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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Dweller in Mesopotamia, by Donald Maxwell
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: A Dweller in Mesopotamia
+       Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden
+
+
+Author: Donald Maxwell
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 20, 2006  [eBook #18031]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DWELLER IN MESOPOTAMIA***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Janet Blenkinship, and the
+Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreaders Europe
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+
+
+A DWELLER IN MESOPOTAMIA
+
+Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden
+
+by
+
+DONALD MAXWELL
+
+With Sketches in Colour, Monochrome, and Line
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  +-------------------------- +
+  |                           |
+  | _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_      |
+  |                           |
+  +-------------------------- +
+  |                           |
+  | THE LAST CRUSADE          |
+  | ADVENTURES WITH A         |
+  | SKETCH BOOK               |
+  |                           |
+  | WITH BIBLE AND BRUSH      |
+  | IN PALESTINE              |
+  | [_In preparation_]        |
+  |                           |
+  +-------------------------- +
+  |                           |
+  | THE BODLEY HEAD           |
+  |                           |
+  +-------------------------- +
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE GOLDEN TOWERS OF KHADAMAIN]
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, Vigo Street New York: John Lane
+Company MCMXXI
+William Clowes and Sons, Limited, London and Beccles, England.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Few adventurous incidents in our lives seem romantic at the time of
+their happening, and few places we visit are invested with that glamour
+that haunt them in recollection or anticipation. I remember comparing
+the colour scheme of a barge in Baghdad with that of one in Rochester.
+It was a comparison most unfavourable to Baghdad--a thing the colour of
+ashes with a thing of red and green and gold. Yet now that I am back in
+Rochester, the romance lingers around memories of dusty mahailas. It is
+easy to forget discomfort and insects and feel a certain glamour coming
+back to things which, at the time, represented the commonplaces of life.
+There certainly _is_ a glamour about Mesopotamia. It is not so much the
+glamour of the present as of the past.
+
+To have travelled in the land where Sennacherib held sway, to have
+walked upon the Sacred Way in Babylon, to have stood in the great
+banquet hall of Belshazzar's palace when the twilight is raising ghosts
+and when little imagination would be required to see the fingers of a
+man's hand come forth and write upon the plaster of the wall, to wander
+in the moonlight into narrow streets in Old Baghdad, with its
+recollections of the Arabian Nights: these things are to make enduring
+pictures in the Palace of Memory, that ideal collection where only the
+good ones are hung and all are on the line.
+
+Although it was for the Imperial War Museum that I went to Mesopotamia,
+these notes are not about the War, but they are a series of impressions
+of Mesopotamia in general. The technical side of my work I have omitted,
+and any account of the campaign in this field I have left to other
+hands. The sketches here collected might be described as a bye-product
+of my mission in Mesopotamia; but most of them are the property of the
+Imperial War Museum, and it is by the courtesy of the Art Committee of
+that body that I have now been able to reproduce them.
+
+                                          THE BEACON,
+                                               BORSTAL,
+                                                 ROCHESTER.
+
+  _June_ 12, 1920.
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+                                                                     PAGE
+     I. THE FIERY FURNACE                                              1
+
+    II. THE VENICE OF THE EAST                                        15
+
+   III. SINBAD THE SOLDIER                                            27
+
+    IV. THE WISE MEN FROM THE WEST                                    37
+
+     V. BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON                                      49
+
+    VI. ARABIAN NIGHTS IN 1919                                        67
+
+   VII. IN OLD BAGHDAD                                                89
+
+  VIII. PARADISE LOST                                                 97
+
+    IX. THE DESERT OF THE FLAMING SWORD                              109
+
+     X. THE KINGS OF THE EAST                                        119
+
+
+
+
+  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  PLATES IN COLOUR AND MONOCHROME
+
+
+  THE GOLDEN TOWERS OF KHADAMAIN                           _Frontispiece_
+
+  ABADAN, PERSIA, THE OIL QUAYS                                        4
+
+  H.M.S. _MANTIS_, ONE OF THE MONITORS ON THE TIGRIS                  12
+
+  HOSPITAL HULKS AT BASRA                                             18
+
+  "THE SOLEMN PALMS WERE RANGED ABOVE, UNWOO'D OF SUMMER WIND"        22
+
+  THE HOUSE OF SINBAD THE SAILOR, BASRA                               24
+
+  A BEND IN "THE NARROWS" OF THE TIGRIS                               30
+
+  A MARSH ARABS' REED VILLAGE                                         34
+
+  MUD HOUSES ON THE TIGRIS                                            40
+
+  A MAHAILA OF THE INLAND WATER TRANSPORT                             42
+
+  EZRA'S TOMB                                                         44
+
+  ON THE EUPHRATES, EARLY MORNING                                     52
+
+  BABYLON, THE EXCAVATIONS AT EL-KASR                                 56
+
+  AN OLD WORLD CRAFT: A TYPE OF BOAT UNCHANGED SINCE THE DAYS OF
+   SINBAD                                                             60
+
+  BELLAMS UNDER SAIL                                                  62
+
+  BABYLON THE GREAT IS FALLEN, IS FALLEN                              64
+
+  A STREET IN KHADAMAIN                                               70
+
+  MOONLIGHT, BAGHDAD                                                  72
+
+  A NOCTURNE OF BAGHDAD                                               74
+
+  MAHAILA AND MARSH ARAB'S BELLAM                                     80
+
+  A MOONLIGHT FANTASY: KUT, FROM THE RUINS OF THE LICQUORICE FACTORY  94
+
+  DAWN AT AMARA                                                      100
+
+  A BACKWATER IN EDEN                                                102
+
