Cyprus: Historical and Descriptive

by Franz von Löher

“Twice in the world’s history, mankind commenced the race of civilisation on the Mesopotamian rivers. Twice the human family diverged from their banks to the east, the west, and the north. Arts and sciences made the first feeble steps of their infancy, upon the shores of these rivers.”

“Very early in history we know that Babylon was a great manufacturing city, famed for the costly fabric of its looms. At a more recent date the Chaldean kings made it a gorgeous metropolis—the fairest and the richest then on earth. Alexander of Macedon made it the port of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf; and he proposed to render it the central metropolis of his empire.”

“The countries through which the Euphrates flows were formerly the most productive in the world. Throughout these regions the fruits of temperate and tropical climes, grew in bygone days in luxurious profusion; luxury and abundance were universally diffused. The soil everywhere teemed with vegetation; much of this has since passed away. Ages of despotism and misrule have rendered unavailing the bounty of nature; but the land is full of hidden riches. The natural elements of its ancient grandeur still exist in the inexhaustible fertility of the country, and in the chivalrous character and bearing of many of the tribes; and the day cannot be far distant when it is destined to resume its place amongst the fairest and most prosperous regions of the globe.”

“The wondrous fertility of Mesopotamia was, in early times, carried to its utmost limit by means of irrigation canals, with which the country was everywhere intersected, and some of the largest of which were navigable. These excited the wonder and interest of Alexander the Great, who, after his return from the conquest of India, examined them personally, steering the boat with his own hand. He employed a great number of men to repair and cleanse these canals.”

“Herodotus, speaking of Babylonia, says: ‘Of all the countries I know, it is without question the best and the most fertile. It produces neither figs, nor vines, nor olives; but in recompense the earth is suitable for all sorts of grain, of which it yields always two hundred per cent, and in years of extraordinary fertility as much as three hundred per cent.’”

“These regions need only again to be irrigated by the life-giving waters pouring down ever cool and plentiful from Ararat—that great landmark of primæval history, now the vast natural boundary-stone of the Russian, Turkish, and Persian empires—to yield once more in abundance almost everything that is necessary or agreeable to man. Many acres now wasted, save when in early spring they are wildernesses of flowers, may be covered with cotton, tending to the employment of the million spindles of our land.”

“It is not too much to say that no existing or projected railroad can compare in point of interest and importance with that of the Euphrates Valley. It will bring two quarters of the globe into juxtaposition, and three continents, Europe, Asia, and Australia, into closer relation. It will bind the vast population of Hindustan by an iron link with the people of Europe. It will inevitably entail the colonisation and civilisation of the great valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, the resuscitation in a modern shape of Babylon and Nineveh, and the re-awakening of Ctesiphon and Bagdad of old.”

“Where is there in the world any similar undertaking which can achieve results of such magnitude, fraught with so many interests to various nations? And who can foresee what ultimate effects may be produced by improved means of communication in the condition of Hindoos, Chinese, and other remote peoples?”

“Although various routes have been suggested with a view of bringing Great Britain, by means of railway communication, into closer connection with India and her other dependencies in the East, and of securing at the same time the immense political and strategic desideratum of an alternative highway to our Eastern possessions, there is none which combines in itself so many advantages as the ancient route of the Euphrates; the route of the emperors Trajan and Julian, in whose steps, in more recent times, the great Napoleon intended to follow, when the Russian campaign turned his energies in another direction. The special advantages which render this route superior to all others are briefly these:”