'File 73/7 I (D 19) Status of Kuwait & Baghdad Railway, and Anglo-Turkish negotiations 1911' [‎232r] (497/631)

3
ENCLOSUBE A,
A ppendix R.
" 14 became evident, early in the history of the Chenab Canal, that a rail-
„ wa 7. r trans port of produce was very urgently required. The re-
^ quisition for this railway came from the railway department unex-
pectedly, it had not been contemplated in the programme of the
(.t being, and some delay occurred before funds could be made avail-
" able. It is scarcely too much to say that the success of the coloniza-
^ tion scheme was seriously threatened by the difficulty the settlers
" experienced in conveying their enormous produce to the market.
]'< Tilis need iias now been 80 full 7 f eco gnized that in the case of the
newly opened Jhelum Canal, a similar railway down the centre of the
^ JechDoab is being constructed and a considerable portion of it will
S4 probably be open for traffic by the time an urgent need for it arrives."
This is a quotation from the completion report of the Chenab Canal in North
ern India, a canal traversing lands similar to those of Mesopotamia in their climate
and in the condition in which they found themselves before the canal works were
carried out. Here is a description of the country from the original report: " The
" country was one of extreme desolation ; the rainfall was only 5 inches per annum
and one might travel for miles without seeing a living thing The
" distinctive feature of the landscape was the camel thorn. The only inhabitants
of the country were the indigenous tribes known as the Janglis and their herds.
^ The Janglis were a people of pastoral and nomadic habits, ekeing out a precarious
" existence by means of their camels and cattle/' In such a land, so like great
part of Mesopotamia, canals have introduced in a few years nearly a million of
inhabitants, and the resurrection of the country has been so rapid that its very
success has been jeopardized by a railway not being able to be made quickly enough
to transport the enormouts produce.
A lifelong experience in India and Egypt has firmly impressed on me the
maxim that in the arid regions of the earth water should be monopolized for irriga
tion and railways for transport. You cannot leave the waters of the rivers in
their channels for purposes of navigation and at the same time take them out of
their channels and irrigate the country with them. For navigation you may sub
stitute railway transport; for purposes of irrigation nothing can take the place of
water.
In countries depending entirely on irrigation, the railways should f jllow the
banks of the main canals and traverse the centre of the tracts they mean to serve..
Now the Baghdad Railway is a desert railway, and though it will put Baghdad in
communication with East and West, it will not serve the irrigated parts of the
delta of the two rivers. I therefore sho w on drawing No. 52 the different alignments
of the railways which would serve the country we hope to irrigate. On the map
itself are given the mam features of the different lines and the task of selecting the
best line and estimating its cost may be left to railway engineers. I confine myself
to a statement of the probable quantity of produce such a railway would have to
transport. The area to be irrigated between Baghdad and Nasmyah will be 750,000
hectares, and if from this area we export so much as represents the rents calculated
in paragraph 22 of this report we shall have to handle annually 375,000 tons of
cereals and 1,250,000 cwt. of cotton. As the country is famous for its breed of
animals, there will be a considerable movement of live-stock, but I have no idea o
what this number will be.
W. WILLCOCKS..