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Show AGAIN TO BE FE.TTILF LAND Building of Euphrates Dam Calculated to Restore the Prosperity of Old Mesopotamia. With the completion of the Hindi-j yeh barrage, on the River Euphrates, the first, step has been taken which will ultimately turn Mesopotamia into the fertile land it was in Biblical times. For ages the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates have run to waste in the desert, or accumulated in unwholesome marshes, and devastation and the decay de-cay of centuries have set their mark upon enormous areas that once blossomed blos-somed as the rose. In the great Babylonian Baby-lonian plain, tradition has placed the Garden of Eden, and the still visible ruins of the old dams and canals show-how show-how important a part was played by irrigation in the economic prosperity of Chaldea and Babylon. After lying dormant for ages as the result of devastating wars, Tartar inroads, in-roads, and Turkish apathy, fertility is about to be restored to those desolate deso-late regions as by the wave of a magician's ma-gician's wand. The magician is the modern engineer, engi-neer, in the person of Sir William Willcocks, who in 1!Hi9 was commissioned commis-sioned by the Turkish government to prepare an irrigation scheme. In its entirety Sir William Willcoe.k's plan entailed an expenditure of $75,000,000. and it is the first portion of the works which were inaugurated. The Hindiyeh barrage. 47 miles south of Bagdad, has been built just above the town of Hindiyeh. and to the east of the present riverbed, and it distributes Ihe waters of the Euphrates Eu-phrates through regulators down the old Hillah branch, past Babylon to Hillah. It is S00 feet long and consists con-sists of 33 arches fitted with sluice gates 16 feet wide. The arches are supported by piers 19 feet high and four feet thick, with key piers measuring measur-ing 11 feet. This structure rests upon a foundation of three feet of concrete and six feet of brickwork. Adjoining the barrage is a lock with a 25-foot opening for the use of the river traffic |