THE GEOGRAPHIC BASIS OF HISTORY 375
semi-arid lands. Wills has investigated the relation of rainfall to the product of wheat per acre in South Australia. He found that during the best seven years, when the average rainfall during the growing season was 18.5 inches, the average yield of wheat was 12.4 bushels. During the poorest years, when the rainfall averaged 13.5 inches, the yield was only 6.6 bushels. That is, when the amount of rain fell off one third, the wheat harvest fell off one half. During the four good years from 1897 to 1901, I lived in the city of Harput in Armenia on the upper Euphrates. The rainfall averaged twenty inches. Brückner's figures show that during the drier extremes in his cycle the precipitation of stations well in the interior of the continents is only half as great as during the other extreme. A falling off of one third in the rainfall of a place like Harput would therefore be moderate; but that, according to the Australian rule, would mean only half as much wheat as in good years. No one who knows the Turkish tax-collector can doubt the distress and the rancor against the government which this would occasion. I was the guest of a poor Kurd one day near Harput. When my escort, a Turkish soldier and tax-collector, left the room, my host picked up the Turk's whip, and holding it out to me said in Turkish : -
" Do you know what that is for ? "
" For his horse," I answered.
" No," was the bitter answer. " It is for men, for us Kurds, when we can't pay our taxes."
He went on to tell me a long story of how the soldiers came every year at harvest time, and when, because the crops were poor, the Kurds could not pay all that was de-
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