MESOPOTAMIA—WILLCOCKS. 415 
are considerable outcrops of limestone, while immense areas are cov- 
ered with pebbles, and are known as haswa to the Arabs. 
During the winter months the deserts are covered with grass and 
the hoilows are sown with barley. This refers to the country past 
Hit. The rainfall increases as one goes northward, and by the 
time one reaches Meskene the whole country is capable of producing 
barley with the aid of the rainfall. 
The total length of the railway from Damascus to Baghdad will 
be 550 miles, which could be constructed for £2,200,000. This allows 
£4,000 per mile along an easy alignment, while Nigeria is being de- 
veloped by railways traversing more difficult country at £3,000 per 
mile. According to the Beduins and the Turkish officers who annu- 
ally escort the sheep from Abu Kemal to Damascus, water is suff- 
ciently evenly distributed to allow of hundreds of thousands of sheep 
traveling from the Euphrates delta to Damascus. 
In addition to the transport of the exports and imports of the 
Tigris-Euphrates delta, the railway from Baghdad to Damascus will 
be the highway for the merchandise of Persia and for all the Moslem 
pilgrims of central Asia to the holy cities of Islam. It will carry 
all the materials and fuel needed for the future irrigation works of 
the delta, and when continued along the bank of the great central 
canal to Basra, it will be the shortest route possible between east and 
west, and will one day be carrying the mails between Europe and 
India. 
Though zealously advocating the direct railway connecting the 
Tigris-Euphrates delta with the Mediterranean, as without it the 
development of the country will not be possible, my hopes are centered 
in the delta itself, where it is my ambition to see the works carried 
out which we are planning to-day. I know that in these western 
countries of Europe, where rainfall is timely and abundant, and 
where ruin and disaster can not overtake a country in a day, we are 
apt to imagine that works of restoration must also take long years 
to bear any fruit. But in the arid regions of the earth it is not so. 
There the withdrawal of water turns a garden into a desert in a 
few weeks; its restoration touches the country as with a magician’s 
wand. In her long history of many thousands of years Babylonia 
has again and again been submerged, but she has always risen with 
an energy and thoroughness rivaling the very completeness and sud- 
denness of her fall. She has never failed to respond to those who 
have striven to raise her. Again it seems that the time has come 
for this land, long wasted with misery, to rise from the very dust 
and take her place by the side of her ancient rival, the land of Egypt. 
The works we are proposing are drawn on sure and truthful lines, 
and the day they are carried out, the two great rivers will hasten to 
respond, and Babylonia will yet once again see her waste places be- 
coming inhabited and the desert blossoming like the rose. 
