THE EUPHRATES AND TIGRIS. BY Y preeminence, the Euphrates is called in Scripture "the great river." Like the Tigris or Hiddikel, it is mentioned as one of the streams of Eden, and was subsequently named as the eastern boundary of the land promised to the children of Abraham. It accordingly became that boundary under David, and as it was also the eastern limit of the Roman Empire, it has thus held a distinguished place in Oriental history. The Euphrates rises, like the Tigris, among the mountains of Armenia, and becomes the Euphrates proper, after the junction of a number of smaller streams which compose it. At first it divides Armenia from Cappadocia. Then deflecting from the south to the west, it forces its way through narrow defiles and over foamy cataracts, and reaches the level country at last near Samsat. In a winding course it skirts the north of Syria, and hastens to meet the Tigris, after which it falls into the Persian Gulf. The united streams, by means of canals, spread fertility over Mesopotamia and the adjacent regions. The entire length of its course is above 1,400 miles, and the breadth varies from 200 to 400 yards, though at some places it is contracted to less than the third of that extent. It abounds in fish, and is for the most part a sluggish current, which, for a very large portion of its course, does not exceed three miles in an hour. At some places it is about eight feet deep, though at others camels can ford it-indicating a depth of only four or five feet. Where the stream is confined by hills, the scenery is sometimes not unpicturesque, for trees of a moderate size, Oriental plants, and islands studded with villages, all help to give liveliness to some portions of the river. Add to these the remains of ancient aqueducts, solidly constructed for irrigation, and we have nearly summed up the beauties of the Euphrates. sometimes allow the stream to lay a large tract, said to be sixty miles wide, under water. Near its entrance to the sea, the Euphrates is from twenty to thirty feet deep, while its width, at the greatest, approximates a thousand yards. It is navigable for about 140 miles, though modern enterprise has attempted to make its waters available to a much larger extent. Julian the Apostate had 1,100 vessels afloat at one time upon the stream; but this Tiber of the East, it may be hoped, is destined for nobler purposes by Him who turns the dry land into water-pools. If Babylon once contained the hanging gardens, the Tower of Belus, and stores of gold valued at more than twenty millions sterling, with other marvels, all now so utterly ruined that "the dragons howl in her pleasant places," let us hope that other sights of beauty will yet be seen, in the fullness of time, on the banks of the Euphrates. But we should, perhaps, ponder more fully some of the incidents connected with the "Queen of Kingdoms "-Babylon-while adverting to the Euphrates. The Birs Nimroud, represented in the background of our view, is generally believed to occupy the site of the Tower of Babel, the origin, and for ages deemed the glory, of the place. We are thus brought into contact with the memorial of an event which dates from near the flood, and which has exercised an unspeakable influence upon all succeeding times. It was there that the pride of man culminatedthere that he sought to make to himself a name, but only made sure of disgrace. In frustrating an ambitious project, the Almighty there confounded men's speech; and from that day to this, the world has felt the effects of that visitation. Indeed, no case could be selected more clearly illustrative of the descending consequences of sin. The Birs Nimroud is about 760 yards in circuit, and 200 feet high; and that is a monument surviving the waste of three or four thousand years, to tell how deplorable and deep are the ravages of sin-how man forsakes his own mercies by forsaking his God. After reaching the level country, the margin of the river is strewed with Arab huts grouped into villages, and surrounded by herds of horses and cattle, with flocks of sheep and goats. But it is in historical associations that the Euphrates is preeminently rich. That it at once watered and defended the ancient Babylon is well known, and our view represents the river in that locality that the draining of it by Cyrus gave him access in a night to that proud capital, is not less familiar-and two branches of the Euphrates still pervade the plain where Babylon once stood in its glory. Thence to the Persian Gulf, irrigation becomes common, and date-trees now line the river and embower the hamlets, although | behind, at that high bidding, which made Abrathe level banks and the flatness of the country ham a wandering exile for the rest of his mortal Had we space to record all that is remarkable connected with the Euphrates, we might dwell farther upon the fact that Padan-aram, the land of Abraham, containing Ur of the Chaldees, his native place-now Urfa-lies upon its eastern margin. That was the home and the country which he left at God's command. There he began to be "the father of the faithful," for there "he went out not knowing whither he went." Terah his father, Nahor his brother, and much that man holds dear, were all left a heap. Cyrus captures the city, sacks it, and the king and his haughty princes are put to the sword. It was the natural result of crime. Belshazzar's sin had found him out at last, and the besom of destruction soon swept him and his city from their place. Alexander the Great advanced the work of desolation begun by Cyrus. The city became "a possession for the bittern, and pools of water;" and when Seleucus built Seleucia on the River Tigris, Babylon fell to rise no more. Its ruins became only a quarry, from which other cities were built. Serpents and scorpions became its chief inhabitants. To the letter the words were fulfilled, "It shall never be inhabited from generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch his tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their folds there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant places." life. It was thus that the Word of God became | therefore full, and in a night Babylon becomes that man's inheritance, and the will of God his law. It was thus