Arizona republican., 1910-01-30
The Worlds Greatest Irrigation
 Project.

FTOleCt.
 Bible students, and students of irri- gation problems as well, will be inter- ested by the snews that the Turkish government is taking steps to finance the most comprehensive irrigation project in the world, in the country which surrounds the legendary site of the garden of Eden.
 Described in figures, the project is to irrigate nine million acres, for which the Turkish parliament has ap- propriated the sum of 350,000 pounds (s1,750.OOO). It is calculated that this first appropriation will be sufficient for the first division of the project, which comprises three million acres.
 The geographical features of the scheme are of special interest because, while there may or may not have been garden of Eden in which man be- gan his existence, the territory to be included within the project is un- doubtedly the land in which civiliza- tion had its origin. if it be not the actual cradle of the human race.
 As might have been expected, it is an Englishman. Sir William Willcocks, who originated and is promoting the project. He proposes to irrigate the Euphrates- Tigris delta by diverting the waters of the Euphrates and the -Tigris. In other words, he proposes to restore these streams to the func- tions they performed thousands of years ago. He proposes to bring once mc-e under irrigation and cultivation that wonderful delta which has re- mained a desert since the Mongols under Genghis Kahn about 1920, com pleted the destruction of the dams and canals which had partly survived the invasions of other conquerors. Gen. ghis Kahn pretty effectually destroyed the entire civilization of western Asia, but nowhere did he succeed so thor oughly in leaving a desert behind him as in the valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris-the country which in bib lical times had supported the city of Babylon.
 The district which Is once more to blossom under the magic influence of irrigation is an irregular oval, about 200 miles long by 100 in extreme breadth. Within it are buried the great capitals of a dozen extinct civ ilizations: UT, the city of the Chal- dees; Babylon; Selucia; Ctesiphon., and the Bagdad of Haroun al Raschid. Sir William Willcocks says this coun- try of desolation, in which the very existence of former great cities is shown only by mere mounds of ruins just as low mounds in our own Salt River valley mark the construction of a forgotten civilization-will soon blos- l som and thrive as it did in the dim | science tell us. and it is easy to be- i lieve him, for the land is exceedingly i fertile and needs nothing but water.
 Sir William estimates the area of | the delta of the Euphrates and Tigris | rivers at twelve million acres; nine | million acres of desert and some- what less than three million acres of | fresh water swamp. The first imz provement proposed, for which the | Turkish appropriation already men, toned has been made. is the diversion | of the Euphrates so that it will follow an ancient stream bed, or canal, which legend identifies as one of the four rivers of Eden
 Although a hardheaded engineer. Sir William in his lectures before the Royal Geographical society has ex- hibted lively interest in the verifi- cation of biblical history in which his investigations have resulted. He agrees with the views of those who fix the district between the Tigris and the Euphrates as the scene of the biblical creation. He places the garden of Eden just above the Euphrates delta,
 | from Anah to Hit, the home of the Hittites. Eden's four streams-Pison. Gihon, Hiddekel and Euphrates-he identifies as the four branches into which the Euphrates divides when it enters the delta, and he has located the sites of many other places named in biblical accounts. Although he does not say so. we are to infer that Sir William is inclined to agree with clergymen of the higher criticism," who hold that the garden of Eden. in- stead of being a small spot whereon the first man and woman, were cre- ated. was in reality very large dis trict, which, because of it's extraordi- nary fertility. the abundance of it's irrigating waters and-the salubrity of its climate. was indeed an earthly paradise: that it was there that civili- zation began, and it was the fame of this paradise, spreading to savage lands, which gave origin to the legend