A variety of climate thus existed, but a variety within somewhat narrow limits.

The region was altogether hotter and drier than is usual in the same latitude.

The close proximity of the great Arabian desert, the small size of the adjoining seas, the want of mountains within the region having any great elevation, and the general absence of timber, combined to produce an amount of heat and dryness scarcely known elsewhere outside the tropics.
Detailed accounts of the temperature, and of the climate generally, in the most important provinces of the Empire, Babylonia and Mesopotamia Proper, have been already given, and on these points the reader is referred to the first volume.

With regard to the remaining provinces, it may be noticed, in the first place, that the climate of Susiana differs but very slightly from that of Babylonia, the region to which it is adjacent.

The heat in summer is excessive, the thermometer, even in the hill country, at an elevation of 5000 feet, standing often at 107 deg.
Fahr.