Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



333 



A NEW GARDEN OF EDEN. 



The August number of the Geographical Journal 

 contains a lull report of the lecture delivered before 

 the Royal Geoirraphical Society by Sir William Will- 

 cocks, and gives the results of his surveys in .Meso- 

 potamia on behalf of the Turkish Government. There 

 are few themes possessing more interest than " The 

 Garden of Eilen and Its Restoration," and still fewer 

 authorities who can vie with Sir William in the rarest 

 combiniition of literary charm and technical skill. 

 The e.xplorution of the valleys of the Euphrates and 

 Tigris has been conducted with a full sense of the 

 romance associated with the earliest settlements of 

 mankind, and at the same time directed by the need 

 of recovering the lost fertility of the land for the 

 service of the present and future generations of the 

 sons of men. 



So charmingly does he discourse of the past that 

 the reader is almost tempted to forget that Sir William 

 is an official concerned with contracts. Of the actual 

 site of Eden he says : — 



In my first leclure I had stated that the Garden of ICden of 

 ihc .SeiiiitLsTtiiist have been near an outcrop of hard rock as we 

 see it at .\nah upstream of Hit, where water could be led olV 

 fiom above a rapid and utilised for irrigating, with free flow, 

 gardens situated a little down-stream and above the reach of 

 the highest floods. Uclow llil, no place could be found for a 

 girden wiihout lifting apparatus or protecting dykes; l>ecause, 

 otherwise, any garden irrigated in the time of low supply would 

 be inunilaled in flood, and if irrigated in flood would be left 

 high and dry in the time of low supply. Since then I have 

 studied on the spot the scriptures of .Sumer and .Akkad, and 

 see that their earliest scltlemenls were made inside the level 

 plain perennially under water, where well-protected dykes kept 

 out the fljotis which are there never more than three feet above 

 ground-level ; and where, free from wilil beasts and descit 

 .\rabs, ihey coidd build their cities and temples and cultivate 

 their lands, which could be irrigated by free flow through 

 openings in the dykes. It w.-is in the marslies surrounding their 

 settlements th.it they encountered the giant brood of Tiainat 

 mentionc<l in ihe first tablet of creation. .Sliatks from the 

 I'ersianGuK travel up the Tigris to Samarr.a, north of liaghdad, 

 and must have been then, ns now, a terror to bathers. The 

 beasts ilescribed as raging hounds and rams in the translations 

 may have been liuns and ttlUl boars, of which the former were 

 conmion in l-uvver Babylonia before the .\rabs possessed fire- 

 arms, and the lailer are still exceedingly numerou-. It is no 

 unreasoning tradition which places the (jarden. of Ivlen of 

 .Sumer and Akkail, the cily of liridu and its temple K-.Sagil, at 

 Kurna, the lale point of junction of the Tigris and Kuphrales ; 

 though I cannot but think that it will eventually be found just 

 north of Ur at the ancient junction of the two rivers. 



Sir William possesses the blessed gift of imagination, 

 and his dc^criplions of what he sees are always 

 picturesf|uc and informed with historical reference ; 

 his theories are clothed with verisimilitude whiih may 

 well be the truth itself. 



In an interesting comparison he says : — 

 . When human beings first appeared on the earth, and for 

 many a generation afterwards, men could only h.ivr iui lnM 

 their own against wild animals, and, while their c|» 

 were surrounded by ftircsU and jungles, Ihc uneri 

 must have left iheni but lilllc lime to make any re.il aJ%.iii^c in 

 civilisation. It was far different in the oases of .-Vrabia and 



f radical <>a-Ci liki- Anah and Mil on the I | prr I Jipljt.ile*. 

 leic it was p 'Milr t'H men to ik-.lri>y ihc i'xl>lin^; » ill I"M.i., 

 and .IS ihfii iiuii !i t > L>juld nut b<: ri-LiaiN-.l out ur ili. -1' 'i:-, 



they were e.ttcrminated ; and men had leisure to become 

 gradually civilised. " .Amaiek was the first of the nations" 

 was spolien, with knowledge, of the .Viabs stretching from the 

 delta of the Nile to the L'ppcr Kuphrales. Living in tents and 

 using gourds for vessels, they have left no traces such as we see 

 in I-gypt and Babylonia ; but .Arabia has been able to pour 

 forth Irom her parched loins her viiile sons who began ihe 

 subjugation of both the Nile valley and the valley of the 

 Euphrates. Everything in Egypt was easy and to hand ; the 

 Nile was and is the most stately and majestic of rivers, and, 

 carrying a moderate amount of deposit, creates no serious 

 difiiculties for the dwellers on its banks ; the Garden of the 

 Lord, the land of Egypt, is very fertile ; and ihe climate.is mild 

 in winter and never parches in summer. EgypI, therefore, 

 produced no world iilcas. None of her sons were possessed of 

 a fine frenzy, with eyes glancing from heaven to earth and earth 

 to heaven. It was far diflerent with Babylonia. The Tigris 

 and Euphrates in flool are raging torrents, and their ungoverned 

 and turbid waters need curbing with no ordinary bridle. 

 Babylonia's soil is very fertile, but the winters are severe indeed 

 and the summers savage and prolonged. The range of 

 temperature is between 2odegree5 and 120 degrees in the shade. 

 Brought up in a hard school, they possessed virile intellects. 



The article is accompanied by an excellent map, 

 and the Journal should achieve a record sale, for its 

 contents throughout maintain the highest level of 

 interest. 



ESCAPE TO THE WHITE MAN. 



That the white man is a walking city of refuge in 

 the dark places of the earth is a fact attested afresh 

 by an incident mentioned by P. .Vmaury Talbot, in the 

 Journal 0/ Ihe African Society. He describes his tour 

 from the Gulf of Guinea to the Central Sudan. H 

 says : — 



Only a few months ago, as I sat at my writing-table, a bo. 

 of about sixteen sLaggercd in, ullerly exhausted. .According 1 

 his story, two men liad hired him at Calabar to accompan. 

 them to the interior. Whenever they neared a town they serr 

 him through the bush, giving as an excuse thai there was sonu 

 lliing in his li ad which must not be seen, but really lest question 

 should l)e asked on their return without him. When the town 

 of Ojo was reached, he was taken to the house of ihe he.id chiel. 

 to whom they arrangctl to sell the boy for /'20, and there Icit 

 hini. After a while an iron cage was brought out, such as is 

 ux;d for human sacrifice. The boy said : "The held chief tied 

 his hunting knife about his waist, and stoo*.! by the main door, 

 I was on the other side of the compound by his principal wife. 

 She saiil, 'I am sorry for you, because they are going to kill 

 you. If you could get awny, perhaps you could reach while 

 man.' I slipped Iwhiiul her and ran out through the litllc door 

 It was night time, and people came uiih lanterns to seek for 

 me. I dared not follow the roads lest other towns should be 

 warned of my escape, but on the third day 1 saw Forest Guaid 

 Ukorc, who helped me." 



Captives and poor have good cause to welcome while rule in 

 Africa, hoHcvcr great 1 iril> like G.irauonga may regret the 

 icsltaint il impose. 



Asii ejectors, or means used for ridding; the steam 

 ship of the mass of ash and clinkers which accumulatr 

 on all voyages, are described in Citssier's for .August In 

 G. 1'". Zimmer. The niethcid arlopted in the Hrilisii 

 Navy is to crush the clinkers, ashes, and other refuse, 

 and then expel by pneumatic pressure through tin 

 opening in the Ixiltom of the ship. 



