TURKEY.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 307, 21 September 1908, Page 7

TURKEY.

ANOTHER ENGLISH EXPERT WANTED. MESOPOTAMIA. IRRIGATION IN THE EUPHRATES VALLEY. (nr TELEGEirn—ritEss association— copyright.; London, September 18. The Porte lias engaged Sir William Willcocks, formerly in tho Egyptian irrigation sorvico, as adviser in regard to irrigation in Mesopotamia. Tho engagement is for five years. THE EUPHRATES. FORMER GREATNESS: GERMAN SCHEMES. Mesopotamia is tho. country between the Euphrates and tho Tigris Rivers, in Asiatic Turkey. The Arab name is A 1 Jezireh ('the island "). Sir Wm. Willcoeks has not only had eminent experience with regard to the conservation of the Nile waters; he has also published a book on "Restoration of Ancient Irrigation Works on the Tigris." _ The country of the Euphrates and the Tigris, which has been forced on the attention of the modern world by Germany's Bagdad railway schemes, is bv the present development brought further into Ike light. Irrigation is one of tho oldest arts, and Mesopotamia was one of the most ancient civilisations. The country _ was successively held by Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Turks. Mesopotamia is mentioned in Genesis. The Tigris, the groat tributary of the Euphrates, was celebrated for the cities founded on its banks—Nineveh, Selencia, Ctesiphon, and Bagdad. In 1838, it was explored by an English steamer. The Euphrates, the largest river in Western Asia, is navigable now for vessels of the larger size to a point 50 miles above its confluence with the Tigris, or for a distance of about 150 miles in all. Its navigability was formerly greater, but has been diminished by rapids ana falls, caused mainly by irrigation dams.

"There is," writes one authority, "no river in the world of anything like the dimensions of the Euphrates the practical value of which is so trifling. The breaking down of the long-neg-locted embankments in 1831, caused by an unusually high flood from the melting of the snows on the mountains near its source, and the consequent spreading of the waters into huge, shallow, and pestilential morasses, closed tho history of this famous stream. Formerly it was the highway for the export of vast quantities of grain raised in tho provinces around it."

Germany's railway ambitions in tho Euphrates Valley, her desire to establish a new route to tho east, had, prior to tho new regime, been tho dominant note in Constantinople politics. Now, says Professor Vambery, German influence is destroyed. Turkoy leans on Britain. Yesterday she was_ asking for tho services of Chitty Bey. the English Director-General of Revenue in Egypt, to' reorganise the Turkish Customs; to-day it is an English irrigation engineer, also from Egypt, who is to advise in the reclaiming of ancient Mesopotamia. Events full of significance succeed each other in Turkey with almost dazzling rapidity.