218 WORLD-POWER AND EVOLUTION 



people would gladly take up farms ; villages would spring up ; and 

 in a few years comparative safety would prevail. 



That the absence of cultivation is not due wholly to lack of 

 energy or to bad government appears from the fact that in the fall 

 of 1909, when the deposition of Abdul Hamid had assured safety 

 in the minds of many, a considerable area of the plateau near the 

 city was planted with grain. The results are said to have been 

 disappointing. The crop was by no means such as to tempt fur- 

 ther expansion of agriculture. Yet the season of 1909-1910 was 

 not one of the worst, although not one of the best. The rainfall of 

 Constantinople varies from eleven to forty-four inches. Some- 

 times it continues all summer, but not often. Usually the effective 

 rains end about the first of June and begin again in September. 

 Occasionally the rainfall almost ceases as early as April and does 

 not begin again until October. In such years agriculture without 

 irrigation is impossible. Dr. Washburn, who for many years was 

 president of Robert College on the Bosphorus, states that he has 

 known the water supply of the College to fail completely because 

 of the delay of the rains until the end of October. That year, as 

 at other times, the little chiftliks^ or villages, on the plateau suf- 

 fered severely because their wells dried up. They were forced to 

 bring water from long distances, and their cattle suffered greatly. 

 An occasional group of years of this kind is enough to keep all 

 people except shepherds away from the plateau. 



The effect of such conditions upon the people of Turkey is illus- 

 trated by another incident. As I drove one day over the plain of 

 Axylon, northeast of Konia, the parched brown land gradu- 

 ally became transformed into a carpet of short thick grass, beau- 

 tifully green. Yet not a trace of village or field was visible, noth- 

 ing but the tents or little mud huts of nomads. Hitherto my Greek 

 driver had not been sparing of opprobrious epithets when he spoke 

 of the local inhabitants. Now he broke out into renewed and more 

 vehement exclamations at the laziness, ignorance, and incom- 

 petence of the "poor swine" who inhabited the plain. "Look at 



