Lincoln County times. (Jerome, Idaho) 1911-1919, 1911-11-30
BY WILLIAM T. ELLIS.

certainly the most romantic, the |
reclamation of Mesopotamia, is |
now in course of actual realization. |
During the time of my sojourn In |
Mesopotamia the papers providing for |
the construction of these vast irri- |
cation works were signed by the Turk
ish government and Sir John Jackson, |
the distinguished British engineer, to |
whom the carrying on to completion of |
the imperial project of Sir William |
Willcocks has been entrusted. Sir
John has left one of his consulting en-
gineers In charge at Bagdad. and the
other men of his staff are either al
ready here or on the way. The mag
nificent conception of Sir William
Willcocks. to give back to civilization
the fertile land between the Tigris
and the Euphrates, which was the
birthplace of history, and the home
of teeming millions of people, is no
longer a dream.
So dramatic an event as the rehab-
ilitation of this once-fertile land, now
become desert, Is found to be full of
startling aspects. Not the least of
Babylon and saw that what the arch
biologists are agreed upon as the re-
mains of the Tower of Babel is now
practically a hole in the ground; and
when / went out to the Hindia Bar
rage, where the Willcocks engineers
are at work, | saw the bricks from the
Tower of Babel being ground up into
powder to make cement for the foun-
dations of the new barrage. There is
measure of fitness in this ancient
tower of deliverance being used to
help save the land from its thirsty
aridity. Lest anybody accuse Sir Will
liam of being an iconoclast it may be
said that the bricks were taken from
their original site 80 years ago by the
Turkish government, which tried to
build a dam that would send the wa
tiers Of the Euphrates once more past
Babylon, or, what. meant more to it,
past the modern town of Hilah.
Making the Garden of Eden Bloom.
Sir William Willcocks, like all arch
aelogists and students Of the Bible,
locates the Garden of Eden in the
Tigris-Euphrates delta. Sir William
fixes the site at a point west of Hit,
the famous springs from which both
antiquity and modern times secured
vast supplies of bitumen. These smok-
Ing and forbidding regions are said by
some to have given the ancients their
figure of the angels with the flaming
swords at the gates Of the garden.
No doubt is entertained by the arch
biologists that It was in this region
that civilization mad its birth. Here
were the great empires of antiquity.
From beneath the drifted dust and
sitting mud of Mesopotamia the schol-
ars with spades are digging up the
wonderful stories of Babylon, Niffur,
Tello. Ninevah and Asshur, while
other tells" or mounds. such as mark
the site of Ur of the Chaldees. the city
of Abraham's ancestors. await the
coming of archaeological expeditions
The Garden Made Desert.
AS every traveller in this part of the
world has remarked, the Moslem is
hot n builder, but waster. The
statement Is commonly made concern
ing the Arab, but 1t is equally true
of the Turk. 1t seems as If the ia
talsm and physical excuses of Mo-
hammedanism cut the nerve of initia-
tive and endeavor. Certainly the fol-
lowers of the Prophet found this re-
gion a garden; but they have made 1t
a desert. | have travelled over con-
siderable part of Mesopotamia, by
kelek, horse, wagon, donkey, small
boat and afoot. Everywhere the same
story is repeated. 1t is all poverty,
ruin and desolation. The Arabs live
in the same black tents that Solomon
sang about, or else in miserable mud
novels. They have none Of the con-
veniences OF civilization. Life is a
hand-to-mouth existence. The appli-
ances Of agriculture are primitive be-
yond belief-a small triangular
shovel. a little hoe about the size and
shape of an adze. and a sharpened
stick for a pillow.
Only a small strip Of territory, lying
along the rivers, or the few subsidiary
canals that remain, is cultivated. Wa
ter is raised by the "cherit," leather
bucket let down to the stream, and
hauled up by oxen, donkeys, camels
or cows. The process is cumbersome,
expensive and inadequate. In few
places oil engines and pumps made in
Britain and America, have displaced
the cumbersome cherit, and 1t seems
inevitable that they should become
general in the new day that Is dawn
ing for Mesopotamia.
Back of these cultivated areas lies
the Mesopotamia desert. have
traversed sections Of It where not 9
plant bigger than the camel thorn
could be seen. 1t looks quite as desc
late as the sandy Arabian desert tc
the west Of the Euphrates. Yet 1t IL
every foot good gray earth, friable
and productive. needing only water &c
make 1t pour forth crops to enrich the
markets Of civilization and to deliver
the present population from dire pow
erty. And the water Is still availaoie