Note 18 — Chapter I · LAND AND PEOPLE
Reading edition
[This entire system is now a vast ruin, according to Rogers, who adds: “The great valley has a climate which appears little fitted to produce men of energy and force, for the temperature over its entire surface is very high in the summer season. It is, however, altogether probable that in the period of the ancient history neither the heat nor the sand was such a menace.… During the period of the glory of Babylon these sand waves (from Arabia) had certainly not gone beyond the Euphrates, and they could hardly have reached it.”]