+  PUFFING BILLY ON THE TIGRIS                                        106
+
+  SUNSET ON THE TIGRIS                                               112
+
+  SHEIK SAAD AND THE PERSIAN MOUNTAINS                               114
+
+  HIT, KNOWN TO THE ARABS AS THE MOUTH OF HELL                       116
+
+  A BRITISH CRUISER IN THE PERSIAN GULF                              122
+
+
+
+
+  LIST OF LINE SKETCHES
+
+
+  ABADAN                                                               2
+
+  "SERRIED RANKS OF TALL IRON FUNNELS"                                 6
+
+  SHIP LOADING WITH OIL                                                7
+
+  "A MYSTERIOUS-LOOKING FURNACE TOWER"                                 9
+
+  "CRUDE STEAM ENGINES EVOLVED BY TITANS WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG"    11
+
+  IN ASHAR CREEK                                                      16
+
+  SUNSET, OLD BASRA                                                   21
+
+  DHOWS, BASRA                                                        26
+
+  MONITOR "MOTH" AT BASRA                                             28
+
+  THE SIRENS OF THE NARROWS                                           33
+
+  NOAH'S ARK, 1919                                                    36
+
+  UPWARD BOUND ON THE TIGRIS                                          38
+
+  HILLAH                                                              47
+
+  CTESIPHON                                                           50
+
+  ANCIENT IRRIGATION CHANNEL NEAR HILLAH                              55
+
+  TOWER OF BABEL. FIG. 1                                              57
+
+  THE TOWER OF BABEL                                                  59
+
+  TOWER OF BABEL. FIG. 2                                              60
+
+  TOWER OF BABEL. FIG. 3                                              61
+
+  GOUFAS ON THE TIGRIS                                                68
+
+  "A MAGIC VIGNETTE OF PALMS, EASTERN BUILDINGS, AND A LARGE
+   SOUTH-WESTERN RAILWAY ENGINE"                                      77
+
+  "SUDDENLY WE CAME UPON A SCENE OF STRANGE BEAUTY AND DRAMATIC
+    EFFECT"                                                            79
+
+  "BY GARDEN PORCHES ON THE BRIM, THE COSTLY DOORS FLUNG OPEN WIDE"   82
+
+  "ALL ROUND THE FRAGRANT MARGE, FROM FLUTED VASE AND BRAZEN
+    URN, IN ORDER, EASTERN FLOWERS LARGE."                             83
+
+  "BY BAGHDAD'S SHRINES OF FRETTED GOLD, HIGH-WALLED GARDENS, GREEN
+    AND OLD."                                                          85
+
+  SHOWING THE SIMPLICITY OF MESOPOTAMIAN DOMESTIC
+   ARCHITECTURE. TIGRIS                                               88
+
+  BAGHDAD                                                             90
+
+  "PUFFING BILLY" IN BAGHDAD                                          91
+
+  A BIT OF OLD BAGHDAD                                                93
+
+  "BLOSSOMS AND FRUIT AT ONCE OF GOLDEN HUE APPEARED, WITH GAY
+   ENAMELLED COLOURS MIXED."                                          98
+
+  "HIGH, EMINENT, BLOOMING AMBROSIAL FRUIT OF VEGETABLE GOLD."       105
+
+  THE WALLS OF HIT                                                   110
+
+  HIT                                                                120
+
+  SAMARA                                                             121
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE FIERY FURNACE
+
+[Illustration: Abadan.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE FIERY FURNACE
+
+
+There is an unenviable competition between places situated in the region
+of Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf as to which can be the hottest.
+Abadan, the ever-growing oil port, which is in Persia and on the
+starboard hand as you go up the Shatt-el-Arab, if not actually the
+winner according to statistics, comes out top in popular estimation. Its
+proximity to the scorching desert, its choking dustiness and its
+depressing isolation, are characteristics which it shares with countless
+other places among these mud plains. But it can outdo them all with its
+bleached and slime-stained ground in which nothing can grow, its
+roaring furnaces and its all-pervading smell of hot oil.
+
+Across the broad waters of the Shatt-el-Arab there stretches a lonely
+strip of country bounded by a wall of palm-tops. Like all the land here
+it is cultivated as long as it borders the river and thickly planted
+with date groves. Then lies a nondescript belt that just divides the
+desert from the sown, and then, a mile or so inland, scorched and
+unprofitable wilderness.
+
+Into this monotonous spiked sky-line the sun was wont to cut his fiery
+way without much variety of effect every evening, and night rushed down,
+bringing respite from this heat; for it is happily one of the
+compensations of life in these parts that the nights are cool, however
+hot the day.
+
+About 150 miles from this busy spot lie the oilfields of the
+Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Two adventurous iron pipes start courageously
+with crude oil and conduct it by or through or over every obstacle from
+these wells to Abadan. In the early days of the war great and successful
+efforts were made to protect this line of supply, which was of vital
+importance to the British Navy. The Turks lost Fao, the fort that
+commanded the entrance to the Shatt-el-Arab, within a few days of the
+opening of hostilities. They had imagined it such a formidable obstacle
+to our approach that they were thrown suddenly on their beam ends when
+we took it. Consequently they could not keep us out of Abadan, but fell
+back on Beit Naama vainly attempting to block the river by sinking
+ships. One of the hulks, however, swung round and left a channel
+through which a passage was simple. I once sketched some of these old
+ships as they lay throughout the period of hostilities. Since then they
+have been partially blown up. A divers' boat was at work when I made my
+drawing and the first charge was fired about three minutes after I had
+finished, removing the funnel and one mast of the principal derelict.
+
+[Illustration: ABADAN, PERSIA, THE OIL QUAYS]
+
+Well, to begin my story.
+
+It was evening. The sun was setting in the orthodox manner described
+above. Abadan was looking very much as usual. The smoke was smoking, the
+pumps were pumping, the works were working, and all the oilers along the
+quay, like all well-behaved oilers, were oiling.
+
+As if to protest against the frankly commercial atmosphere of everything
+and everybody at Abadan, a dhow that might have belonged to Sinbad the
+Sailor himself was making slow headway before the failing breeze under a
+huge spread of bellying canvas--an apparition from another age, relieved
+boldly against the dark hull of a tank steamer.
