24 



DISCOVERY 



succulent herbage, and in consequence it has almost 

 entirely disappeared there in a wild state. 



France has not suffered so much, being farther 

 away, but there are not wanting indications that the 

 climate there has also dried considerably since men 

 have occupied the land. 



Italjr also, being farther away, has not suffered so 

 much as Spain, but she has begun to irrigate, and 

 only lately opened the longest aqueduct in the world, 

 in Apulia. Also it is evidently the failure of moisture 

 in the Appenines that prevents the enormous pro- 

 duction of wool which made Florence for centuries 

 the centre of the cloth trade and the banking house 

 of the world. 



Sicily has sadly deteriorated. Once the garden of 

 Europe, the coveted prize possessed by twelve nations 

 in succession, and the granary of Rome, she now 

 grows lemons and oranges by means of irrigation, and 

 maintains a limited existence. She is no longer a 

 prize to be conquered by the dominant race in the 

 Mediterranean. Her uplands are deforested, either 

 the cause or the result of drought, now so acute that 

 sometimes for a whole j'ear scarcely a drop of rain 

 will fall. When Verres was the Governor under the 

 Roman Empire, he made a corner in grain (the first 

 on record) in the Roman market, by checking the 

 sailings of the grain ships from Sicily. 



P.\ST AND Future of Mesopotamia and Persia 

 Mesopotamia was once the most fertile region on 

 earth. Its possession gave the wealth that made the 

 great kings Sargon, Xerxes, Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, 

 Cyrus, and many others down to the Caliph Haroun 

 al Raschid of Baghdad. Its first set back was when 

 Hulagu (a descendant of the terrible Genghis Khan, 

 whose empire was the largest ever known on earth) 

 dehberately put the population of Baghdad to the 

 sword, at the same time that he cut the canals and 

 irrigation system, compelling the people to resume their 

 old nomadic life. Settlers on the land, in his opinion, 

 were very inferior to herdsmen and wanderers. Now 

 the water of the two rivers — Euphrates and Tigris — 

 has fallen so low that there is not enough for both 

 navigation and irrigation. Enormous sums would 

 have to be spent to restore the fertility even if it were 

 possible. The sources of the rivers of Mesopotamia 

 have been deforested, and as they lie in Turkish 

 territories, the present owners could not be expected 

 to co-operate and spend their money and energy for 

 the benefit of another people and another government. 

 Persia is the next desert country to which we come. 

 I One of the oldest empires in the world, it achieved 

 wealth and civilisation many thousands of years ago. 

 It was a conquering power at the dawn of Greek 

 historj' and a menace to its neighbours. For four 



centuries it fought the Roman Empire for the rich 

 prize of Mesopotamia, inflicting countless defeats on 

 them, and once capturing a whole Roman army and 

 the Emperor Valerian himself. Why has it decayed ? 

 Why has it now such a spar:.e population where once 

 there were cities such as Persepolis and Susa, nearly as 

 big as London ? The curse of drought has fallen on 

 it and it only exists by irrigation. 



The Gobi Desert 



In the centre of Asia is a group of deserts known 

 generally as the " Gobi," though locally there are 

 many other names. Sven Heydn and Sir Aurel Stein 

 have done much exploration in them. Both report 

 the existence of extensive ruins, temples, shrines, 

 inscriptions, documents, mummies, and dried-up 

 rivers and lakes. The difficulties of travel were so 

 great owing to the absence of water that Sir Aurel 

 Stein was only able to proceed in the winter, in the 

 Lob Nor desert, because he could then load his camels 

 with lumps of ice and by this means could spend a 

 month at a time away from the water supply. He 

 found there a dried-up inland river system, leading to 

 a lake bed without an outlet, and now quite deserted. 

 It was the cradle of the Chinese race, from which they 

 were forced by drought. 



The true Gobi is supposed to have been the home 

 of the Huns, against whose raids the Chinese, 2,000 

 years ago, buUt their famous wall, the largest work 

 of man, which to this day faces the desert for 1,000 

 miles. In the north of this desert was the city of 

 Karakorum, the capital of the empire of Genghis Khan, 

 whence his armies commanded the whole of Asia, 

 conquered the Crimea, defeated the Poles, and laid 

 the Russian Grand Dukes under tribute. Marco 

 Polo, the Venetian traveller, visited Karakorum in 

 .\.D. i2ho, but he does not seem to have had any 

 difficulty in crossing the Gobi, which therefore could 

 not have been a desert at that time —that is, if we can 

 trust his veracity. 



It would be tedious to go through the whole of the 

 earth's deserts ; enough has been brought forward to 

 show the sameness of their history. They have not 

 always been deserts, but have generally at some time 

 supported humanity, in many instances very large 

 and civilised populations. It seems as if there must 

 be some cause, affecting the whole earth, reducing 

 the available quantity of water, and gradually turning 

 the fertile portions into uninhabitable regions. If so, 

 what is the cause ? Can it be met and neutralised in 

 any way ? 



Reduction of the Earth's Water 



It is plain that in the making of the earth it received 

 as its share a definite quantitj- of water, which can 





