Page:The Commercial Future of Baghdad (1917).djvu/7

4 "All the merchants in the world will profit," said Sir Mark. "It will mean eventually putting down something like a new Hamburg in the world. Money will be made there, and the Arab, if the past is any criterion, will acquire European tastes, and will want to buy things.

"If the Arab in the fourth century liked Corinthian columns so much that he built them in the desert, there is every reason to believe that he will have similar ambitions again, now that he is to be a free man, able to respond to the high intellectual impulses which have always been a characteristic of his race.

"Baghdad depends for its prosperity upon two factors—its position as a junction of main routes, and its central situation in a very rich agricultural area. It has a double advantage as a junction of routes, because it is a place where the rivers Euphrates and Tigris come very close to one another, two big rivers which, even under the primitive conditions of the present time, carry an enormous amount of current-borne traffic, by means of rafts on the Tigris, and barges and rafts on the Euphrates.

"On the Euphrates comes the water-borne transport from Aleppo down to within thirty miles of Baghdad.

"On the Tigris comes the water-borne transport of Diarbekir. Baghdad has the only caravan route from Central Persia, and as the Tigris is fully navigable from Basra, Baghdad is almost