BAGDAD FLOODS

Evening Star, Issue 19275, 14 June 1926, Page 4

BAGDAD FLOODS

WHY GAIN KILLED ABEL Once again the Tigris has overflowed it banks, causing damage estimated at £2.000,000, writes Lieu-tenant-general Sir George M'Munn, in Uio ‘ Daily Mail.’ The Hooding of the Tigris is amongst tho oldest problems of the world. Like nil rivers of its 'kind, tlio Tigris runs over a bed which aces of silting has raised above the •level of the valley, and consequently it invariably Hoods its banks in the snow-melting season. An extra mudbank to prevent floods tops its steep sides for hundreds of miles, and Bagdad, the centre of a great loop, is surrounded by a high mud embankment. The river almost always _ bursts its banks near what is now King Feisul s palace, and the waters sweep over the desert, isolating the city, flooding gardens, and imperilling villages. _ When the British first occupied the country the military engineers excited the admiration of the populace by their success in keeping back the floods. The failure to relieve General Townshend s force in Kut was almost entirely due to floods. The relieving force, under General Aylmer, was moving and fighting within flood banks built of mud, am! the Turks cut the hanks above him so that he could neither move nor dig trenches. The murder of Abel by Cain undoubtedly illustrates the perennial nnarrel between the agriculturists and the graziers. The latter cut the flood banks to lot pasture grow on the desert, and when this is done the cornfields are destroyed. To this day the farmers turn out with arms to prevent the graziers cutting the banks in the vicinity of agriculture. Abel was a grazier, and cut the banks once too often for the patience of his farmer brother. There is no remedy for tho_ Bagdad floods. The only protection is better banks and precautions. The Tigris, as has been said, is running in the highest portion of its valley, and it will not bo many years now before it leaves its course, as it has often done before, to flow where it should, in the lower levels. It is curious that when tho floods are out the farther you walk from the bank into tho flood water the deeper it gets, because of the fact that the river is higher than the country round. Brit it is even more curious that tho Prophet Ezekiel should take __ the trouble to describe it (chapter xevii) as it is to this day.