that he set to his seal that God was true, and thus that he was honored, because he honored the Holy One. In a word, by the margin of the Euphrates, lessons were taught and learned, on which the felicities both of time and eternity are made by God to hinge. And as Abraham at the commencement, so Daniel near the close of the Hebrew nation's existence, was signally favored of God on the banks of the Euphrates. The captive Jews hung their harps on the willows which fringed "the flood," and wept there when they remembered Zion-its long desolation, and its chains. Yet there was among them one whom not merely an earthly king delighted to honor, but, moreover, the King of kings-Daniel, the "man greatly beloved." Prophecies were both uttered by him, and fulfilled by God, on the banks of the Euphrates, which are still confirming the faith of God's people. From the same spot whence man had sent forth an influence noxious as a mildew, over all generations, God sent forth his message to counteract man's machinations; in a word, under the very shadow of the Tower of Babel, Jehovah reared new bulwarks for the Christian faith. But retribution overtook Babylon at length. Her kings had done their utmost in guilt. The last of them had desecrated the sacred vessels of the Temple of Jerusalem, and employed in the service of grossest passion what was meant for the service of God. The cup of iniquity is Wandering amid these dreary monuments of decay often saddens and depresses. It is like walking in a graveyard, where memorial after memorial appears, each sounding out some dirge of the past. But the Truth which came from heaven takes us, when most dejected, by the hand. She bids us look through the dark portals of the grave to the bright eternity which greets the believer beyond it. Babylon, once a majestic queen, may be a dismantled or a shapeless ruin now; but the city of our God is a joy forever. The Tigris is commonly understood to be the Hiddikel of Scripture-a conjecture which seems to some to be confirmed by the fact, that each of these names means the rapid or arrow-like stream. One of our views represents the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates near the town of Korna. The whole course of the former, which rises among the mountains of Armenia, extends to about 1,200 miles. On its banksfor example, at Diyarbekr-are many well-cultivated gardens and fertile plains. At that place the river is about 250 yards wide, at some seasons of the year, though it be navigable only for rafts. Two hundred miles farther down stands the town of Mosul, which occupies the site, or stands in the vicinity of Nineveh, "the exceeding great city of three days' journey"—the long entombed, but now disinterred capital of palaces, of mighty monarchs, and of hoary dynasties. On the banks of the Tigris, which are at some places steep, and now covered with brushwood, which furnishes shelter for lions and other wild animals of the district, Nineveh became the scene of lordly dominion, of bloated pride, of fabulous wealth, and inconceivable luxury. There Nimrod laid the foundations of his metropolis and his power; there Ninus and Semiramis ruled; but their pomp has been buried for thousands of years, and it has been reserved for strangers from empires which were not founded for many centuries after Nineveh had waned into decay, to decipher its hieroglyphic history, and tell us, in shreds and patches, of the glory | tions, were, till lately, all that remained of Nineor the shame of its mighty rulers. The Scriptures give us only glimpses of the history of Nineveh. About 900 years before the Savior came, Jonah was commissioned to preach to it, and it repented. The banks of the Tigris thus resounded with the brief but imposing denunciation of the prophet. But they witnessed also the peevish waywardness of man, in contrast with the long-suffering of God. Its walls 150 feet high, its prodigious towers of defense, its gorgeousness and magnificence, had no charms for Jonah. The idolatry of Nineveh was an abomination in his sight, and he cordially sought its destruction. And though long delayed, it came at length. Shapeless mounds of earth, round which floated some vague tradi veh. The arrowy Tigris rolled on as before, but the city became a nameless mass of ruins or mounds of earth. Kouyunjik, on the east bank, opposite to Mosul; Nimroud, about eighteen miles farther down the Tigris; with Khorsabad at some distance from the other two-all represented in the engraving-are supposed nearly to indicate as many corners of Nineveh, inclosing a space about sixty miles in circumference. The whole neighborhood along the banks for many miles is strewed with fragments of brick, pottery, and similar materials, proclaiming at once the former importance and the present desolation of the spot. But the Tigris hastens away from the dreary scene, and gradually widens till its breadth at one place becomes 500 yards. The city of Bagdad is situated upon its banks, and about 350 miles below that city the Tigris enters the Euphrates, as our view represents. Upon its banks, or near them, Jonah, Daniel, and Ezekiel had all uttered the prophecies of God, and to a jot and a tittle these have been fulfilled. The recent excavations have so verified the predictions, that baffled infidelity, like the baffled magicians of Pharaoh, has been compelled to confess, "This is the finger of God," and we need seek no better armor in which to contend for the faith than the banks of the Tigris and the excavations of Nineveh supply; although we have the highest authority for saying, that men will not believe, even though a city has thus been raised from the dead. But, if we would grow truly wise, we should not pass so lightly as we have done over the doings of Jonah at Nineveh. His position, when sent on his embassy thither, was one of the most trying in which any mortal was ever placed. To think that the millions who dwelt there, eagerly pursuing pleasure, and hunting with half a martyr's zeal, all that could fascinate or fetter the soul, would listen to the voice of a sorry stranger unfriended and alone, appeared to flesh and blood a foolish and a romantic hope. And that any warning words, though uttered in thunder, would long startle or arrest