When the promenade had been transformed into Conference Hall, the arrangement for the maps had not been forgotten, and the frame had been set up against the after end of the pilot-house. It covered the two windows; but they were not needed when the ship was at sea. When the professor made his bow, Mr. Gaskette exposed to the view of the audience a map which had been completed before the steamer arrived at Port Said; and all the way through the canal he and his assistants had been busy upon others.
"Perhaps I ought to apologize for this map, Captain Ringgold," said Mr. Gaskette, when he had unrolled the huge sheet; "for the boundaries of these ancient countries are so indefinite in the great atlas that I have not been able to lay down all of them."
"You have done exceedingly well, Mr. Gaskette, and I think the professor can ask for nothing better than you have given him," replied the commander.
"Certainly not," added the learned gentleman. "I can give the boundaries no more definitely than they are presented on this beautiful map. I am extremely delighted to have the assistance which it will afford me. The artist might have guessed at some of the division lines, as others have done. He has given us Mesopotamia, Susiana, and the region between them, and that is all I desire.
"Perhaps I shall disappoint you, Mr. Commander, by the meagreness of my description of these ancient countries; for these subjects in detail would be very tiresome to the company under present circumstances, and I propose to bring out only a few salient points in regard to them," said the professor.
"The only thing I feared, Professor, was that you would go into them too diffusely, forgetting that your audience are not savants, or even college students, such as you have been in the habit of addressing. I am very glad to find that you have just the right idea in regard to the situation," replied Captain Ringgold.
"It is fortunate that we agree," continued the instructor, as he took the pointer and turned to the map. "This map lays before you the region lying to the north-east of Arabia, on the port hand of the ship, as the commander would say; and with your imagination you can look over these mountains and sands and see it. You observe that Syria is on the west of the northern part of it, with Armenia just where it is now, on the north of it, though there was more of it then than now; for in ancient times it reached to the Caspian Sea. An old lady in the country at whose house I used to spend my vacation used to call things that could not be changed as fixed as the laws of the 'Medes and Parsicans.' She meant the Medes and Persians; and Media, now a part of Persia, was the eastern boundary of the region mapped out On the south-east is Susiana, now a large portion of Persia.
"This beautiful map tempts me to be more diffuse than I should have been without it; but it gives you a bit of ancient geography which will do you no harm. There are two great rivers which extend through this territory, the Euphrates and the Tigris, though both of them unite and flow into the Persian Gulf. Of the former of them the commander has spoken to you this morning. Scholars have not been able to locate Paradise, or the Garden of Eden, with anything like precision; but it is generally supposed to have been between these two great streams. Some think it was not a place at all, but only a location given to a moral idea; others place it in the mountains of Armenia or Northern Mesopotamia."
"The pesky Bible critics!" exclaimed Mrs. Blossom; but Mrs. Belgrave "hunched her" as the good lady expressed it.
"All this region has been in the possession of various masters, and even the countries themselves are very much mixed. Assyria was the eastern portion of the northern part," continued the professor, indicating the location with his wand. "In the British Museum and elsewhere you have seen bass-reliefs and figures brought from the ruins of Assyrian cities, and in these the country is called Assur. In Genesis x. 11, we read: 'Out of that land [Shinar] went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh.' This was said of Nimrod; Shinar was a name of Babylonia.