+
+The flood tide had spent itself and the river seemed unusually still as
+twilight deepened and the many lights of the works wriggled in long
+reflection in the water. A spell of enchantment seemed to lie over
+everything, and the faint purring hum from the distant oil blast
+furnaces pervaded the still air. Old Sinbad came to anchor and night set
+in.
+
+This is all very peaceful and picturesque to write about now, but at the
+time I was in a motor boat that had left Mahommerah to take me for a
+run and it had broken down and seemed unlikely to start again in spite
+of all the coxswain's efforts. Consequently we were drifting about on
+the stream and likely to be swept down by the ebb tide. We were
+unfortunately on the far side of the river from Abadan, and consequently
+our plight would not be observed from the works. The situation was not a
+pleasant one because we stood a very good chance of being run down by
+some incoming steamer.
+
+[Illustration: "Serried ranks of tall iron funnels."]
+
+When it was clear that we should drift down below the region of the oil
+quays I thought we would see what our lungs could do. Timing our shouts
+together, the coxswain and I, we sent up a tremendous hail to the lowest
+of the piers. Again and again we startled the night, until at last we
+heard an answering hallo.
+
+In a few minutes a motor-boat bore down upon us. It was the British Navy
+in the shape of an engineer lieutenant commander. He took us in tow,
+carried me off to his bungalow, arranged about the boat being berthed
+and looked after till the morning, and proved a most cheery soul full of
+good looks and given to hospitality. When I explained my job he roared
+with laughter.
+
+"Just the right time to arrive," he said. "Subject one, Abadan at night
+complete with tanks; subject two, works, oil, one in number--sketched in
+triplicate--why, my Lords Commissioners will be awfully bucked. They've
+put a couple of millions into this show, you know. Say 'when,' it can't
+hurt you, special Abadan brand."
+
+[Illustration: Ship loading with oil.]
+
+I said "when." I kept on saying "when," and then as a measure of
+self-protection suggested sketching the works while I could distinguish
+tanks from palm trees. So we went out and had a preliminary look round,
+reserving the "Grand Tour of the Inferno," as my host named our
+projected expedition, until after dinner.
+
+I will not attempt to explain the processes of oil refining. I am merely
+concerned in narrating what it looks like. I know little beyond the fact
+that the crude oil arrives by pipe from the oilfields by means of
+several pumping stations and that it is cooked or distilled over
+furnaces and converted into different grade oils from petrol to heavy
+fuel oil. As a spectacle, however, I found a journey through this weird
+region most fascinating and mysterious. At night it appears as a vast
+plain gleaming with lights and studded with dark objects, half seen and
+suggesting primitive machinery of uncouth proportions. Huge lengths of
+pipes creep from the shadows on one hand into the far-off regions of
+blackness on the other.
+
+Armed with an electric torch, which the Chief carried, and a large
+sketch-book which I regretted taking almost as soon as we started, we
+set out on our quest of Dantesque scenery. At first our road ran along
+the quays by the river side. A camouflaged Admiralty oiler was loading
+fuel oil by means of three pipes that looked like the tentacles of an
+octopus clutching on to the side of the ship. Near this quay was a gate,
+and we entered the wire fence that surrounds the works and the area of
+the tanks and struck out over a dark waste.
+
+The novice who roams about this place in the dark spends a lot of time
+falling over pipes. They are stretching all over the place without any
+method that is apparent. The Chief showed up most of them with his
+torch, and so I fell about only just enough to get used to the feel of
+the ground as a preliminary to what was coming later. It had rained
+heavily two or three days before, consequently there were lake
+districts, slimy reaches of mixed oil and mud and dried, hard-looking
+islands that were in reality traps to the unwary. The top only was firm,
+and it had the playful property of sliding rapidly on the greasy
+substratum and thus sitting you down without warning when you thought
+you had reached dry land.
+
+[Illustration: "A mysterious-looking furnace tower."]
+
+Had I known more about Abadan before I started I would have taken a
+course of lessons in tight-rope walking, for that seems to be a great
+asset in getting along. The Chief was quite a Blondin. He could walk or
+run any length of pipe and never swerve. Much practice had made him an
+adept. There were places where the only alternative to walking in mud
+and water was this balancing feat along the pipe lines.
+
+When I had fallen several times and covered myself with a mixture that
+looked like grey condensed milk mixed with butter and felt like a
+poultice, I got my second wind. I was still recognizable as a human
+being. All fear of making myself in a worse mess had vanished, and thus,
+freed from nervousness, I began to get quite daring. The Chief saw in me
+the making of a first-class pipe walker, and prophesied that I should be
+able to attain the speed of three miles an hour. I still fell off,
+however, enough not to get a swelled head on the subject.
+
+After what to me seemed miles, and which as a matter of fact must have
+been about five hundred yards, we emerged from the lake region and
+were able to find a track along the ground. It skirted a railway line
+and led toward some buildings and machinery. A dull glow began to
+illuminate the scene and show up our path.
+
+[Illustration: "Crude steam engines evolved by Titans when the world was
+young."]
+
+A building loomed up against the sky. It was dimly lit by firelight and
+suggested to me a glimpse of the Tower of London with the corner turrets
+knocked off. In front of this were some vast boilers with uncouth
+chimneys stretching out of sight into the dark sky. The whole thing,
+weird and eerie, was reflected in pools of water, through which black
+figures toiled and splashed, pushing some loaded trollies. Then we came
+out into a lighted area at the foot of a mysterious-looking furnace
+tower, where strangely clad men, not unlike tattered and disreputable
+monks, were hauling at a great black object, some boiler or piece of
+machinery.
+
+The workmen on closer view showed that they were dressed in sacking or
+some such rough material in a sort of tunic. They wore long curly hair
+and curious hats that looked like Assyrian helmets.