that throng, immersed in the pursuits of business, engrossed with the glories of war, or drenched with the pleasures which follow in the train of wealth, would seem quixotic to flesh and blood. For a time it seemed foolishness to Jonah, and he would not go to Nineveh. His faith did not stand the trial, and he fled. devices-not by mere culture for the mind, or mere care for the body, but, before and above all, by the truth of God, proclaimed on the one hand, and believed on the other. That is the divine panacea-the infallible specific-and they who employ it in faith will prosper in their measure, as Jonah did at last. It is on the word of God believed that the eternity of man is thus made to depend. But, long after Jonah's day, Nineveh and the Tigris witnessed the triumphs or the honors of another prophet. It was there that Daniel saw in vision the roll of the future opened up, and had the knowledge of omniscience imparted to him. Dan. x, 4. There, also, in long-subsequent times, the fiery Tamerlane and his hordes wrought desolation among the people; for that resistless conqueror is said to have piled up there, on one occasion, 90,000 human heads, as a trophy to his desolating power. And in our own day, the Tigris and Nineveh have again become like household words. The excavations which have been made there, the monuments disinterred, the corroborations of heavenly truth discovered, as already mentioned; the helmets, the coats-of-mail, or fragments of them, the sphinxes, the winged bulls, and the innumerable proofs of the pride and pomp of Ninevehall lead us away back to the banks of the Tigris, and to Scriptural times. In a sense, they make the world three thousand years younger, at least they carry us that far back into the dimness of the past. And who does not see the wisdom of God in raising up now and there such witnesses for His truth? Now, when infidelity is doing its utmost in many lands to prove the truth to be a lie; and there, where neither fraud nor forgery can be so much as suspected. Some portions of the Bible are twice given on the banks of the Tigris. First, prophecies are there uttered, and, secondly, they have been fulfilledfulfilled through every jot and tittle; nay, fulfilled once, and refulfilled once more. When Nineveh was besieged by the Medes under Arbaces, and on the eve of being sacked, Sardanapalus, the king, determined not to sur But even when he did resort to the city, we can understand how his heart would faint and fail at the sight of its gorgeous wealth, its prodigious strength, and its myriads of people. Many who have blamed "the peevish prophet," never fairly pondered the difficulties which he had to face. Nobles in their pomp and pridelovers of pleasure in their hot pursuit-the devotees of wealth-the slave and his enslaver-vive his capital, or fall into the hands of his all were, by nature and practice, pledged to op- enemy. Influenced by a tradition of the counpose the prophet. Yet all these he must as- try, which said that the city would fall when the sail to all these he must deliver the heavenly Tigris became its enemy, he gave himself up to message. despair during a signal overflowing of the river. He constructed a huge funeral pile within his palace, and, disdaining to grace the triumph of his conqueror, Sardanapalus placed upon it all his wealth, his harem, and all that was deemed precious by a royal Eastern voluptuary. He next mounted the pile himself, and then caused it to be ignited, so that he, and all that he But Jonah did at length deliver it-he delivered it in faith, and was honored in his deed. The streets and palaces heard the dirge-like cry-"Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be destroyed"—and from the king to the menial they repented. Now that may tell us how our great cities may be reformed. Not by human In the engraving of the Tigris at Nineveh, a structure of some prominence is seen upon a mound to the right of the view. It is a monument to the prophet Jonah, under the title of his Tomb. The Mohammedans reverence the Old Testament prophets, and even the Savior himself, in as far as he was a prophet. Among the rest, Jonah is signalized as having been in some manner connected with Nineveh, and the monument here represented is the result. It stands above the buried glories of the fallen city, as if the prophet might rejoice, even in the grave, over the prostration of that place whose respite provoked his peevishness, and made him wish to die. The lapse of time, and the revolutions of our globe, render it impossible that we can ever exactly ascertain the site of Eden. The wildness and extravagance of men's speculations on the subject have only enveloped it in additional darkness. By means of the Euphrates and the Tigris, however, we seem to be pointed at least to the region where man's first home was placed; and it appears to give something like tangibility to the subject, when we learn that a critic so cautious, so judicious, and so free from all extravagance as Calvin, placed Eden somewhere near Korna; that is, at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, according to our view. Will the reader glance at the engraving? Will he suppose that sin, and all its effects, had no existence in our world? That there were neither floods to inundate, nor tempests to overthrow, nor earthquakes to upheave? Let the heavens supply just enough of sunshine, and the earth and the sky together just enough of moisture, and let all that is beauty to the eye in vegetation, as we know was the case in Eden, reappear, and it seems as if the spot to which we point would be no unmeet scene in which to place the garden which Jehovah planted, and sinless man was set to keep and dress. We repeat, we do not assert any thing as certain on this subject. The point can never be decided now. But we do say that the region which is watered by the Euphrates and the Tigris, especially near their junction, invites the eye to give judgment in its favor. Eden there, with the Bible in our hand, becomes by some degrees a more palpable or a more visible reality. And if there be any truth in these views, then our eyes behold near about the spot where innocence once dwelt. From man, the delegated lord of all, down to the lower animals, |