MESOPOTAMIA—WILLCOCKS. "4138 
first complete some 30 miles, and immediately use the water for irri- 
gation in this reach while we are digging the second reach of 30 miles. 
In this way we shall waste no time. 
The works should, I think, be carried out on the following prin- 
ciples. The Government should undertake the construction and 
maintenance of the barrages on the rivers, the main feeder canals, 
the main drains, the navigation works if any, the flood escapes, and 
the flood embankments. In this way the control of the rivers and 
their supplies would be in the hands of the authorities. All minor 
canals, drains, and masonry works of every kind should be left to 
the agricultural community and to interested parties. In return for 
constructing and maintaining these works they would receive title 
deeds for the lands they irrigated. I had at first thought of recom- 
mending the Chenab system of irrigation works, but acquaintance 
with the people has taught me that all details should be left to the 
agriculturists themselves. They have their own ideas, and will be far 
happier working on their own lines, many of which have come down 
from the remotest antiquity, and are well worthy of preservation. 
I have shown how the country can be protected from floods, and 
how a beginning can be made with the irrigation of 3,000,000 acres of 
land capable of producing annually 1,000,000 tons of wheat, and 
2,000,000 hundredweight of cotton. It now remains to consider how 
we are going to get this produce to the markets where it will be sold, 
and how we are going to dispose of the millions of sheep and hun- 
dreds of thousands of cattle which the delta will contain. 
Every merchant and man of business I have talked with in Baghdad 
is convinced of one thing, and that is that the backward state of the 
country is due in great part to the fact that while communication is 
open by river with the east, it is to the west that the whole produce 
of the country wants to find a way. In this direction there is no out- 
let. The principal products of Mesopotamia to-day—sheep, cows, 
buffaloes, wool, liquorice, wheat, barley, and rice—have their markets 
in the eastern Mediterranean and in Europe, and all the imports the 
country stands in need of could come most readily from Europe. 
What is wanted, therefore, is a cheap railway connecting Baghdad 
with the Mediterranean by the shortest and cheapest line possible. 
Such a railway would have its outlet on the Mediterranean coast 
near Tyre and Sidon. These centers of commerce did not place them- 
selves by accident where we find them to-day. They fulfilled the re- 
quirements of the trade of western Asia. Haifa and Beirut, to the 
immediate south and north of Tyre and Sidon, are the modern rep- 
resentatives of these old Phoenician cities. They are connected by 
railway with Damascus. Very shortly Tripoli, to the north of 
Beirut, will be connected by railway with Homs, on the Damascus- 
Aleppo Railway. 
