The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1916-01-04
Bloody Conflict Is Raging
Where the Creator Planted the
Cradle of the Human Race


one aside the tadpole theory of exist
ence the mind leaps to the narrative
of Genesis. And scholarship tells us
that the Garden of Eden-Whethel
an actual paradise where the first
man and his mate heard the sentence
of their Creator or a metaphorlcal
scene imagined by the poets OF all
ages and races--lay in the heart OF
Mesopotamia.
Herein, at least, science makes a
concession to the plausibility OF the
ancient record, for in the second
chapter we read:
And a river went out Of Eden to
water the garden; and from thence
it was parted, and became into four
! heads. And the fourth river is
Euphrates."
This suggests a glance at the geog-
Iraphy of the region where machine
guns are waking the echoes of dead
centuries. MesopOtamia is long,
narrow strip of territory stretching
southeastward from the center of
Asiatic Turkey, bounded on the east
by Persia, it's upper extremity almost
overlapping Palestine. 1t comprises,
roughly, the country lying between
the Tigris and Euphrates rivers,
which drain a thousand miles of the
continent and join to flow into the
Persian gulf.
1t is, therefore, the natural site of
a direct highway between CONSTANT
nople and the east; and to this day
caravans traverse the age-old paths
between Bagdad and the modern
seat of the caliphate on the BOsphO-
rus. Bagdad, built $500 years ago,
is on the Tigris, about 900 miles
above the confluence of the two riV-
eTs.
Secrets From Silent Dust.
Fifty miles southwark on the east
bank of the EuphrateS, the level OF
the plain is broken by some mounds.
Here and there the accumulated
sand has been dug away from wide
spaces, revealing tumbled masonry
and traces of human habitation-
roofless walls and shattered pillars
rudely chiseled.
These are the fragments that re-
main of Babylon, that great city,
built by Nimrod, great-grandson of
Noah; for Is centuries the capital of
a mighty empire, the seat OF eight
successive dynasties, a center from
which a magnificent civilization radl-
ated throughout western Asia.
Two hundred miles north of Bag
dad. on the east bank of the Tigris,
are like mounds, from the depths OF
which like disordered scraps Of bur
led race history have been exhumed.
There the regal city of Nineveh rear
ed the vast bulk of it's palaces and
temples from the plain; built by
Asshur, son of Shem, who was son
of Noah, another record in stone OF
the great dispersal after the deluge;
a city that was old a thousand years
before Moses was born, that was the
capital of the mighty Assyrian en-
pire and that had so completely dis
appeared four centuries before Christ
that XenOphon and his Greeks pass
led by the site and made no record
of it.
Mesopotamia then, was the region
of two of the most magnificent and
most powerful of the ancient en-
pires-Assyria in the north and Bah
ylonia in the south. And 1000 years
after the remOrseless desert sands
swallowed up the Hottest pinnacles
of their proudest cities the world sees
two great new empires struggling
for the mastery of the solitudes once
peopled by the ruling races of the
earth in its far-off youth.
Where Abraham TrOd.
One speaks of antiquity" when a
medieval city in Flanders is destroy
ed or when the heights where Troy
stood echo to guns in the Dardan-
Giles. What shall be said of fighting
columns that tramp over the graves
of cities entombed by time; Of wire
less signals thrilling beneath the sky
that looked down upon the canals
and hanging gardens of imperial Bah
ylon; of trenches dug in the dust OF
peoples whose teeming life story can
be guessed but fragmentarily from
rude scratches in tablets of clay?
Consider this: the shadows Of the
wheeling aeroplanes that scout in
advance of the columns cross and
recross the path that Abraham trav-
ersed when he heard the call in Ur
of the Chaldees and set forth to
claim the inheritance of Canaan, COW
enanted to him and to his seed for
ever.
Or reflect upon gunboats troubling
the waters of Eden, within sight OF
the place where Nebuchadnezzar fell
from majesty to become as beast
of the field; where Belshazzar saw
the livid letters of his doom start
out from the wall Of the banquet
room; where Semiramis held her leg
endary court and Sennecherib led
his hosts to battle; where Darius the
king called with a lamentable
voice" to know whether Daniel had
been delivered from the lions; where
| Cyrus overthrow the Babylonian dy-
nasty and imposed upon the world
! the changeless laws of the Modes
and Persians; where Alexander halt
ed to contemplate the wonders of
his conquests, and died ruler Of the
| earth at 30.
One thinks of Assyria as ancient,
=, yet Babylonia energies from the
mists of the past 200 years before
| Assyrian influence was felt: its his
/ tory. vague but traceable, begins 10
| centuries before Cheops built his
| pyramidal tomb. BabylOnia in time
developed into an empire of culture
and art and peaceful commerce.