Sandstorms are frequent, and at times the baleful simoon sweeps across the entire tract, destroying with its pestilential breath both men and animals.
Towards the north Chaldaea adjoined upon Assyria.

From the foot of that moderately lofty range already described which the Greeks call Masius, and the modern Turks know as Jebel Tur and Karajah Dagh, extends, for above 300 miles, a plain of low elevation, slightly undulating in places, and crossed about its centre by an important limestone ridge, known as the Sinjar hills, which have a direction nearly east and west, beginning about Mosul, and terminating a little below Rakkah.

This track differs from the Chaldaean lowland, by being at once less flat and more elevated.
Geologically it is of secondary formation, while Chaldaea proper is tertiary or post-tertiary.

It is fairly watered towards the north, but below the Sinjar is only very scantily supplied.

In modern times it is for nine months in the year a desert, but anciently it was well inhabited, means having apparently been found to bring the whole into cultivation.