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But little rain falls in Assyria, enough, however, to make the corn
begin to sprout, after which the plant is nourished and the ears formed
by means of irrigation from the river. For the river does not, as in
Egypt, overflow the corn-lands of its own accord, but is spread over
them by the hand, or by the help of engines. The whole of Babylonia
is, like Egypt, intersected with canals. The largest of them all,
which runs towards the winter sun, and is impassable except in boats,
is carried from the Euphrates into another stream, called the
Tigris, the river upon which the town of Nineveh formerly stood. Of
all the countries that we know there is none which is so fruitful in
grain. It makes no pretension indeed of growing the fig, the olive,
the vine, or any other tree of the kind; but in grain it is so
fruitful as to yield commonly two-hundred-fold, and when the
production is the greatest, even three-hundred-fold. The blade of
the wheat-plant and barley-plant is often four fingers in breadth.
As for the millet and the sesame, I shall not say to what height they
grow, though within my own knowledge; for I am not ignorant that what
I have already written concerning the fruitfulness of Babylonia must
seem incredible to those who have never visited the country. The only
oil they use is made from the sesame-plant. Palm-trees grow in great
numbers over the whole of the flat country, mostly of the kind which
bears fruit, and this fruit supplies them with bread, wine, and
honey. They are cultivated like the fig-tree in all respects, among
others in this. The natives tie the fruit of the male-palms, as they
are called by the Greeks, to the branches of the date-bearing palm,
to let the gall-fly enter the dates and ripen them, and to prevent the
fruit from falling off. The male-palms, like the wild fig-trees,
have usually the gall-fly in their fruit.
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