The Landof Menu° Rivers. By Edwyn Bevan. (E. Arnold. Is.
not.)—This admirable little sketch of Mesopotamia's place in history is by far the best of its kind that we have seen. Mr. Bevan's very first sentence, protesting against that misleading catchword " the unchangeable East," stimulates curiosity, and is fully justified in the course of the book. Mesopotamia, as he points out, was for the ancients the Upper Tigris and Euphrates Valleys, not the lower reaches, which they called Babylonia from the old capital. General Maude is only now on the verge of Mesopotamia properly so named. Mr. Bevan shows how this country was for long ages the debatable ground between Europe and Asia, and was not lost to Europe until the Arabs conquered Persia and Syria in the seventh century. From the days of Sumer end Akkad down to the thirteenth century Meso- potamia flourished under all its successive rulers, because it was always well populated. But when Hulagu the Mongol took Baghdad in 1258 he partly exterminated the people, and Timm a century and a half later completed his work. Inlesopotmaia, deprived of its culti- vators, returned to its primitive state. It will not become the garden of Asia once more unless it is repeopled with industrious
Indian peasants. •
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