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Show ..SI OLDER SNAnONS Tower of Babel Is Again In Use-Mesopotamia's Use-Mesopotamia's Reclamation Sir William Willcock's Great Project Now in Course of Realization. . ; By WILLIAM T. ELLIS. Babylon. Possibly the greatest present project of civilization, and certainly the most romantic, the reclamation of Mesopotamia, is now In course of actual realization. During the time of my sojourn In Mesopotamia the'papers providing for the construction of these vast Irrigation Irri-gation works were signed by the Turkish Turk-ish government and Sir John Jackson, the distinguished British engineer, to whom the carrying on to completion of the imperial project of Sir William Willcocks has been entrusted. Sir John has left one of his consulting en gineers in charge at Bagdad, and the other men of his staff are either already al-ready here or on the way. The magnificent mag-nificent conception of Sir William Willcocks, to give back to civilization the fertile land between the Tigris and the Euphrates, which was the birthplace of history, and the home of teeming millions of people, is no longer a dream. So dramatic an event as the rehabilitation rehab-ilitation of this once-fertile land, now become a desert, is found to be full of startling aspects. Not the least of these I discovered when I came to Babylon and saw that what the archaeologists arch-aeologists are agreed upon as the remains re-mains of the Tower of Babel is now practically a hole in the ground; and when I went out to the HIndia Barrage, Bar-rage, where the Willcocks engineers are at work, I saw the bricks from the Tower of Babel being ground up into powder to make cement for the foundations foun-dations of the new barrage. There is a measure of fitness in this ancient tower of deliverance being used to help save the land from its thirsty aridity. Lest anybody accuse Sir William Wil-liam of being an iconoclast, It may be said that the bricks were taken from their original site 30 years ago by the Turkish government, which tried to build a dam that would send the waters wa-ters of the Euphrates once more past Babylon, or, what meant more to It, past the modern town of Hlllah. Making the Garden of Eden Bloom. Sir William Willcocks, like all arcb-aelogists arcb-aelogists and students of the Bible, locates the Garden of Eden in the Tigris-Euphrates delta. Sir William fixes the site at a point west of Hit, lilt; taujuus aynii&a liuuj uulu antiquity and modern times secured vast supplies of bitumen. These smoking smok-ing and forbidding regions are said by some to have given the ancients their figure of the angels with the naming swords at the gates of the garden. No doubt is entertained by the archaeologists arch-aeologists that it was in this region tbat civilization had its birth. Here were the great empires of antiquity. From beneath the drifted dust and silting mud of Mesopotamia the scholars schol-ars with spades are digging up the wonderful stories of Babylon, Niffur, Tello, Ninevah and Asshur, while other "tells," or mounds, such as mark the site of Ur of the Chaldees, the city of Abraham's ancestors, await the coming of archaeological expeditions. The Garden Made a Desert. 1 Aa every traveler in thi3 part of the world has remarked, the Moslem is not a builder, but a waster. The statement is commonly made concerning concern-ing the Arab, but it is equally true of the Turk. It seems as if the fatalism fa-talism and physical excesses of Mohammedanism Mo-hammedanism cut the nerve of initiative initia-tive and endeavor. Certainly the followers fol-lowers of the Prophet found this region re-gion a garden; but they have made it a desert. I have traveled over a considerable con-siderable part of Mesopotamia, by kelek, horse, wagon, donkey, small boat and afoot. Everywhere the same story is repeated. It Is all poverty, ruin and desolation. The Arabs live in the same black tents that Solomon sang about, or else in miserable mud hovels. They have none of the conveniences con-veniences of civilization. Life is a hand-to-mouth existence. The appliances appli-ances of agriculture are primitive beyond be-yond belief a small triangular shovel, a little hoe about the size and shape of an adze, and a sharpened stick for a plow. Back of these cultivated areas lies the Mesopotamia desert. I have traversed sections of It where not a plant bigger than the camel thorn could be seen. It looks quite as desolate deso-late as the sandy Arabian desert to the west of the Euphrates. Yet It is every foot good gray earth, friable and productive, needing only water to make it pour forth crops to enrich the markets of civilization and to deliver the present population from dire poverty. pov-erty. "The Father or the Nile dams," Sir William Willcocks, who has also had extensive experience in Irrigation work in India, has for years been call mapping out and beginning of a cana! system. This he has done for a nominal nom-inal salary, which has straightway gone back into the project. In some cases the lines of the old canals, which to this day are the outstanding feature of Mesopotamian scenery, are followed. In others, newer methods, made possible by modern engineering skill, are employed. At present the area affected by the irrigation project contains about a million : -d a half of population. These are mostly poor Arabs, who subsist on a pittance, so that thousands of them are glad to get work on the new canals and barrages at 12 cents a day. The women and children make even less than this, while some of the foremen fore-men and picked workmen receive as much as 25 cents a day. All, however, are learning, to a degree, the habits ol steady industry which will stand them In stead when they come to take up the land that Is being redeemed by their present labors. Sir William Willcocks Will-cocks is authority for the statement that there should be a livelihood for twelve million people In the reclaimed area. Where these extra ten and a half millions of population are to come from gives concern to some students ft'-" t" r7 . - 'xi Mode of Carrying Baggage. I ing the attention of the world to the I Irrigation possibilities of the delta of the Euphrates and the Tigris. There is no good reason why the ancient productiveness of this district should not be restored. The water is still available, and the soil Is as good as ever it was. The only reason for its ancient productiveness which was so great that Herodotus was afraid to describe it in full lest his neracity be questioned was the system of canals maintained by the peoples of old. For the present It Is enough to recall re-call that a complete and wonderful system of canals covered all the land known as lower Mesopotamia. Nothing Noth-ing like it is known In modern times; engineers have freely conceded high praise to this achievement. Not until Sir William Willcocks took up the subject, from high humanitarian motives, mo-tives, was the re-establishment of the Babylonian canals ever seriously considered. con-sidered. His preliminary observations led him to broach the question, and five years ago he undertook, on behalf be-half of the Turkish government, whose interest he had enlisted, the actual of the scheme, Inasmuch as tee Young Turks refuse to admit any settlers who will not become Turkish subjects. Otherwise the surplus peoples of India In-dia and Egypt, already trained to work on Irrigated land, would quickly Hnd their way here. Back to the Garden of Eden. The immediate results of the new Irrigation are fairly staggering. The land which within three years will be calling for settlers will, according to Sir William, be capable at once of producing a million tons of wheat and two million hundredweight of cotton, not to mention rice, dates, beans, bar-lev, bar-lev, oats, melons, etc. Sir William has figured out an entire scheme for the most profitable order of crops. This scheme Is at the present moment visualized In mountains of new-plied earth, great canals, throbbing engines, growling stone-crushers, thumping pile-drivers pile-drivers (which use Lackawanna piles), and regiments of slow and singing Arab laborers. Here are In prospect the freights of the new Bagdad railway. rail-way. (Copyright, 1911, by Joseph B. Bowles.) |