IRRIGATION IN PALESTINE. 435- 



the forests would very soon follow. In such climates, the rains 

 are inclined to be periodical ; they are also violent, and for these 

 reasons the soil would he parched in summer and liable to wash 

 in winter. In these countries, therefore, the necessity for irri- 

 gation must soon have been felt, and its introduction into moun- 

 tainous regions hke Armenia must have been immediately fol- 

 lowed by a system of terracing, or at least scarping, the hillsides. 

 Pasture and meadow, indeed, may be irrigated even when the 

 surface is both steep and irregular, as may be observed abun- 

 dantly on the Swiss as well as on the Piedmontese slope of the 

 Alps ; but in dry chmates, ploughland and gardens on hiUy 

 grounds require terracing, both for supporting the soil and for 

 administering water by irrigation, and it should be remembered 

 that terracing, of itself, even without special arrangements for 

 controlling the distribution of water, prevents or at least checks 

 the flow of rain-water, and gives it time to sink into the ground 

 instead of running off over the surface. 



The summers in Egypt, in Syria, and in Asia Minor and even 

 Pumeha, are almost rainless. In such chmates the necessity of 

 irrigation is obvious, and the loss of the ancient means of furnish- 

 ing it helps to explain the diminished fertility of most of the 

 countries in question.* The surface of Palestine, for example, 

 is composed in a great measure of rounded hmestone hills, once, 



* In Egypt, evaporation and absorption by the earth are so rapid, that all 

 annual crops require irrigation during the whole period of their growth. As 

 fast as the water retires by the subsidence of the annual inundation, the seed 

 is sown upon the stUl moist, uncovered soil, and irrigation begins at once. 

 Upon the Nile, you hear the creaking of the water-wheels, and sometimes the 

 movement of steam-pumps, through the whole night, while the poorer cultiva- 

 tors unceasingly ply the simple shadoof, or bucket-and-sweep, laboriously 

 raising the water from trough to trough by as many as six or seven stages 

 when the river is low. The bucket is of flexible leather, with a stiff rim, and 

 is emptied into the trough, not by inverting it like a wooden bucket, but by 

 putting the hand beneath and pushing the bottom up till the water all runs 

 over the brim, or, in other words, by turning the vessel inside out. 



The quantity of water thus withdrawn from the Nile is enormous. Most of 

 this is evaporated directly from the surface or the superficial strata, but some 

 moisture percolates down and oozes through the banks into the river again, 

 while a larger quantity sinks till it joins the slow current of infiltration by 

 which the Nile water pervades the earth of the valley to the distance, at some 

 points, of not less than fifty miles. 



