Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE TIGRIS-EUPHRATES VALLEY; PALESTINE I. The Inhabitants Of The Tigris-euphrates Valley 28. The Land of the Twin Rivers. — Par up among the snowy heights of the Arme'nian mountains rise two of the most notable rivers in the world — the Ti'gris and the Euphra'tes. In their upper courses they flow near together, then far apart, and again together, inclosing the great plains of Mesopotamia (mfe-o-po- ta'mi-a).1 The course of the Tigris is the more direct. The Euphrates makes a great detour toward the desert of Arabia; but in their lower course the two rivers unite and flow as one into the Persian Gulf. The land along this lower course, together with the southern part of Mesopotamia, was known to the ancients as Chaldea (kal-de'a) or Babylonia. It was a land of burning sun, of extraordinary fertility of soil, and of extensive forests of palm trees. It was the seat of one of the earliest civilizations in history. Some scholars, indeed, believe that the historic period of this great valley can be traced fully as far back as the historic period of Egypt. As the valley of the Nile, because of its great fertility, developed an early civilization, so it was with the great valley of the twin rivers. The vast fertile plain between the snowy mountains of Armenia and the uninhabitable deserts of Arabia became the prize for which contending peoples fought. Wandering tribes would roll in from the desert or the mountains, and if successful in subduing the inhabitants, would settle down and become tillers of the soil. These again would be driven out by other tribes, and so the process continued for thousands of years. 1 From two Greek words meaning "between the rivers." Many a nomadic tribe, with its meager possessions of flocks and herds and rude implements of war, ...