+
+"What race are these men?" I asked the Chief.
+
+"They are the Medes and Persians," he replied.
+
+"And what is that tower?"
+
+"Oh, that--," he paused for a few seconds, "that's Nebuchadnezzar's
+Fiery Furnace heated seven times hotter."
+
+He was evidently determined to do me well from the point of view of
+local colour and picturesque Biblical association. I think, however,
+he missed a chance when later on we saw mysterious writing in Arabic
+characters upon the wall of an engine house. He should at least have
+read it out as MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.
+
+[Illustration: H.M.S. _MANTIS_, ONE OF THE MONITORS ON THE TIGRIS]
+
+Abadan is on an island and the pipe line crosses the water from the
+mainland. We could see it stretching away across the flat land into the
+darkness where the sky-line of the palm belt by the waterside was just
+visible. It is strange to reflect that all this scene of careless
+activity is dependent on those two pipes, each about 14 inches in
+diameter, connecting it with a point 150 miles away.
+
+I came again in the morning to look at the works. They did not appear
+half so mysterious as when seen in the dark. The Tower of London had
+shrunk into quite a small buttressed building of brick and
+Nebuchadnezzar's Fiery Furnace dwindled considerably in size. The Medes
+and Persians, on the other hand, looked wilder and more "operatic" than
+at night. I think as a matter of fact they were Kurds.
+
+It is a very simple style of get-up to imitate. For purposes of private
+theatricals I will tell you how to do it, in case you should find the
+stage direction, "_Alarums and excursions. Enter the Medes and
+Persians._"
+
+Take a very tattered, colourless, and ill-fitting dressing gown, without
+a girdle and flopping about untidily. Wear long black curly hair to
+shoulder. Put plenty of grease on. Then knock handle off a
+round-bottomed saucepan, very sooty, and place on your head. Dirty your
+face and you might walk about Abadan without attracting notice.
+
+I daresay if I knew something technical about the refining of oil I
+should not find these works so fascinating. There is always a glamour
+about a thing only half understood. Probably the retorts and boilers and
+all the apparatus here are of the very latest pattern, yet so strangely
+unlike modern machinery do they seem that I find myself wondering if I
+have gone back into some previous age and unearthed strange things of
+prehistoric antiquity. These solemn-looking turbaned Indians might be
+tending the first uncouth monsters of engineering--the antediluvians of
+machinery. These serried ranks of tall iron funnels, these rude furnaces
+fed by crawling snakes of piping, these roaring domes of fire might be
+crude steam engines evolved by Titans when the world was young.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE VENICE OF THE EAST.
+
+[Illustration: In Ashar creek.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE VENICE OF THE EAST
+
+
+Before the war, when Mesopotamia was a more distant land than it is
+to-day, Basra was often referred to as the Venice of the East. Few
+travellers were in a position to test the accuracy of the comparison,
+and so it aroused little comment. No Venetians had returned from Basra
+burning with indignation and filled with a desire to get even with the
+writer who first thought of the parallel, probably because no Venetian
+had ever been there.
+
+A few simple souls, who had delighted in the mediaeval splendours of
+Venice, dreamed of a Venice still more romantic--a Venice with all her
+glories of art tinged with the glamour and witchery of the Arabian
+Nights, a Venice whose blue waterways reflected stately palms and golden
+minarets. Other souls, like myself, less simple and sufficiently salted
+to know that these Turnerian dreams are generally the magical accidents
+of changing light and seldom the result of any intrinsic interest in the
+places themselves--even they had a grievance when they saw the real
+Basra. Was this the Venice of the East, this squalid place beside
+soup-coloured waters? Was this the city that reveals the past splendours
+of Haroun Alraschid as Venice reveals the golden age of Titian and the
+Doges?
+
+The first general impression of Basra is that of an unending series of
+quays along a river not unlike the Thames at Tilbury. The British India
+boats and other transports lying in the stream or berthed at the wharves
+might be at Gravesend and the grey-painted County Council "penny
+steamboats" at their moorings in the river look very much as they looked
+in the reach below Charing Cross Bridge.
+
+Another thing which makes the contrast between Venice and Basra rather a
+painful one is the complete and noticeable absence of anything of the
+slightest architectural interest in this Eastern (alleged) counterpart
+of the Bride of the Adriatic. Whereas in Venice the antiquarian can
+revel in examples of many centuries of diverse domestic architecture
+from ducal palace to humble fisherman's dwelling on an obscure "back
+street" canal, in Basra there abounds a great deal of rickety rubbish
+that never had any interest in itself and which depends for its
+effect on the flattering gilding of the sun and the intangible glamour
+of Eastern twilight. In fact Basra might be described from an
+architectural point of view as a great heap of insanitary and ill-built
+rubbish which can look collectively extraordinarily picturesque.
+I have seen bits on Ashar Creek (as for instance the wooden
+old-tin-and-straw-mat-covered buildings shown in the centre of the
+sketch in the heading to this chapter) look most romantic and beautiful.
+Yet they will not bear any close inspection, without revealing
+themselves as monuments of slovenliness and dirt.
+
+[Illustration: HOSPITAL HULKS AT BASRA]
+
+In spite, however, of these drawbacks and disappointments, to those who
+would find Venetian character by the waters of Mesopotamia, there are
+two features in Basra that do undoubtedly bring Venice to mind--the
+boats and the canals. The bellam is a long, flat-bottomed boat not
+unlike a punt but narrowing at each end to a point, the stem and
+stern-post alike ending in a high curved piece suggestive of a gondola.
+These craft are propelled by two men standing one at each end like
+gondoliers and punting the boat along by poles. If the water is too deep
+to bottom it they sit and propel the boat with paddles.
+
+The canals of Basra are multitudinous. They are artificially dug and are
+really more canals than creeks, although they are always called creeks.
