MAKING THE EARTH BLOSSOM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 135, 16 September 1910, Page 4

MAKING THE EARTH BLOSSOM.

Although county councillors may despi.se engineers as unnecessary luxuries, the huge population "that lives in Egypt, and lives in plenty because of the work of great engineers in irrigating from the river Nile, <lo not think so. The miracie performed by engineering science in Egypt gave to the world the idea that the genius of British engineers could transform the >wildi!"ness, and, as we have seen by a cablegram, it is now proposed, by the reip of Sir William Wilcocks, the most tmincnt of all irrigation engineers, to recreate Chalden. Sir William Willeocks was engaged ir. 1908 by the Turkish Government to supervise the contemplated irrigation and canalisation works in Mesopotamia and elsewhere. In 1-905 he surveyed the country. His appointment enabled him "to devote himself to tin- attainment of the dream of his life," says the Times «f India—"the recreation of Chaklea The magnitude of the scheme may be judged from the fact that rough estimates place the irrigable area at nearly 3,000,000 acres, the expenditure at £21,000,01)0 sterling, and the capital Value of the land, when irrigated, at £60,000,000. Nothing is needed but money, brains and labor to make the Tigro-Euphratas Valley just such a waving wheat fie'.d a3 the Cherub and Thelum Canal colonies. The desert will blossom like a garden; new cities will rise on the ruins of the mighty memories of the Assyrian and: Sassanian. kings. Basra will become another Hamburg or Antwerp, and India will find in the Tigro-Euphra-tes Valley, a field for colonisation and trade, rich beyond the dreams of avarice." Sir William Willeocks himself said: "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 Baghdad, 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 cot-' ton 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 facta of the twentieth century. At ia moderate calculation, there is £250,000/)00 of money in thai land. And agricultural wealth differs from a goldmine in being inexhaustible." It seems that this old earth is not played out yet.