Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 296, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 December 1918 — The Persian Gulf [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Persian Gulf

m w -<BERE is & bit of seashore of r Ysuch vital Importance to our ■ \ world today that thitherward is directed the anxious gaze of all the leaders of the nations. It figures prominently as one of the- questions involved in the great war, is the territory of an Important campaign, and;was, in fact, one of the prime factors in the causation of the war. It has been a region of high importance since the first morning of our civilisation, rich alike in history and fable—probably the cradle of western culture; the playground of many empires gone (and perhaps of others yet to come), whose undulating sands and bills hold the ruins of sixty centuries. I* Is a haunt of tranceful dreams and infinite fascination, a latitude which can lay most plausible claim to the consideration of all of us. And yet, In our time of knowledge, these coast lands, famous for ages, are scarcely known—nd more probably than they were to the curious Greeks of Herodotus’ time or to the Chaldeans who studied the stars and the sea a dozen centuries earlier —assuredly no more than they were to the geographers of Bagdad or the merchants of Ispahan In the days of the good Haroun al Raschld, writes Proyer Butanal in the New York World. The Persian gulf Ues brooding with the-ages. Around its ancient water's are set the luster-shorn crown jewels of Islam. It Is a solitude of obscure wonders awalt4ng exploration. The Persian gulf Is a landlocked body of water of oblong shape lying between Arabia and Persia. It is about five hundred miles long by an average of two hundred miles wide, extending from northwest to southeast. Its outlet to the Indian ocean, the Straits of Ormuz, Is less than -three hundred miles .from the outpos't frontier of India, so that a power controlling the gulf, say by holding a fortress at the tip of the Pirate coast, the Arabian side of the narrow strait, would have an immediate sally port for excursions, against the empire of the east. Indeed, with proper railroad facilities In Ask atie Turkey, the Persian gulf becomes the logical route to India. go ft is not astonishing that when

the heavy spectacles "of German schol- , arship formed an alliance with kaiserllchmustachios the idea of the North-sea-to-Perslan-gulf railroad cropped up Immediately and showed extreme pertinacity. The center of equilibrium in the Orient lies In the control of the Persian gulf. ' .= As In the Day* of the Prophet. To one side Is Persia, to the other Arabia, with crumbled Babylon, looking down from the north. Where a fairer setting for the romancer? Along the low, sandy and forbidding west shore lie the provinces of El Hasa and Oman, the latter with that precious territory known as the Pirate coast Here the various touches of modern culture are perfectly unknown. The Arab holds forth mm* as be did when the prophet was raising the first ructions of the Islamitlc storm. And the Arab is a person of wide and deserved reputation. On this coast he is seen In his most characteristic guises—and also in roles comparatively unknown to the outside world. Camels, sand storms and the desert axe the usual settings for the burnoused follower of the prophet. But on the Persian gulf coast the Arab has become an expert sailor —and pirate; He follows both of these worthy avocations with all the guile traditional of his breed—and often it is guile quite fantastic to the occidental mind,* ■ ~ The coast has long been a refuge for outlawed characters from western Europe. They partake readily in the robberies and piracies of the natives, which in spite of English gunboats flourish exceedingly. Slave trading and gun running are lucrative professions, and the warriors of- central Asia are enabled to make large amounts of. trouble, thanks to the rifles placed in their hands by these hardy rascals of the gulf littoral. i' : . All along the sandy waste lie treasure stores of'ruins. Travelers have described half-burled stone formations, the reties of man long before the early civilization of the region. There is a resemblance to the famous stone age work at Stonehenge and other remains

of prehistoric man in Europe. Southern Arabia holds the Remains of what seems a very early and quite unknown civilization. Excavation may add a new and revolutionary page to the his> tory of culture. Large parts of Arabia have never been explored by the outsider, some not even by the Arabs themselves, it would seem. The natives will tell you that certain sections are impassable. Some of this may be taken with a trifle reports as to the fatal characteristics of this section or that—that the very air Is poisoned—thereby frightening away thieving tradesmen from the right of way of well-laden caravans. Land of Romance and Ruin.

The Persian side shows a rugged beach formation with bristling cliffs and rocks. There tin Bushire and Basra—from "this latter Sindbad, a historical character, sailed on his never-to-be-forgotten voyages. To the interior. .He Shiraz and Ispahan, of poeticoromantic gldgy. It is a land as strange as Araby itself. Takd the punishment of slaves. When a slave has misbehaved himself seriously enough he is punished by being freed and left to earn his own Hvlng, which virtually consigns him .to a lingering death. Across the Straits of Ormuz, opposlte the tip of. the Pirate coast, is the once great trading city of Ormuz, now a ruin, showing evidences of vanished magnificence. Western travelers who visited the city in the days of its splendor five hundred years ago used extravagant language in describing the wealth and luxury which prevailed there. But Ormuz after undergoing spectacular ups and downs finally decayed and fell into dust, and is now an object for the philosophic ruminations of the tourist, a cadaver for the dissecting picks and shovels of the archeologist. There are few ports on this rough coast and the interior is harried .by robbers and fractious tribesmen. There are sites and cities untouched by the ravages of tourists, Although they have Been drummed into the head of the western world by the great Persian poets in their latter-day occidental vogue. ..".--'-At,-

At the narrow northern shore of the Persian gulf lies the ancient land of the Chaldeans. It is here that the storied rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, unite and fiow into the gulf, Qn the Tigris is Bagdad, the city of the Arabian Nights. The ruins of Babylon are near the Euphrates; the rivers run almost parallel. On every side, on the sands, or more often beneath them, are the decayed remnants of days which stir the imagination of the dullest Persia, Chaldea, Arabia — all clustered about the gulf—and the tourist found them not

On the Shores of the Persian Gulf.