+Ashar Creek is the most important of these waterways. It is generally
+packed with craft from big mahailas, the type of vessel shown in the
+sketch facing page 16, to the ubiquitous bellam. Old Basra lies up here.
+As I approached it one evening, with the sun going down, it looked most
+gorgeous. Palms and gardens on the right and the buildings of the town
+on the left, and boats approaching, dream-like In the sunset glow. I
+have sketched the effect roughly in the line drawing on page 21.
+
+Some of the regions up these creeks are extremely beautiful. For once
+there was nothing disappointing even in comparison--although
+comparisons, as we have seen, are odious--with Venetian waterways. For
+once we have something that can surpass in beauty anything that Venice
+can show. Basra can boast no architecture, but Nature, coming to her
+assistance, can produce, between sunshine and water, vistas of
+orange-laden trees overtopped with palms and all reflected in the still
+canal. I have known seven kinds of fruit to overhang the banks of one
+creek at the same time.
+
+[Illustration: Sunset, Old Basra.]
+
+I hired a bellam manned by two fearsome-looking pirates and explored
+unending waterways in and around Basra. The main thoroughfares run at
+right angles to the river, but there are numerous narrow branches
+communicating from one to the other, in some places forming a network of
+little channels. Some of these were beautiful beyond description. The
+tide is felt in all these waters, and sometimes, during a spring tide,
+the effect of some of these date palm plantations, with the ground just
+covered, is strange. Hundreds of palms seem to be growing up out of a
+lake, and the glades reflected in the still water is dream-like and
+enchanting, recalling Tennyson's nocturne--
+
+  "Until another night in night
+   I enter'd, from the clearer light,
+   Imbower'd vaults of piller'd palm."
+
+The pirates were quite jolly fellows who pointed out various things to
+me as being worthy of interest. By this time the natives have got up, in
+a most superficial way, the things which they think will interest the
+Englishman. Every group of palm trees more than twenty in number is
+pointed out as the Garden of Eden, every bump of ground more than six
+feet high is the mount on which the Ark rested, and every building more
+than fifty years old is the one undoubted and authentic residence of
+Sinbad the Sailor. An old house in Mesopotamia in which Sinbad the
+Sailor had _not_ lived would be equivalent to one of England's ancient
+country mansions in which Queen Elizabeth had never slept. The fact that
+Sinbad the Sailor is a literary creation doesn't discourage the Arabs in
+the least.
+
+During this voyage of mine by bellam through the multitudinous creeks of
+Basra a remarkable thing happened. Under the circumstances it was a
+providential happening. _I ran into Brown_.
+
+[Illustration: ".... THE SOLEMN PALMS WERE RANGED ABOVE, UNWOO'D OF
+SUMMER WIND"--_Recollections of the Arabian Nights_]
+
+Now I do not expect the readers of some previous notes of my sketching
+escapades[1] to believe this. It is almost too wonderful that a
+chronicler of travels in desperate need of some comic relief to save his
+book from dulness would be so lucky as to pick up such excellent copy as
+Brown, without previous intrigue. Nevertheless I do solemnly state that
+I had not the slightest idea where Brown was doing his bit in the war. I
+had last heard of him in France in the Naval Division. That we should
+both have travelled half across the world to meet with a crash in a
+backwater at Basra was one of the strangest freaks of fortune I have
+come across.
+
+My two pirates were poling along quite merrily when we took a right
+angle turn in fine style. It is evident that the low foliage had hidden
+the side channel into which we shot, and they had not seen what became
+evident too late, a motor-boat at right angles across the creek,
+apparently stuck fast.
+
+I had just time to observe two naval officers and the native coxswain
+struggling with poles to turn the boat round, or free it from its
+unserviceable position with regard to the bank when the prow of my
+bellam took a flying leap over the motor-boat, precipitating my two
+boatmen into the water, and sending me by means of a somersault into the
+launch. Somewhat stunned I lay gazing up at a piece of blue sky in which
+I could discern the green leaves of palm trees.
+
+When in the midst of this blue dome above I beheld Brown perched on the
+top of a palm tree exhibiting with a look of blank astonishment on his
+face, waving an arm as if in a kind of bewildered greeting, I gave up
+the struggle for existence and became resigned to my fate. Without doubt
+Brown, whom I had last heard of in France, had been killed and was now
+doing his best to welcome me into a happier and better world.
+
+It would be quite like Brown to try and outdo the ordinarily accepted
+symbolism of bearing a palm branch by attempting to wave a whole palm
+tree, for this he seemed most undoubtedly to be doing, embracing its
+trunk and swaying from side to side.
+
+Subsequently, when things had sorted themselves out in my mind, and when
+I found I was still in the land of the living I realized that he was
+attempting to descend to earth. He was no less astonished than I.
+
+After baling out the bellam and restoring order in the launch we found
+that the casualties were nil, and proceeded to compare notes. Brown, it
+appeared, had joined the Naval Division, been to Antwerp, Gallipoli and
+France, and then been transferred for gunnery duties to the rivers of
+Mesopotamia, and was now Lieut. R.N.V.R. in the _Dalhousie_ stationed at
+Basra. His occupation, when I came across him in this unexpected way,
+was that of a leader of an expedition in a motor-boat with two R.N.
+victims to find a new route to somewhere or other which could not
+possibly be approached by water.
+
+His enthusiasm had been so infectious that he had persuaded these
+gallant and guileless officers to go with him, and was, at the moment of
+my arrival, attempting to get a better geographical idea of the
+surrounding country by climbing a palm tree and shouting directions to
+the unfortunate occupants of the boat below, who were hopelessly stuck.
+The sudden impact of the bellam, uncomfortable as it was for all
+concerned, succeeded where they had failed, in getting them off the mud.
