MESOPOTAMIA—WILLCOCKS. 411 
Beginning at Beled, the delta first consists of bare plains of clay 
with the silt banks of countless canals, showing what a desperate 
fight the wretched agriculturists made for existence when the dams 
were carried away and the level of the water fell. We then have 
alternate stretches of level country covered with a thorny leguminous 
plant, which dies down in winter, and the same bare plains which 
we met in the north. Near the rivers are jungles of licorice plant 
and the same leguminous thorn. On the rivers themselves, but espe- 
cially on the Euphrates, wherever there is a foreshore, there is a lux- 
uriant growth of poplars and sometimes of willows. On the upper 
Euphrates, and as one approaches Babylon, we have great stretches 
of salted land interposed with bare plains and low sand drifts. All 
this land is capable of easy leveling and reclamation. The presence 
of 15 per éent lime in the soil renders reclamation very easy compared 
with similar work in the dense clays of Egypt. One is never far 
away from the giant banks of old canals and ruins of ancient towns. 
As one goes south the salted land increases in area, and then the 
marshes begin with their stretches of rice. On the lower Euphrates 
and on the Basra River are luxuriant date groves and gardens mingled 
with wheat and clover. The lower Euphrates, past Nasrie and Suk 
es Shaytik, is a veritable garden surrounded with water. 
The junction of the Tigris and Euphrates is no longer at Kurna, 
where it had been for 500 or 600 years, but at Garmat Ali, near Basra. 
Such is Mesopotamia to-day. From what has been already said, it 
will not be difficult to gather that the first works before the hydraulic 
engineer are the protection of the country from floods, and the pro- 
vision of water as free of silt as possible. The levels and surveys of 
the twelve engineers who are working for me in Baghdad, with a 
devotion worthy of the task they have undertaken, have shown that 
we can do both. We have already submitted to the Government a 
project for escaping the excess waters of the Euphrates down the 
depressions of the ancient Pison, the first of the four rivers of 
Genesis. An expenditure of £350,000 should suffice for the work, 
and it should take three years to carry out. I am under and not 
over the mark when I say that the cultivated area will be doubled 
and the yield of wheat trebled along the Euphrates the day this work 
is completed. The cultivators to-day are afraid to sow anything like 
the crop they could put in; and, moreover, they count on losing every- 
thing every third year. If Noah had been an hydraulic engineer, he 
would have constructed the Pison River escape instead of an ark, and 
saved not only his family but his country as well. ‘This escape has 
been approved of by the Turkish Government, and the necessary 
funds have been assigned for beginning it immediately. Its effect 
will be far-reaching. 
