406 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909. 
rested. This Armenian Ararat could no more have been the Ararat 
where the ark rested than New York be York. 
As I have tried to depict these early events, everything has been 
looked at from the point of view of the dweller in the Babylonian or 
Chaldean plain. And this in accord with the opinion of the time. 
My friend, the Reverend Professor Sayce, has shown me a copy of a 
Chaldean map of Abraham’s time, in which the earth lies round 
Babylon as a center. 
In following the history of the delta the second lesson we have 
learned is the necessity of controlling the floods of the Euphrates if 
any serious development of the country is to be undertaken. 
The dwellers in the Euphrates delta, tired of anarchy and confu- 
sion, gladly welcomed any strong man ready to produce order and 
method in a country which could not exist without order and method; 
and they found their “ mighty one ” in the person of Nimrod, accord- 
ing to Genesis, or Khummurabi, according to the tablets. The 
~ dwellers in the delta to-day are in the same position. I have seen 
eight hundred armed peasants, all Arabs, volunteer to help the gov- 
ernment troops to keep order. Every Arab family, like that of Isaac, 
has some of its sons after the peaceable Jacob and some after the 
Beduin Esau. In Mesopotamia to-day the would-be agriculturists 
have little chance, for whenever they desire to settle, down comes a 
mighty flood and converts them into wanderers. Let the floods be 
controlled and the irrigation works begin operating, and it will be 
seen that those on the side of order are more numerous than those 
against it, and moreover far more earnest. 
This dispute between the agriculturists on the one hand and the 
shepherds on. the other is as old as the feud between Cain and Abel. 
About May 5 this year, when the flood was at its highest, I was riding 
up the left bank of the Euphrates from Ramadi to Hit, and counted 
over 50 flocks of sheep of about 200 each, or 10,000 sheep in all, 
walking into the valley from the desert. The appearance of the 
shepherds made the agriculturists alert, and on my way down the 
river in a boat the next day I heard two shots fired quickly, one after 
the other, and in an instant the cultivated plain was covered with 
men on horseback and on foot rushing to the spot, some with spades 
and some with guns. They were prepared to fight the Beduin 
shepherds or the flood. Meeting one of the head sheikhs I asked him 
why they could not arrange to let some of the land be inundated and 
some put under wheat and barley. He said that they could not agree 
among themselves, but would be pleased to see some order and method 
instead of the eternal feud. He added that if working rules were laid 
down, the agriculturists were sufficiently numerous to insist on their 
being respected, 