+
+[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF SINBAD THE SAILOR, BASRA]
+
+An old-world touch is given to the waters of Basra by the high-sterned
+dhows anchored in the river. Above Ashar Creek the scenery of the banks
+with its wharves and big steamers is not particularly characteristic of
+the East. Some of it might be by the Thames at Tilbury Docks. But by
+Khora Creek and in the lower reaches of the river at Basra, these
+old-world ships, with their quaint lines and steep, naked masts, are
+more in keeping with our recollections of Sinbad the Sailor, or perhaps
+of the days of the Merchant Venturers of our own Elizabethan days.
+
+It is to be supposed that the type of ship that has survived in the East
+to the present day, like the mahaila and the goufa, is very much
+unchanged like everything else, and tells us faithfully what sort of
+ships there were in these waters some two thousand years ago or more. If
+this surmise be a correct one, then we can trace the poop tower of the
+_Great Harry_ and the square windows and super-imposed galleries of the
+_Victory's_ stern to this common ancestor. I wish I had been able to get
+an elevation of the details of one of these more ornate sterns. It would
+be interesting to compare the work with that in the ships of the Middle
+Ages and see if there is a definite development of type from East to
+West via the Mediterranean.
+
+We passed down Ashar Creek just after sunset, and the house of Sinbad,
+with its picturesque surroundings, thoroughly looked the part. The tower
+of the mosque stood out against a lemon-coloured sky, and wandering
+wisps of purple smoke curled up from countless hearths.
+
+Some giant mahailas, nearly obliterated the crooked little galleries
+that overlook the creek, and a few boats glided silently down towards
+the open river. Lights began to appear and stars studded the darkening
+sky. Faint sounds of chanting music floated across the water and all the
+world was still.
+
+[Illustration: Dhows Basra.]
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+SINBAD THE SOLDIER
+
+[Illustration: Monitor "Moth" at Basra.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+SINBAD THE SOLDIER
+
+After a few days among the waterways of Mesopotamia one can get hardened
+against surprises. The most amazing and outrageous types of craft soon
+meet the eye as commonplaces of river life. Things that would make a
+Thames waterman sign the pledge proceed up and down without arousing any
+comment. Noah's ark, with its full complement, could ply for hire
+between Basra and Baghdad, and the lion's roaring would be accepted as
+the necessary accompaniment of a somewhat old type of machinery
+resuscitated for the war.
+
+I have seen boats jostling each other cheek by jowl that might have been
+taking part in a pageant entitled "Ships in All the Ages." There were
+Thornycroft motor-boats and Sennacharib goufas, mahailas and Thames
+steamboats, an oil-fuel gunboat and a stern paddler that could have come
+out of a woodcut of the first steamboat on the Clyde--and all these in
+the same reach. I travelled in this last extraordinary vessel for a
+short time. She was in charge of a sergeant of the Inland Water
+Transport, with an Indian pilot and miscellaneous crew, and my
+adventurous cruise called to mind both the travels of Ulysses and the
+Hunting of the Snark.
+
+The sergeant could not speak Hindustani and the pilot could not speak a
+word of English. Mistakes of the most frantic nature were common,
+especially when we were being whirled round and round by the stream at a
+difficult corner. In the midst of controversy unrelieved by any glimmer
+of understanding on the part of anybody present we would slide
+gracefully into a state of rest on a mudbank or bump violently against
+the shore. Luckily, it seemed as easy to get off the mudbank as to get
+on it, and we finally got into positions we wanted to for making
+sketches of various points. The pantomimic violence of the sergeant,
+together with diagrams in my sketch-book, were ultimately successful.
+
+[Illustration: A BEND IN "THE NARROWS" OF THE TIGRIS]
+
+Nearly all the Tigris steamers proceeding up river have loaded
+lighters on each side of them. These act as fenders at the corners and
+take the bump whenever the bank is encountered. The progress is slow and
+there is often a good deal of waiting, for in the region between Ezra's
+tomb (above Kurna) and Amara there is not room for two steamers thus
+encumbered to pass with safety. These waters are known as the Narrows.
+Signal stations are placed at various intervals, and a signal is made to
+clear the way, generally for the down-river boat, the up-river craft,
+which, with the stream against them, will not have to turn round in
+stopping, tying up to the bank. This manoeuvre is done in a few
+minutes. The steamer that is to stop runs alongside the bank and natives
+with stakes jump out and drive them into the marsh ground. She moors to
+these until the other vessel has passed downwards.
+
+The sketch facing page 30 was done from a steamer bound
+up-river, which had tied up under these conditions. The paddler coming
+down has a lighter on each side of her as the one sketched on page 38.
+She will come down toward the leading marks shown on the
+right-hand side of the picture, and then slide along the bank,
+using the lighter on the port side as a fender. Then she will leave the
+bank and shoot across to the other side of the river, taking the next
+turn with her starboard lighter.
+
+This drawing will serve to show the general nature of most Mesopotamian
+river scenery, dead flat, with nothing or little to relieve the
+monotony, a great expanse of muddy waters and featureless dust, with
+just a suggestion in one direction of a low line of blue--very faint.
+It tells of the far-away Persian mountains and of snow.
+
+The great feature of the Narrows, however, and one which all our
+dwellers in Mesopotamia will remember vividly as long as they live, is
+the egg-sellers from the Marsh Arab villages on the banks. Although a
+steamer proceeding up-river may be kicking up a great fuss in the water
+and apparently thumping along at a great rate, it is, in reality, making
+only about four knots on the land. Consequently, when it sidles into the
+bank, with one of its lighters touching the marsh, the natives who are
+selling things can keep up, and a running--literally running--fire of
+bargaining is maintained between the ship's company and the Arabs.
+
+They are all women who do the selling--weird figures in black carrying
+baskets of eggs and occasionally chicken. Gesticulating, shouting,
+shrieking, they rush along beside the up-going steamer and keep even
+with it. In the middle of a bargain the steamer may edge away until a
+great gulf is fixed between the bargainers. Sometimes it will slide
+along the other bank and a fresh company of yelling Amazons will try and
+open up negotiations for eggs while the frenzied and now almost demented
+sellers left behind rend their clothes and shout imprecations at their
+rivals. Another turn of the current, however, and the vessel again nears
+the shore of the original runners and the deal is finished.
