prosperity upon this science.

Of the two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, the banks of the
Euphrates are the more wooded and picturesque and the Tigris is the
busier. The backwaters, creeks and side channels of both are exceedingly
beautiful, and here one can get a glimpse of the fertility that must
have belonged to Mesopotamia when it was a network of streams and when
the forests abounded within its borders. Centuries of neglect and the
blight of the unspeakable Turk have dealt hardly with this country. It
is indeed a Paradise Lost and it will be many a long day before it is
Paradise Regained.

A beginning, however, has been made. Our army of occupation includes
"irrigation officers," and gradually the work of watering the country is
extending. Hardly any tree but the palm is found, yet this is only for
want of planting. The soil is good, and with an abundance of water,
everything, from a field of corn to a forest, is possible.

I made some study of the irrigation work in progress, and picked up a
little rudimentary information concerning this problem of the watering
of the land, although I lay no claim to technical knowledge on the
subject. The chief difficulty does not seem to be that of making the
desert blossom as the rose, but that of causing the waste places to be
inhabited. What the Babylonians with slave labour could do, modern
machinery and science can quite easily achieve; but the difficulty of
finding sufficient people to live in this resuscitated Eden will be
great. Mesopotamia is not a white man's country. India would appear to
be the direction in which to look for colonists, but it is an
unfortunate fact that the Arab does not like the Indian and the Indian
does not like the Arab. Sooner or later there would be trouble.

[Illustration: A BACKWATER IN EDEN]

In the creeks the water is much clearer than in the river, as it
deposits the silt when it flows more placidly than in the turmoil of the
main stream. Oranges, bananas, lemons, mulberries abound, and vines
trailing from palm to palm in some of the backwaters. In one narrow arm
near Basra, a sort of communication trench between two canals, I saw
orange bushes overhanging the water, and, growing with them, some plant
with great white bells. I have sketched the effect on page 98, and
incidentally show a bellam in which an old Arab is pushing his way
through the overhanging shrubs. On page 105 is a goufa, a type of
round wicker boat in vo