4:SQ Sir John Jackson [May 28, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, May 28, 11)15. 



J. H. Balfour Browxe, K.C. D.L. LL.D., Vice-President, 

 in the Chair. 



Sir John Jackson, C.V.O. M.P. LL.D. F.R.S.E. 31. RJ. 



Engineering Problems 

 of Mesopotamia and Euphrates Valley. 



The area which I propose to cover within this title may he taken as 

 extending from the head of the Persian Gulf north-west to Mosul 

 on the Tigris, and to Hit, up the Euphrates, more to the west. These 

 lands bounded by the two rivers, Tigris aud Euphrates, are now 

 commonly regarded as the site of the Gardeu of Eden, and just as 

 they were made so productive by the energy of men who lived prior 

 to the time of the Babylonians, so, to-day, by similar agencies, they 

 can be made one of the very best districts for raising cotton, cereals, 

 and other products— a garden of the world indeed. The ruins of 

 the ancient city of Babylon are now seen about fifteen miles to 

 the south of the new Hindia Barrage across the Euphrates, which 

 was completed by my firm some eighteen months ago. The remains 

 of ancient canal irrigation works are to be seen to-day, and wherever 

 water can be put on the soil even by the primitive methods at 

 present used everything is fruitful and luxuriant. Without water 

 the land remains desert. It is said that at present some ten million 

 palm trees on ground easily irrigated fringe the Shat-el-Arab, 

 supplying a date trade alone of a value of about half a million 

 sterling per annum. 



For hundreds of years the whole of this country in the hands of 

 the Turks has been worse than nn'sgoverned, and from my personal 

 knowledge the feeling, not only of the people of Arab blood, but a 

 large proportion of the more enlightened Ottoman subjects, have 

 expressed themselves only anxious tliat the whole country should be 

 brought under the influence and control of Great Britain. In con- 

 sidering this question, it is to be hoped that neither the British 

 Government nor the British public will take narrow views, or be 

 deterred by the prospect of larger responsibilities from dealing with 

 a question of such wide interest and vast importance as the develop- 

 ment of this country, and I venture to suggest that in its government 