+
+[Illustration: The Sirens of the Narrows.]
+
+One girl kept up for miles and at last sold her basket of eggs. She got
+a very good price for them, but apparently she wanted her basket back
+again. The buyer insisted that the basket was included, and the seller
+shrieked frantically that it was not. She kept up with us for some
+miles, making imploring gestures, kneeling down with her arms
+outstretched as though she was begging for her life, and yelling at the
+top of her voice, tears streaming down her cheeks. The basket would be
+worth twopence or less and she had made many shillings on the deal.
+Finally, a soldier good-naturedly threw it to her and it fell in the
+water about three feet from the shore. She hurled herself upon it waist
+deep in the water and seized it, then waved her arms and leaped about in
+a dance of ecstatic triumph that would have made her fortune at the
+Hippodrome.
+
+Another feature of the Narrows is the reed villages. This, of course,
+does not exclusively belong to this region, but it is here, when tied up
+to the bank, that the best opportunity of a close view is taken.
+
+That houses can be built in practically no time and out of almost
+anything has been abundantly claimed at home by numerous enterprising
+firms by ocular demonstration at the Building Trades and Ideal Home
+Exhibitions. Cement guns and climbing scaffolding, we are assured, will
+raise crops of mansions at a prodigious pace, and the housing problem is
+all but solved. If we have not noticed many new houses it is not for
+want of inventors. Yet the best of these efforts is elaborately
+cumbersome compared with housing schemes on these flat lands bordering
+the Tigris and Euphrates. Not only has the Marsh Arab evolved a style
+of dwelling that can be built in a night, but he can boast of a device
+still more alluring in its naivity and utility--the _Portable Village!_
+
+[Illustration: A MARSH ARAB REED VILLAGE]
+
+I once made a sketch of a Marsh Arabs' village at evening (reproduced
+facing p. 34), and on returning thither on the following morning to
+verify certain details, I found it had gone! I succeeded in tracking it
+down again by the afternoon, about ten miles from its former situation,
+and found the mayor (or whatever the Marsh-Mesopotamian equivalent may
+be) inspecting the finishing touches being made to the borough. Of
+course it is frightfully muddling, all this moving about of villages, to
+the stranger who is not keeping a sharp look-out and marking well such
+impromptu geographical activity.
+
+Along the shores of the rivers of Mesopotamia and in the innumerable
+lagoons and backwaters that abound can be found large areas of tall
+reeds, ranging from quite slight rushes to canes twenty feet high. It is
+with such material the Marsh Arab builds. The long rods he bends into
+arches like croquet hoops. On this skeleton, not unlike the ribs of a
+boat turned upside down, he stretches large mats woven out of rushes. At
+the ends he builds up a straight wall of reed straw bound up in flat
+sheaves. An opening is left for an entrance, a mat, sometimes of
+coloured material, doing duty for a door.
+
+So much for the principal and removable part of the village. However,
+the town planner will add to this by improvising mud enclosures for
+animals, and an occasional wall and "tower." The mud is mixed with cut
+grass and reeds, quickly drying into a hard substance, and sufficiently
+permanent for anything that such a temporary village requires.
+
+In the bright sunlight of the Mesopotamian plains, and probably also on
+account of their prominence at a distance over the flat land, some of
+these mud buildings look quite imposing. I remember once approaching a
+city with ramparts, towers, and formidable walls which, on close
+inspection, turned out to be a small mud enclosure of the most decrepit
+kind.
+
+Great changes have been made in the rule of the waterways of
+Mesopotamia. Sinbad the Sailor has given place to Sinbad the Soldier,
+the Inland Water Transport.
+
+We have learnt, as we were advised to do in regard to the things of
+Mesopotamia, to think amphibiously.
+
+[Illustration: Noah's Ark, 1919.]
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE WISE MEN FROM THE WEST
+
+[Illustration: Upward bound on the Tigris.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE WISE MEN FROM THE WEST
+
+
+The story of Mesopotamia is a story of irrigation. "It is not
+improbable," writes Sir William Willcocks, the great irrigationist,
+"that the wisdom of ancient Chaldea had its foundations in the necessity
+of a deep mastery of hydraulics and meteorology, to enable the ancient
+settlers to turn what was partially a desert and partially a swamp into
+fields of world-famed fertility." The civilizations of Babylon and
+Assyria owed their very life to the science of watering the land, and
+even in the later times of Haroun Alraschid their great systems had been
+well maintained. It is said of Maimun, the son and successor of this
+monarch, that he exclaimed, as he saw Egypt spread out before him,
+"Cursed be Pharaoh who said in his pride, 'Am I not Pharaoh, King of
+Egypt?' If he had seen Chaldea he would have said it with humility."
+
+Allowing for a certain amount of patriotic exaggeration, the exclamation
+at least shows at what a high degree of excellence the irrigation system
+of Mesopotamia was maintained in the 10th century A.D. Yet
+Mesopotamia is to-day a desert except for the regions in the immediate
+vicinity of the rivers. You can go westwards from Baghdad to the
+Euphrates, and every mile or so you will have to cross earthworks, not
+unlike irregular railway embankments, showing a vast system of
+irrigation channels both great and small. But there is not a drop of
+water near and not a tree and no sign of any life. How came the change
+and how can such a network of channels have ceased to work entirely?
