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0457 The Pulse of Asia : vol.1
アジアの鼓動 : vol.1
The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 / 457 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000233
引用形式選択: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

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semi-arid lands. Wills has investigated the relation of rain-
fall 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 poor-
est 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 dur-
ing the drier extremes in his cycle the precipitation of sta-
tions 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-col-
lector, 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-