president's address— section J. 193 



At the risk of wearying the patience of this meeting, I 

 would like to recall to notice one or two instances of what has 

 been done in irrigation, which may serve as ideals at which 

 Australian engineers should aim. 



The alluvial country which surrounds the rivers Tigris and 

 Euphrates is, at the present time, a parched and dry desert, 

 on which wandering Bedouins find a scanty ))asture for camels 

 and horses, cultivating a little barley and millet close to the 

 rivers by means of water raised in buckets ; yet this country 

 was the home of one of the oldest and grandest nations the 

 world has ever seen, with the great city of Babylon for its 

 capital, the circumference of wiiose walls was greater than 

 that of modern Paris outside the fortifications. This great 

 city and nation depended entirely on irrigation. 



As the two rivers yield a very scanty supply in summer, 

 Init discharge a vast body of water in floods, the Babylonians 

 built a reservoir to retain the water of floods to irrigate the 

 land wdien the rivers were low. The size of this reservoir is 

 so enormous that we may Avell doubt whether, as related by 

 Herodotus, it was entirely artificial ; it would contain 3200 

 millions of cubic yards of water, and if it could be completely 

 emptied, which must 1)e assumed if it served the j)urpose 

 intended of controlling the floods as well as storing them, it 

 would irrigate nearly two million acres one foot deep in 

 water, 



A large part of Anstralia is very similarly situated to the 

 Mesopotamia of the East ; it has great plains of good soil, 

 l)ut arid for the want of water ; it has one or two large rivers 

 usually carrying a scanty supply, but when flooded a vast 

 quantity of water, charged with fertilising silt, rushes to 

 waste in the sea. 



Australia has arid hills as well as plains, and the time must 

 come when these will also be required for cultivation. Here 

 the rising generation of engineers would do well to consider 

 the stupendous irrigation works of the ancient Peruvians, 

 the magnitude and difficulty of which excite wonder and 

 admiration in every one who sees their ruined remains. Some 

 of their aqueducts, or water-races, as we call them, were many 

 hundred miles long, carried through tunnels in the hills, over 

 deep ravines, and along the face of precipices 400 feet or so 

 above the foot. 



Peru is now desolate and poverty stricken, but in the time 

 of the Incas the whole country seems to have been under 

 cultivation almost to the tops of the Andes, the ruins of towns 



