north-east and the south-west, while the ends or shorter sides front to