Salt Lake Tribune | 1911-02-05 | Page 6 | To Water as of Old

TO "WATER AS OF OLD. There is rosy promise for new life in another oC the ancieut lands. Egypt has been renewed by tho tremendous tre-mendous reclamation works the British have put in the Nile, and the people there are cheered by the hope of yet further and even more extensivo reclamation rec-lamation propositions. And now, inspired in-spired no doubt by the example of the great things done in and promised for Eypt, the people of anciont Mesopotamia Mesopota-mia are reaching forth for help. And they aro to get it from the same source. The Knglish firm of Jackson & Co. has obtained a contract from the Turkish Government to build a great dam at the Hindie section of the Euphrates, the same being, as explained, "a part of the scheme for the irrigation of Mesopotamia." Meso-potamia." Tins old division is now comprised in the vilayets of Bagdad, Mosul. Aleppo, and Diarbckr. Tt is one of the great garden-spots of the earth, fertile beyond experience elsewhere, else-where, and anciently was tho seat of the known world's empire. Babylon, and then Assyria, ruled all peoples from chat seat of empire. The ancient dams in the Euphrates aud the Tigris controlled con-trolled and utilized the waters of those rivers, and from the meeting of the waters and the fertile lands a great people sprang, advanced beyond all those of its ages in civilization, culture, power, and trade. And now, a beginning is to bo made to restore that ancient basis of teeming teem-ing life; the ravages of more than twenty centuries of war. neglect, and devastation are to be repaired, and a new beginning mado toward a mighty population and production. It is true (hat for a time after the Mohammedan conquest the .bright star of promise shone forth from the liberal rule of some of the great caliphs, especially in the reign of Ilaroun al Raachid (Aaron the Just); but that star was dimmed in blood, and the desolation came on even worse than before, and the land has been asleep for centuries. No more promising field for tho play of modem science in practical form, could bo imagined than in this old land of fertility and of swarming millions. And no race is belter adapted than tho British to take up tho old work and make it even more resplendent resplen-dent than it was aforotimc. It is ono of tho groat and spectacular enterprises enter-prises of nil timo that ds thus undertaken, under-taken, and all tho world will nolo its progress with wonder and admiration.