Re-Creation of Chaldea.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXIX, Issue 12111, 4 July 1903, Page 1 (Supplement)

Re-Creation of Chaldea.

GREAT: iMIGATIQN SPHEME.

■("'Daily. Express.")

Sir William the "faniens engineer, recently deliyered a lecture in Cairo, which, despite its arrahgement of dry facts and. drier figures, is filled with a romance of the past almost unbelievable in its gigantic conception, its prolonged success, and its sudden failure. The lecture has now been printed in pamphlet form, and is entitled "'The Restorationof the' Ancient Irrigation Work -on-.the Tigris; or, the ReUreationof Chaldea." ;

It sets out a scheme by j which ■ it: is possible to achieve the resurrection, of 'he ancient granary of the Near',-East, which has sunk to a wedge of marsh and desert | between the Tigris and the 'Euphrates. "Politics I have nothing to do with," says Sir William. "My 'ambition is to see' ten blades of gras3 growing where none are | growing to-day " Surely a text this more ' filled with love of humanity than scores of 1 more pretentious sermons. The suggested work is'merely a resurrection. It has all been done before and done well, while we Britons were skipping in our o* woad. We are just learning what may be brought about by-dani and trench and pump and reservoir in Egyru, India;' Australia, and South Africa; but twenty• ce ituries ago the swarming thousands of the Tigris, valley saw around them greater j works than- any we have yet accomplished. I The Bagdad of; to-day lies amid 'desolate v wastes of uncultivated arid plains. Before it rolls the Tigris, a, mighty river.fed by the northern snows, now dwindling in a summer sand-banked channel, now spreading in great flood reaches over a ' desert dotted with the ruins of'deserted cities. To the north are the broken walls of what was once Opis, the wealthiest mart of the East for many generations ; Ctesiphon, the ancient- capital of the Sassanian kings of Persia; and Cucaxa, where Xenophon and his-ten thousand commenced their" retreat; to the west are the ruins of the mightiest city of them all—Babylon itself. How comes it then that the ancient land flowing with'milk and honey, the goal of-all, Eastern coiquerors and the envy of the nations, has fallen into this lamentable decay? Why has the legendary site of the Garden, of Eden vanished under the sands of the.desert'' The Tigris river can tell the story. Thev had built them two great systems of irrigation to command the country. Massive rubble weirs dammed stream, turning the water into canals on the right and left bank above Opis, fifty miles north of Bagdad. Of these canals the Nahrwan, on the left bank, was by far the larger. It was over 300 miles in lepgth, from 12 to 16 yards deep, and in breadth varied from 25 to 130 yards. It was.hewn through hard conglomerate, banked with walls of earth, regulated,; checked, and , controlled. The biggest canal in Egypt is 65 yards across and 12 yards deep, i Indeed, as Sir William points out, this ! work of the old civilisation cannot be matched by any undertaking planned by us either in Egypt or India.' , ' ' Along the banks the farmers clustered in hamlets and villages. Great towns reared themselves, massively fortified. It is held to have been one. o£ the most wealthy and densely inhabited districts that the world has ever seen. <

But on some fatal spring morning there came the entL The river rose in a mighty flood. The weirs were turned, the old bed was deserted, and the country inundated. When the waters' subsided, ruin remained—a ruin complete and irredeemable. Probably the scene of desolation differed little from that .which Commander Felix Jones, who recently (surveyed the spot, thus describes :—The summit of Opis, as we gaze around, affords a picture of wreck that could scarcely be conceived, if it were not spread at the feet of the beholder. Close to us are the dismembered walls of the great city, and many other mounds of adjacent edifices, spread like islands oyer the vast plain, which is as bare, of vegetation as a snow tract,' and smooth aid glasslike as .a calm-sea. This appearance of the country denotes that some sudden and'overwhelming mass of water'must have prostrated everything in its way, while the Tigris, as it anciently flowed, is seen to have left its channel, , and to'have taken its present course through the most flourishing portion of the district, severing in its mad career the neck of the great Nahrwan artery, .and spreading devastation over, the whole district around. Towns, villages, and canals, men, animate, and cultivation: must thus have been engulphed in a moment, but the immediate loss was doubtless small, compared with the misery and gloom that followed. The whole region for a space of 400 kilometres averaging about thirty in breadth, was dependent on the conduit for water, and contained a population so dense, if we may judge from the ruins-and great works traversing it in ita whole extent, that* no spot in the globe perhaps could excel it. ; Of those who/were spared to witness the sad effects of the disaster, thousands, 1 perhaps millions, had to fly to the banks of the Tigris; for the immediate preservation of life, as the region at once became a de-

sert, where before were animation and!; ! prosperity. '., v - v - . ; The ruin of the Nahrwarl is indeed the ; great blow the country has received. Its severity must have created, universal stupor, and was doubtless followed by pestilence and famine of unmitigated rigour, ! owing to the marshes which accumulated, annually in the absence of dams, on each spring rise of the river. They made eiforts at repair—the feeble efforts of a ruined race. But the dykes were swept away, and gradually the canals silted up; or were choked with weeds. The main' river was incapable of carrying the streams that had filled the canals for centuries. Swamps were formed- from its overflow, and the waters that had nourished the land became its curse instead, of its blessing. , ■ But if Sir William Willcdeks' dream comes true, the desert will again blossom as the rose. He sets out; &:■ canal system based en, that which was swept: away, which will turn the wastes into cornfields and groves of date palms. With water thus supplied, and with the Bagdad railway; now the subject of much discussion, as a means of transport, prosperity is, he thinks, assured. Labour would come pouring in from British India; capital would be found in' 'London, Paris, and Berlin.. , '.-•■■.;,

, Of; all the regions of the earth, none is more favoured by : nature for. the production , of corn crops than these semi-arid acres. : As on the Nile, we may expect to see, says, Sir William, 'cotton,', sugarcane, and Indian corn, opium, clover, and tobacco in tropical abundance. Fed by the snow-clad . hills and scientifically 1 controlled, the Tigris will never fail, in its •water, supply; This table, which has Been the result of careful calculation, sets out the cost of his scheme and the. area which, will be affected. "The area of first : class land," he writes, "waiting only for' water to yield at once ,a handsome'return, T estimate as fallows r-VWestof old.,Tigris.2Bo,ooo acres, between old and new Tigris 160,000 acres, east of the Tigris north of Bagdad ,420,000 acres, ditto south of-Bagdad 420,000 acres, total 1,280; 000 acres.

"The l "cost of the works,, discounting.all assets, I estimate roughly as follows • Earthwork : main canal £2,000,000, weirs on the Tigris £600,000, masonry, works main"canal £1,000,000; minor canals (1,280,000 acres) £3,840,000, total £7,440,000, add contingencies £560,000, grand total £B,'!000,000. Cost per acre (8,000,000 by equals £7 per acre. ■: Yalue of land, 1,280,000 acres, equals £38,000,000. • Rent per annum, 1,280,000 acres, equals £3,840,000; ',. ' v- vxX;".

.-." "If of this sum nearly a half is spent in maintenance of the cunals, we have ariet, return of £2,000,000 per annum, or 25 per cent, on £8,000,000 oleapital. • Let those :who know.Egypt say whether; they, consider: such figure's.as-too sanguine ! ';■■'■■'■.