sites for our camps.

of our way in time.

They were not always successful in getting out On one occasion, as the boat was coming down at a rapid pace into a pool, we were all thrown together by a tremendous bump, and for a moment all thought we had struck upon a rock. But the rock snorted and plunged out of our way.

For the next 6 miles, up to the station of Wandi, the river is quite unnavigable. In places the boat had to be unloaded and dragged over the rocks, so as to avoid the chutes, which were gigantic. The river in appearance ceases to exist, and the water pours itself as best it may over the slabs of rock with which the whole length and breadth are strewn. In this distance there are at least six big rapids. At one we had a very narrow escape of being smashed up. We had been going in smooth water for a time and the men were all in the boat poling when suddenly the current became strong and the boat was carried helplessly along, each second nearing the steep. The poles were quite useless to check the increasing impetus of the boat. In spite of the heroic efforts of the men the boat swung round, and the next instant crashed heavily against a large dead limb of a tree, where it stuck. But for this there would have been nothing to hope for.

The tsetse fly, the species that carries the germ of sleeping sickness, was very much in evidence about Wandi, and I saw two cases of the disease. Further on it became still worse, and close to Amadi I came across two villages that were wiped out by it and the chief of another was brought to me in a dying condition. The same scourge carried off one of my boys, who died just before we reached the Nile.

For 100 miles after leaving Wandi there are nothing but rapids the whole way, and the one 6 miles from that place is the biggest we had yet seen and presented a splendid spectacle. Here the river is 300 yards across, and a great volume of water sweeps foaming over steep rocks, past islands covered with beautiful palm trees, which are the resort of dog-faced baboons. In the neighborhood of Raffai appear small hills of not more than 400 feet. These are inhabited by the Miza people, a tribe that struck me as rather original. The men, who are smooth-skinned and gentle, adorn themselves with bead ornaments and girdles of beautiful design, while the women affect a masculine severity of costume, fruit stones taking the place of beads. At Avurra the Yei becomes a splendid river, with an average width of 60 yards, and the country throughout is well populated.

It was now December, and the river was rapidly emptying itself; in places there was hardly enough depth to clear the keel of the boat, and it became a race between us and the water. To hasten our pace we threw away all our belongings with a light heart, for our spirits were high, as we had said good-bye to the rocks. For about 90 miles, to near its mouth, the Yei flows through a flat fertile country, where large herds of cattle and sheep roam at will. Often along the

sloping banks one sees the brilliant green of young tobacco plantations. This is the land of the Dinkas, who, on our first appearance, ran away, but later, gaining confidence, flocked down to the river and lined the banks in hundreds. All naked and with their bodies painted a ghastly white, they shouted and danced and threw their long spears into the air. So we made 60 miles, then trees, flocks, and men gradually disappeared, and the river wound alone through a vast empty plain. It widened and slackened, and the impression came over me that it was nearing its journey's end. Eagerly we craned our necks for a sight of the Nile, but this reward was still withheld; nothing but marshland as far as the horizon met our gaze. We followed the river till it lost itself in a lake surrounded by dense reed and sudd. We crossed the lake with irresistible recollections of Chad, and then found ourselves stopped by the barrier of marsh and sudd which choked our passage to the Nile. I then trekked 38 miles with the boat sections to Gaba Shambi, on the Nile. Thus we had reached the goal that we had set ourselves, and here our journey was brought to an end, which, in distance, had extended over some 5,000 miles, and in time occupied just three years.

MESOPOTAMIA: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.o

[With 4 plates and 1 map.]

By Sir WILLIAM WILLCOCKS, K. C. M. G.

66

Out of Eden came a river which watered a garden, and from thence it was parted and became four heads." Plans and levels in hand, starting from the spot where Jewish tradition placed "the gates of Paradise," I have followed the traces of the four rivers of the early chapters of Genesis. Appointed by the new Turkish Government to engage engineers and survey and level the rivers and canals of the Tigris-Euphrates delta, and devise projects for the rehabilitation of the country, I first set myself the task of mastering the ancient systems of irrigation, improving on them when I could, and adopting them when I could find no better substitute. I started with the Garden of Eden.

The Euphrates enters its delta a few miles below Hit, at the gates of Babylonia, where Cyrus the Younger's army, accompanied by the ten thousand, left the deserts and entered the alluvial plains which terminate at the Persian Gulf. What the gates of Babylonia were to one descending the Euphrates, the gates of Paradise were to the early livers in the Babylonian plains.

