THE CONQUEST OF ARID AMERICA 



ridges you are prepared to excuse the Mohammedans for 

 calling it the earthly paradise. Around the marble 

 minarets, the glittering domes, and the white buildings, 

 shining with ivory softness, a maze of bloom and fruit- 

 age where olive and pomegranate, orange and apricot, 

 plum and walnut, mingle their varied tints of green is 

 presented to the sight, in striking contrast to the miles 

 of barren desert over which you have just ridden/' 



This is the miracle of irrigation in the Syrian desert. 

 It is no more miraculous in that far-eastern country than 

 in our own West. Nor is Damascus more beautiful than 

 Denver, Salt Lake City, or than any one of a score of 

 modern towns in California. But because Damascus is 

 ancient and historic, and looks down on mankind from 

 the biblical past, it possesses a degree of interest with 

 which it is difficult to invest much better and more im- 

 portant places of our own country and our own time. It 

 is well, then, to remember that not only the beauty of 

 Damascus, but the glories of the Garden of Eden itself, 

 were products of irrigation. " A river went out of Eden 

 to water the Garden," says the Bible story. 



No consideration of the subject can bo appreciative 

 when it starts with the narrow view that irrigation is 

 merely an adjunct to agriculture. It is a social and in- 

 dustrial factor, in a much broader sense. It not only 

 makes it possible for a civilization to rise and flourish in 

 the midst of desolate wastes ; it shapes and colors that 

 civilization after its own peculiar design. It is not 

 merely the life-blood of the field, but the source of in- 

 stitutions. These wider and more subtle influences are 

 difficult to define in abstract terms, but wo may trace 

 them clearly through the history of various conimu- 



