Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-01-29

could be transformed into grain fields
and fruit gardens more productive than
any others in the world.
'Of all the countries that we know,
wrote HerodotuS CT this, there Is none
so fruitful Of grain. 1t yields commonly
two hundredfold. but when the produc-
ton is greatest even three hundredfold
and the blades of wheat and barley
plants are often four fingers in breadth.
Result of Irrigation.
This productiveness was entirely due to
irrigation. The soil is the same now
as then. and having been idle for twenty
centuries or more, it must contain a vast
amount of plant food. which has been &C
cummulating all Of these years. great
canal from the Tigris. which was more
than 300 feet wide. irrigated the land as
far south as Bagdad. which was the CEN
ter Of a vast garden. Similar canals
from the Euphrates carried life to an i'm
mense area. and produced as great and
even greater harvests than the pampas
of Argentine Republic or the prairieS of
our own northwest. There is plenty OF
water in the two great rivers. and their
tributaries. and even now they are navi-
gable to light-draft steamers. and furnish
an outlet to the Persian gulf, which will
make 1t possible to get the grain to mar
kct at very low rates. Every condition
is Orable-much more so than in Egypt
or India-where the governments are
spending enormous sums OF money TO in
crease the productive area. The otto
man government owns or controls the
greater portion of the land in the val
leys Of the Tigris and Euphrates. and
expects to recover the money invested in
the irrigation works by selling them to
settlers.
Where the purchasers will come from
is the question. The former pepula ton
has vanished. What took them off is
a matter of speculation. the most gen.
orally accepted theory being the destruc-
ton of the irrigation plants and the
cities in war.
There Is no immigra ton into the Otto
man empire, except few Greeks Ital-
ians and Germans. merchants who have
settled in Constantinople and other of
the large cities to engage in trade. Nor
is the Ottoman empire 'thickly settled.
but it is believed that European farm
erS who are accustomed to cultivating
large tracts OF grain may be induced
and use American labor-saving machinery
In planting and harvesting their crops.
1t Is the hope that corporations with
large capital can be tempted to take ad-
vantage Of the opportunity offered but
even the most sanguine of the Young
Turks does not even dream that Mesopo-
tama Will ever he repopulated with the
millions who lived there before the Chris
tian era.
Garden of Eden.
This is the country in which the Gar
den of Eden has been located by many
Psychologists, although the description
In Genesis is SO vague as to give plenty
of scope for difference of opinion. All
we know about the place in which our
common ancestors, Adam and Eve, lived
is found in the second chapter of Gene
sis, as follows:
IS. And the Lord God planted a gar
1n, CT or1 In, nd there
the man whom he had formed:
10. And a river went out OF Eden to
water the garden, and from thence II
was parted and became into four heads.
I'll. The name of the first Is Pison:
that in it which compasseth the whole
land of Havilah, where there Is gold:
40. And the gold OF the land is good;
there is bdellum and onyx stone:
"13. And the name of the second river
is Gihon; the same is 1t that compasseth
the whole land of Ethiopia.
IA. And the name of the third river
is HiddekeI that is 1t which goeth
towards the East of Assyria; and the
fourth river is Euphrates."
Writer a Little Mixed.
Moses, or who ever wrote this descrip-
ton. got his geography a little mixed,
because Ethiopia, which is called Abys-
sinia today, is long distance from the
valley Of Euphrates although the river
Gihon, which Is identified as the Nile.
was then the regular route from Assyria
to that country over which the Queen
of Sheba ruled. Several early writer's
thought the Nile had its source in India.
Alexander the Great believed that such
was the case Hipparchus, who wrote
on geography in the second century be-
fore Christ, believed that eastern Africa
and western Asia were connected by land,
and that the Red sea was a river and a
part of the Nile. Some biblical scholars
think that Moses. who wrote the book
of Genesis about the beginning Of the
fourteenth century before Christ, had the
same idea.
Leaving out the thirteenth verse of the
second chapter of Genesis: the Garden OF
Eden can be very easily located in
Mesopotamia between the Euphrates and
the Tigris, which is identified as the
"Hiddekel," and the River Pison may be
either the Kerah or the Karom. Either
would fit the case. Havilah means 1.-The
Of the region in question, and 1t had
gold and myrrh, which is transparent
gum called bdellium by the ancients. but
there Is no onyx there This is explained
that there was mistake in the transla-
ton Of the word "schoham," which means
a precious stone, and was improperly
rendered onyx in the original transla-
ton.
Prof Frederick Deletzsch Of the Univer-
sity of Breslau. who is probably the
greatest authority in Europe. believes
that the Garden of Eden was in Mesopo-
tamia, between the Tigris and the En-
pirates: Sir Henry Rawl!nston. the high
est English authority, agrees with Dele
tzsch. Paul Haupt of Johns Hopkins
University Identifies the Gihon as the
Nile, but believes that Eden was far
Their north near the shores of the Black
sea, between the cities Of Trebizond and
Ezerum, Turkey. Other authorities locate
it in Armenia or in the northwestern
part Of Persia near Mount Ararat, half
way between the Black and Caspian
seas.
SENDS THANKS TO PRESIDENT.