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Show PiCTURtspye Osaft on The. Tigris i "LONG the flooded banks of the A Tigris river the English cam - paign in Mesopotamia is still being waged. It has brought into the limelight this great water course of western Asia which has almost al-most as many historical associations is the Euphrates, which flowed through the Garden of Eden. A bulletin bul-letin issued by the National Geographic Geo-graphic society gives an interesting account of this highway of ancient civilization, civ-ilization, which seems to have assumed once more the role of history maker. The great Tigris, upon whose banks there flourished the magnificent city of Lagash and the great Babylonian empire em-pire more than three thousand years before the Christian era, today has fallen to such lowly estate that even the Turks and Arabs, whom it sustains, sus-tains, scorn to do It honor. Almost contemptuously they have given it the sobriquet, "the cheap cameleer," because be-cause It is used by the natives of its cpper reaches to bring down rafts or te'.eks from DIarbekir to Bagdad, where tho wood is sold while the in- 1 fated skins used as floats are deflated. On Its turbid course through Meso-ptamia, Meso-ptamia, the Tigris, which Is tra- I tersed by small boats for a distance ; tarly four times as great as the navigable nav-igable reaches of the Hudson river. Joss past many ruins which have roved an almost Inexhaustible mine of information for archeologlsts. Ophite Op-hite Mosul, from which we have derived de-rived the word muslin, applied to the fabric firat imported into Europe from ;:i3 town in the twelfth century, there ire to be found the extensive remains jf what was once haughty Nineveh, ever associated in the popular mind i si'.h the Biblical account of Jonah, the peat fish and the gourd vine. Ruins of Once Mighty Assur. Sixty miles down the river from Nl-. Nl-. :eveh, which was the last capital of ! Assyria, there squats the mean little irab village of Kal'at-Shergat, on the g hried ruins of Assur, the first great 0 ";;y of the Assyrian empire. It was 4 in honor of their god Assur that high 4 "iests founded the city of the same laae. These priestly builders and ad-lt ad-lt tinistrators were at first under the - 5-zerainty of Babylonia, but when that f pire fell into decay they succeeded a establishing themselves as lnde-Ul' lnde-Ul' indent kings, founding a dynasty e iich held ruthless sway over this g iKtlon of the world for centuries. iy Another historic place on the banks m t the Tigris Is Nimrud, which legend J1? ;':! us was built by the Biblical hero io in addition to being a mighty nlT Later is credited with having been 'n " ie projector of the Tower of Babel, i also with having cast Abraham in-' in-' the fire because the father of the elites refused to worship Idols. J09 Not long ago British soldiers were "0I -mending with the Turks in the en-ne en-ne "irons of the ancient capital of the l0" irthian kings, Ctesiphon, a few miles h "'-'Jth of Bagdad. Here one finds the a -ins of the great palace known as wb0 le throne of Khosrau," the most re-bo1 re-bo1 arkable example of sassanian archi- ture extant. 1 j Ttle Tigris has two main sources In u -e laurus mountains, at an elevation lon : 5,000 feet. The headwaters of the "tern brancn are on'y tw0 or three 1 " ;'6s from one- of the sources of the ilne4 -fhrates. After the two branches Sttfc( the rlver nw8 in a southeasterly i Motion for 800 miles until it unites andy- iih the Euphrates 70 miles above the wer. ,rsiaa gu an(J formg the ghatt-el-ae r" rah. -rEe (w0 principal towns on waterway of ancient glory are '-Had and Basra. Diarbekir Once Was Rich. Bt tb Diarbekir, situated on the upper 9 cP"' -?ris, has an impressive situation. Dattl Jilt upon a basaltic table land, sur-a sur-a that anded by v.alls constructed of basal-a basal-a cliff : rock, the city overlooks a broad n anl H 0f the Tigris, which flows by its 6j tn Hern side. Beneath the walls of the smooth y and within the bend of the river ust b 3 a plain covered with vegetation of 5 bug9 "ty shade of prccn that the East amble4 1 a produce. tell tb cities of the earth have under- ;t tbeir Je greater vicissitudes than Diarbe- ,( gan4 Roman and Persian, Armenian 0t car- 1 Parthian, Arab and Turk have dis-tne dis-tne 8eft puted its possession. In one of it3 many changes alone, more than 80,001) of its people were put to the sword. So heavy has been the toll that war ha? levied upon it that where once it was larger than the capital of the United States, today less than 40,000 people dwell there. The city Is rich In remnants of Its former greatness. Old Jacobite, Greek and Armenian churches raise their spires to heaven along with the mina rets of a host of Mohammedan mosques. Silk raising is a principal industry, and the sheaves that the inhabitants bring in there are sheaves of mulberry leaves which serve as fodder for the hungry silkworm. Lettuce is a favorite favor-ite article of diet, and the Turks eat it all day long. Strange Craft on the Tigris. Strangest of all the kinds of floating float-ing equipment is the kelek, seen on the Tigris. The kelek Is probably one of the earliest forms of water transportation trans-portation used by our ancestors in Asia. It consists of goatskins inflated with air, tied beneath a framework of light poles. Often as many as 800 such skins are used to give the boat tho desired buoyancy. The cargo Is loaded onto the kelek Just as though It were a flat-bottomed barge, after which the craft begins its journey down the Tigris or the Euphrates Eu-phrates propelled or guided by oars. When it reaches Its Journey's end it is broken up and sold as skins and timber. The two great rivers of Mesopotamia Mesopo-tamia are very crooked and very Irregular Irreg-ular In their depths. The airline distance dis-tance between Diarbekir and Bagdad Is 400 miles, while the water route via the Tigris is about 1,000 miles. At many places the river is deep enough to accommodate boats of considerable draft, but at others it is so shallow that a man has difficulty In swimming. But even over shallows where a man cannot go as a swimmer, a well-laden kelek will float without accident. For thousands of years this buoyant boat has helped the people of Mesopotamia to move their commerce over the shoals and shallows of two of the earth's moodiest rivers. |