28 LETTERS ON AGRICULTURE. 



Owing' to the rigidness with which the Turkish quarantine laws 

 are enforced, few English people from India go into the region, 

 although there are regular weekly steamers of the British-India line 

 going up the gulf, which, though small, are not very uncomfortable. 



The trip from Bombay to Bagdad and back required two months, 

 and the greater part of this time was spent in travel. The collections 

 made during the trip include 224 date palms, representing 45 of the 

 best varieties from the various noted date-growing regions; a number 

 of Persian and Arabian hard wheats, in quantities large enough for 

 preliminary trials; and several interesting fodder plants, about which 

 latter, however, it is impossible to predict anything. 



The main object of the trip being to secure the best dates and hard 

 wheats, I feel it has been on the whole very successful; and predict 

 an important future for some of the dates, which are sorts far superior 

 to any that come on our markets from this region and are likely to 

 ripen earlier than the north African varieties, which latter character- 

 istic is considered by those interested in this new industry a most 

 important one. The purchases which I have made and shipped for 

 Mr. Lathrop include over 100 different things, and weigh about 10 

 tons. They left Bombay tin 1 6th of last April and full particulars 

 regarding them went forward. 



Recent affairs at the Arabian port of Koweit have attracted the atten- 

 tion of the public to the question of the political control of the Persian 

 Gulf. This trip along its shores tends to strengthen one's impression 

 that affairs in that region are gradually coming to a head, and that it 

 will not be long before important political changes in Persia and 

 Arabia will take place. 



Both the Arabian and the Persian coasts of the Gulf, as seen from 

 the steamer, are precipitous barren cliffs or stretches of desert sand. 

 Little indication of wealth is in sight, and the towns, with their flat- 

 roofed mud houses and filthy streets, indicate the undeveloped nature 

 of the country. There are extensive tracts of territory in the interior, 

 I am informed, where the subterranean streams of fresh w r ater come 

 to within 3 feet of the surface of the soil. But it was only after leav- 

 ing the Gulf of Persia and starting up the broad river Shat-el-Arab, 

 which is formed by the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates, that I 

 began in some small measure to realize the extent of the unimproved 

 lands of the Sultan's possessions in Arabia. 



Chaldea and Mesopotamia are Biblical places to whose present 

 conditions I had never given any thought, and the actual conditions of 

 the region were a great surprise to me. It is easy to understand 

 where the great wealth of Babylon and Nineveh came from after 

 traveling for five and one-half days up a muddy river which so nearly 

 fills its banks that the inhabitants of the village have only to reach 

 down from them to wash their hands m its waters. On both .sides as 



