Norwich bulletin., 1915-03-18
WONDERFUL HISTORIC INTEREST
 IN LAND OF TURKS
The Bible Is Story of Doings of Peo- pIes Who Were Got Beyond What Have Been Confines of That En- pire,
(Special to The BulIetinD

NopeCId1 lO l IIS IOuiIClllJ
 Washington, D. C., March 17-In a
 paper telling something of the won
 derful history of the lands over which
 Turkey has ruled for many genera
 tions, prepared for the National Geo.
 graphic Society, William Joseph
 ShOwalter gives some interesting facts
 which ordinarily escape attention. He
 reminds the reader that except when
 Paul and his associates crossed the
 Hellespont to Athens and Rome, the
 Revelation, was lived in what has been Turkey, and calls attention to
 the fact that the great Empires of the East the civilizations of the Egypt ianS and the PhoenicianS, the glories of ByZantium-ail were planted on what has been Turkish soil. He also shows how Cling Sargon, ruling at the very dawn of history, congratulated his empire upon his success in bring ing down the high cost of living. He says in part:
 No other people possess lands of such wonderful historic interest as the Turks. Occupying a region only Q third as great in area as the United States, they have yet a territory with in whose boundaries the greatest. the tory have occurred.
 ''The Bible, with little exception, is
 an account of the doings of people who never got beyond what have A4IL1iSA LO OSCI luS NOil41hSS O1 uIh0S From a single corner of the Ottoman Empire arose the Babylon that in it's day all but ruled the world. From that same region envy and famine conspired to send the children of Abraham into Egypt, which until re gently was embraced in the Empire of the Ottomans. Thence, as they
 marched back from Africa to Asia, through the Wilderness of Sin to the Promised Land, they never once set foot nf nf haF fn hn JS-h soil. And when the Star of Bethle- hem arose it stood over a manager, on land that is now Turkish soil.
 Tn Asia Minor once dwelt Croe-
 sus, whose name to this day expresses l the last degree of wealth. Here was Pergamus, whose library in it's period was the finest in the world, making such demands for papyrus that Ptol- | emy was led to prohibit the exporta- | ton of that commodity from Egypt. Under the reign of the Caesars, Asia l Minor alone contained 800 populous cities. enriched with all the gifts of | nature and adorned with all the re- hrementS of art.
 whose lands finally were occupied by the hosts of Israel; the civilization of Tyre and Sidon, the greatest Of an cient times; the civilization of Egypt, rival of Persia and Chaldea in the value of the heritage 1t bequeathed to the future; the civilization of Con- stantinople and the Byzantine Elm | pire, in it's day more gorgeous than | any that had gone before-all found their home within the boundaries of | of the Turk. Mohammed, and the re- | ligion, which bears his name, and | now claims several hundred millions adherents, were also born in the Otto- man Empire.
 The greatest of these ancient em- pires was the Babylonian. The Babylonians built their civilization | upon an irrigation ditch and made | Babylonia a land teeming with peo- | pie, the seat of magnificent cities, and the home of a orld-conquering em- | pire. Babylonla rivaled the Valley of l the Nile in production. Every Greek traveller who wandered that way marVeled at the luXuriouSneSS of the crops of MeSopotamia. Even HerodO- l tus hesitated to tell the story in it's fulness lest. the people for whom he wrote history might regard him as a | nature faker. The hanging gardens of Babylon stirred the admiration of | the travellers out of the west, so that l they wrote them down as one of the seven wonders of the world. Nebu- chadneZZar built them for his wife, i AmytiS, the beautiful Mede, to rescue l her from her homesickness for her native Median hills.
 King sargon, though he lived at
 the dawn of history, reviewed his reign much as a President of the Uni ! ted States or a great European sov- ereign might review his official career. | He tells us that he restored ancient l ruined cities and colonized them; that | he made barren tracts of land fertile; | that he gave his nation a splendid system of reservoirs. dams, and canals; that he protected the needy from want, the weak from oppression, filled the nations granaries with corn, brought down the high cost of liVing and found new markets for the na- tion's products.
 "Babylon's Notifications are said to have had a circumference of 55 miles, | the outer wall of which was 360 feet | high and 85 feet thick. The palace