The Wenatchee daily world. [volume] (Wenatchee, Wash.) 1905-1971, 1910-11-02

tacle as ever the sun shOne on. These
tan and Persia in caravans number
ing often 100000 a year, bringing
| with them the sailed and dried bodies
of their dead for burial in the holy
cities of Kerebela and Nedjef, which
| lie south of the Garden of Eden. The
| corpses they carry dashed to the back
of mules and camels. White-robed
Star worshippers (Sabeans) live in
Eden too, and each autumn perform
their strange rites, wading waist
deep into the Euphrates at nightfall
and chanting their mysterious pray
ers to the evening Star. Then there
is the Yezidi or Devil wOrshipping
| sect, now almost extinct from Mos
lem oppression. They haunt the Ar
alb graveyard and practice in the dark
of night their secret rites. The Yez-
| Good in the world, so they worship
the forces of evil. They have no
written book. and most of their
creed is unknown to others than
themselves. A strange feature of
their belief is that no one should
ever utter Satan's name. Though
theythemselves pray to the Devil
they never speak his name. A few
years ago, when the Musselmen
waged a war of partial determination
against the Yezidis, a favOrite form
of torture was to whisper into cap
tive's ear the name of the Devil. The
superstitiOus savages would fall to
the ground, writhing in an agony of
fear an i dread, and it is reported
on good autharity that one man &C
tually died of fright when he heard
Satan's 'Shaytan" the Arabs
say.
The Arabs themselves who
now occupy Eden, keep to the habits
and customs of Abraham's time. They
sacrifice a sheep to seal a vow, and
observe the blood covenant Feuds
| flourish, as in Jacobs and Esaus
time, and Eden sees many bloody
tragedies. In tribal wars, and in
| fights against the Turks, thousands
of Arabs are slain every year, no
| wv of hi ah dc
world And not so many years ago
a caravan of rich Bagdad Jews SET
out for Aleppo, travelling along the
old overland route through the Gar
den of Eden. When west of the Eu-
pirates, and we'll out on the great
Arabian desert their Bedouin guides
played them false; they led the un-
suspecting Jews about in circles til
they We're thoroughly confused, and
then deserted them. The Jews wan.
dered about in the desert till THU
water skins went dry, and then died
of thirst When the last Jew haC
persisted the Bedouin guides came
back and looted the caravan of the
silver and the opium which haG
been taken for sale at Damascus
And on another occasion the desert
ruffians captured the Arab camel
driver who carries the mail from old
Bagdad via Eden to the Mediterra
thny 1nnfo1 tho nnnahnc fbnr
ham-strung the camel and cut Off
the hands of the mail-carrier. Man
and beast persisted on the desert.
In old ante-Suez canal days the
English carried their mails from In
dia across this same desert, by cam
els. And now they are planning tC
build a railway, which will run from
Damascus to Bagdad and pass thru
the very heart of the Garden of Eden
To the north will pass the American
railway, the concession for which is
being sought by a $30,0O0,O00 syndi-
cate of New York men, with Manning
Maxwell & Moore at the head. And
along the Euphrates is coming the
German or 'Bagdad Railway, whose
trains are already putting as far into
this hidden land as BourgourlOu
And as | write this, Sir William Will
cocks engineers are surveying the
Garden of Eden for new canals, and
1000 Arab wOrkmen are digging like
mOles, throwing up a dam in the
middle of an artificial channel dug
for the Euphrates, against which
the old stream will be turned as in
Nebuchadnezzar' time, and thus Sc
acres about Adams old home.
A boom struck Eden once before
when Moses led the Jewish home
seekers out of Egypt and up towards
the promised land. But the rush
then was merely a Sunday school ex-
cursion compared with the back to
Eden" movement which must set in
| in good earnest within the next ten
years. With new avenues of trade
and travel, this long forgotten place
must come suddenly into its own;
the world is growing too fast to per-
NIT this vast area of good land to
| lie idle, and if the new scheme or
the Turkish government succeeds
only in part, and if only one of the