MESOPOTAMIA..

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14473, 13 September 1910, Page 5

MESOPOTAMIA..

THE IRRIGATION SCHEME.

WORLD'S ANCIENT GRANARY

By Telegraph —Press Association.—

(Received September 12, 10 p.m.)

Constantinople, September 12.

Sir William Willcocks, late Direc-tor-General of' Water Works in Egypt, and now Adviser to the Turkish Minister fur Public Works, has started for Mesopotamia to arrange for the irrigation of two and a-half million acres, comprising three main canals along the Tigris and the Euphrates, besides the construction of barrages in those rivers.

It is estimated that the preliminary work will cost £4,000,000, and will occupy six years.

RESTORING THE ANCIENT SYSTEM.

When a.sked recently by a press representative to explain the irrigation scheme in a general way, Sir William Willcocks replied : —" Babylonia, or Lower Mesopotamia, was a heavily cultivated and densely populated country for many thousands of years. Its prosperity depended on numerous canals fed from the Euphrates and the Tigris. The total area of the delta is some 14,000,000 acres, of which 5,000,000 acres must have been cultivated (practically the same area as Egypt). Between A.D. 1200 and 1300 the country was overrun by Mongols, and again about 1400 by Tartars, and utterly ruined ; .while, to complete the catastrophe, the Tigris changed its course north and south of Bagdad, and threw the country into complete confusion. I propose to bring back a state of affairs which will make this delta as rich as Egypt, and one of the great cotton producers of the world. I consider the Mesopotamia will be the Johannesburg of irrigation. The agricultural wealth of that country will be one of the facts of the 20th century. At a moderate calculation, there is £250,000,000 of money in that land. And agricultural wealth differs from a gold mine in being inexhaustible."