Upstream of Hit, past Anah, the river is to-day a series of very indifferent cataracts, where the current turns giant water wheels which lift water and irrigate the narrow valley to the edge of the desert. Garden succeeds garden, orchards and date groves lie between fields of cotton, and life and prosperity are before us wherever the water can reach. I do not think it possible to imagine anything more like a practical paradise than the country near Anah. Every tree and crop must have been familiar to Adam except the cotton crop. Though to-day, owing to the degradation of the cataracts, a degradation whose steady progress was noticed by the writers of the Augustan age, water wheels are necessary to irrigate the gardens; it is easy, indeed, to imagine the condition of the river when the

a Read at the Royal Geographical Society, November 15, 1909. Reprinted by permission from The Geographical Journal, London, vol. 35, No. 1, January, 1910.

cataracts were such as we see on the Nile, and water could be led off from above a rapid and utilized for irrigating, with free flow, gardens situated a little downstream and above the reach of the highest floods. Such was the Garden of Eden, and its site must have been near an outcrop of hard rock like we see at Anah, where, in coming down the river, we first meet the date palm, which even to-day is a tree of life to the whole Arab world.

Below Hit no place can be found for a garden without lifting apparatus and protective dikes, because otherwise any garden irrigated in the time of low supply would be inundated in flood, and if irrigated in flood would be left high and dry in the time of low supply.

Downstream of the garden the river was parted and became four heads. The first was Pison, represented to-day by the many-armed depressions of Habbania and Abu Dibis between Ramadi and Nejef, which are not inaptly described, from the point of view of a dweller in Babylonia, as encompassing the whole land of Havilah which lay between the frontier of Egypt and Assyria.

The second river was Gihon, the modern Hindia, the Chebar of Ezekiel, who lies buried on its banks, the Ahava of Ezra, the Pallacopus of Alexander, and the Nahr Kufa of the early khalifs. It is represented as encompassing the whole land of Kis or Kutha or Cush, the father of Nimrod, the beginning of whose kingdom was Erech and Akkad and Calneh and Babylon. The ancient town of Kutha lay on the Nahr Kutha, which was in all probability the main stream of the Euphrates in the earliest times, and on whose banks were situated Kutha, Nil, Niffur, Erech, and Tel Senkere, which date from days long prior to Babylon, the capital of Khammurabi, founded on the Babylonian branch when the other had silted up.

The third river was Hiddekel, the modern Sakhlawia branch, some 250 feet wide and 25 feet deep to-day, running like a mill race into the wide Akkar Kuf depression, and flowing out of it into the Tigris at Bagdad. If let alone, the Sakhlawia would be capable of carrying more than half the waters of the Euphrates, and rendering the country between the two rivers uncultivable. In ancient times it was undoubtedly a second head to the Tigris, and from the point of view of a dweller in Babylonia, it was accurately described as "that it is that goeth in front of Assyria."

And the fourth river was Euphrates. No definition was necessary. It was the river of Babylon itself.

Just as the Babylonian colonists carried the name Tigris with them to Nineveh, so doubtless, in times after the most ancient, they gave the name of the river of Babylon to the great stream on whose banks was situated the cradle of the race. From source to mouth one river became the Euphrates, and the other the Tigris.

The Tigris enters its delta at Beled, south of Samarra, over the ruins of one of the most interesting works of antiquity. In ancient days some giant, local tradition says Nimrod, closed the channel of the Tigris by an earthen dam and turned the river over the hard conglomerate, forcing it to flow at a high level and irrigate the whole country. Coursing down over rapids, the Tigris became navigable at Opis; and from there past the modern Baghdad and on to Kut it kept within the channel of to-day. From Kut on to Ur of the Chaldees, past Tel Lo, the ancient Tigris followed the line of the modern Hai or Garraf branch. The country past Amara and Gurna on the modern Tigris was an immense sheet of fresh water known as the Susiana Lake. The levels of the country prove this beyond the question of a doubt.

The junction of the Tigris and Euphrates was at Ur of the Chaldees; and from there the joint waters of the two rivers flowed past the modern Zobeir and down the Bubian channel of the Khor Abdalla. The 3-fathom line depicted on the British admiralty charts clearly shows the ancient mouth of the river north of Koweit. The Khor Abdalla has two heads, one represents the joint waters of the ancient Tigris and Euphrates, and the other the mouth of the ancient Karun.

The Karun River has played no small part in the formation of the Tigris-Euphrates delta. While the Tigris and Euphrates have left all their deposit behind in the Babylonian, Chaldean, and Susiana marshes, the Karun has always hurried down from the Persian hills and carried its silt-laden waters into the Persian Gulf or into the joint stream of the two other rivers. It has been the sole factor in forming the comparatively high-lying land which stretches from Basra eastward. This tongue of land protects the Tigris-Euphrates swamps from the inroads of sea-water, and keeps them fresh. The Basra bar is formed almost entirely of Karun mud. The Tigris and Euphrates mud lies far away to the west.

The ruins of all the more ancient cities lie near the junction of the Euphrates and the ancient Tigris at Ur of the Chaldees. The two rivers had left their deposits in the extensive marshes higher up their course, and the earliest settlers had to do with opaque water, rich in chemical matter, but free of silt, which would have necessitated the presence of many hands to keep their canals clear. A comparatively small population could begin and continue the development of the country, and it was not until the inhabitants became really numerous that the silt-laden waters higher up the rivers were taken in hand.

The lands in the marshes so reclaimed and cultivated became extraordinarily productive, as we see to-day. They were valuable enough to be protected from floods by immense dikes running along