Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 180, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1913 — CITY FOUNDED ON IRRIGATION [ARTICLE]

CITY FOUNDED ON IRRIGATION

Rivers Always the Wet-Nur«e« of the Earliest Civilisation*. Rivers are always the wet-auraes of the earliest oiviHsatloßs, aad in this respect the Tigris and Euphrates are rivals of the Nils, for Babylonia, like Egypt, was a river's “gift” The Mesopotamian Valley is intersected, gridiron fashion, by huge canals—not dug out, but built upon Mie earth’s surface, crossing; the plain from river to river and seeming to the traveller like ranges behind ranges of ouriously regular hills. From these, lesser canals branched in all directions and gave birth in turn to others still smaller, until at last the final threads carried the life-giving water to every grove and garden and individual palm. A system of irrigation so mechanically perfect and on so vast a scale was never elsewhere seen. All the wealth and splendor and power of the ancient Babylonian and Assyrian Empires were dependent upon it The prosperity of the country hung upon its water supply as absolutely as the existence of a Saharan oasis hangs upon its well. .A harm done to the irrigation system was felt through all the civilisation it nourished.

It was so the Mesopotamian civilization died. The complicated irrigation works which watered tht country required for their upkeep the superintending care of multitudes of trained laborers and expert engineers. Only knowledge and skill and large resources could deal with and maintain the immense canals and sluices and dams and locks which distributed the river water over the land and which composed a machinery as elaborate as a clock’s, though of water works, not metal works. The hand of a steady and strong government was needed to wind that machinery up and fceep going, and there came a time when that hand was withdrawn.