Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 140, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 June 1916 — EUPHRATES A MIGHTY RIVER [ARTICLE]

EUPHRATES A MIGHTY RIVER

Flows Through the Cradle of Civilization Where Empires Have Risen and Fallen. _ The Euphrates is the largest river in western Asia and civilization is reputed to have come into being upon Its banks. For six thousand years at least empires have risen and fallen on its plain, conquering armies have marched to battle and a hundred cities have come up out of the earth and fallen into obliterate ruin again. Describing this great river as it runs, its seaward course today, the National Geographic-society, whose headquarters are in Washington, says in a statement given to the press: “The Euphrates lays a strong claim to the honor of being the most his-

toric river on earth and certain it is that in the region it drains, along with its twin sister, the Tigris, man first emerged from behind that impenetrable curtain which divides the known from the unknown past. “From then henceforth civilizations have raised their proud heads above come and gone, cities of rare beauty have risen their proud heads above the plain only to pass on into obliterate ruin. “The Euphrates rises in two arms, flowing parallel to one another op the north side’ of Taurus mountain, through narrow valleys into which pour innumerable email streams from the high Armenian plateau. The

northernmost of the two branches 18 the shortest, but it is generally regarded as the real source of the river. It lies to the north of Erzerum, while the longer branch passes it to the south. The two branches are divided by the wild mountain district of Dersim. After uniting they form the Euphrates proper, which boldly breaks its way through the mountains by a zigzag course that carries it now to the right and now to the left. Now It flows for 30 miles at right angles to its general course, then 60 miles parallel to it and then 180 miles at right angles .again, as though it were *£ the Mediterranean sea. Then it w.nds to the south for 80 miles.

"Here it takes up its general trend to the southeast and with innumerable sharp windings and bends, but with only a few broad curves it heads its way to the sea. The air line distance of the remotest spring of the Euphrates from the sea is only 800 miles and yet its waters must travel 1,800 miles before they reach the sea. In the last 1,200 miles of its course th© E uphrates is slow and sluggish, wandering all over the land when it has opportunity, making that which it touches a marsh and that which it cannot reach a desert. "Its fall during the last 1,200 miles is only ten inches to the mfle and it broadens out so much that while it contains enough water to float the greatest battleship, It is so that at places a swimmer cannot float in it.”