+
+The reason is to be found in some past neglect of the ancient dams that
+kept the water on a high level, so that it could flow by means of
+artificial canals at a greater height (and consequently at a slower
+rate) than the rivers themselves. The Tigris and Euphrates are rivers
+fed by the melting snow in the mountains of Armenia. The hotter the
+season and the more necessary a plentiful supply of water, the greater
+is the amount brought down. The rivers, however, when they reach the
+flat alluvial plain between the region round about Baghdad and the
+Persian Gulf, when left to themselves are always bringing down a
+deposit and choking themselves up and then breaking out in a new
+direction, causing swamps and turning much of the land into useless
+marsh. Consequent also upon this silting-up process the banks of the
+rivers are higher than the surrounding country, and there is a gentle
+drop in the level of the land as it recedes from the river.
+
+[Illustration: MUD HOUSES ON THE TIGRIS]
+
+The object of the ancient irrigationists was to tap the rivers at the
+higher part of this plain, and then, by means of great canals, lead the
+water where they wanted it. Large reservoirs and lakes for storing
+surplus water were made, and thus the uneven delivery of water by the
+rivers was checked and a more regular and manageable supply maintained.
+
+The greatest of these ancient channels was the Nahrwan. A regulator, the
+ruins which are still traceable in the bed of the Tigris, turned
+sufficient water into this high-level river at Dura. It stretched
+southwards for about 250 miles along the left bank of the Tigris. It was
+the neglect of this canal that led to a fearful catastrophe which must
+have been responsible for the death of millions; a catastrophe which
+turned some 20,000 square miles of fruitful land, teeming with populous
+cities, into a dismal swamp.
+
+The intake from the Tigris of this and other canals evidently silted up,
+and thus enormous volumes of water, usually carried off by them in times
+of flood, helped to swell this river till, bursting its banks, it
+inundated the whole country. The result remains to-day--a vast tract of
+swampy land, barren and almost useless, except to a few wandering tribes
+of Arabs.
+
+And now the land which sent its Wise Men to the West is looking towards
+the West again for aid. If its ancient prosperity is to be restored, if
+Chaldea is again to be a granary to the world, it is to the West that it
+must turn. Science and machinery shall again make the waste places to be
+inhabited and the desert blossom as the rose. Thus shall the wise men
+return to them--the Wise Men of the West. In every important
+agricultural centre are to be found irrigation officers--the
+first-fruits of British occupation.
+
+There was only one subject of conversation in Mesopotamia in the winter
+of 1918-1919, and that was the chances of getting back home. There was
+very little to do at Basra except watch steamers load up with the more
+fortunate candidates for demobilization and give them a send-off. Brown
+had no difficulty in getting three weeks' leave to accompany me in some
+of my expeditions to gather up such fragments as remained of naval
+subjects on the rivers. We determined on a voyage of discovery up the
+Euphrates in search of the famous "fly-boats" which had figured so
+vividly in the early days of naval river fighting, and which now were
+more or less peacefully employed. I had to make many sketches of them
+for further use, and succeeded in finding a whole "bag" at Dhibban.
+
+[Illustration: A MAHAILA OF THE INLAND WATER TRANSPORT]
+
+We embarked in an ancient-looking stern paddler named _Shushan_. As
+we had to camp out in a somewhat rough-and-ready way, with not a little
+discomfort owing to a spell of very cold weather, Brown insisted on
+referring to her as _Shushan the Palace_.
+
+She had a tall funnel, like the tug in Turner's _Fighting Temeraire,_
+and kicked up a tremendous wash with her paddle, the whole effect being
+faintly reminiscent of a hay-making machine. She pushed her way along,
+slightly "down by the head," as if she had suddenly thought of something
+and was putting on a spurt to make up for lost time. I cannot lay hands
+on a sketch of her, but the one reproduced at the head of this chapter
+will give some idea of her character. Take away one funnel and place it
+amid-ships, reduce her tonnage a little, and you have the _Shushan_ to
+the life.
+
+This gallant little curiosity is no late conscripted product of the war.
+She is one of the pukka ships of the Navy in Mesopotamia--one of the Old
+Contemptibles. Armed with a three-pounder which caused such havoc to her
+decks when fired that it is reported the ship had to be turned round
+after each round. Two shots in succession in the same direction would
+have wrecked the vessel.
+
+A host of amusing stories of her exploits were told us by her C.O., who
+was an R.N.V.R. Lieutenant. Some practical joker produced a cylinder
+alleged to be in cuneiform writing. A translation of the inscription
+proved beyond doubt that the _Shushan_ was used by Nebuchadnezzar as a
+royal yacht, and is the last surviving link with the Babylonian navy.
+
+When the Turks had fled from Kurna and we were chasing them up the river
+with an amazing medley of craft, like a nightmare of Henley regatta
+suddenly mobilized, the _Shushan_ was in the forefront of the battle.
+Led by the sloops _Espiegle_, _Clio_, and _Odin_, the Stunt Armada came
+to Ezra's Tomb at twilight. The river was high and the land in between
+the great bends was a maze of rushes and lagoons. Hospital hulks like
+Noah's arks, little steamers, and loaded mahailas jostled each other in
+their endeavours to get up against the strong stream. The hulks and the
+barges were dropped at the bend shown in the sketch, facing page 46, and
+the _Odin_ anchored. We had captured already some Turkish barges, and
+prisoners had to be collected.
+
+The rest pushed on. Across the bend, some two or three miles away, the
+Turkish gunboat _Marmaris_ was putting on every ounce of fuel she had,
+and a mass of mahailas and tugs were doing their best to escape the
+Nemesis that awaited them. Then the sloops opened fire, and a desultory
+cannonade was kept up as it grew darker and darker. At last it was too
+dark to get any sort of aim, and firing ceased. The _Marmaris_ had been
+set alight by her crew, but we captured the whole of the enemy's
+flotilla.
+
+[Illustration: EZRA'S TOMB]
+
+Ezra's Tomb is a splendid spot to look at. Mosquitoes at times makes it
+far from pleasant to live in. The blue-tiled dome surrounded by
+palms, one of which is bending down in a manner strange to such a
+straight-growing tree, is an oasis in a vast wilderness of nothing in
+particular.
+
+The Euphrates from a scenic point of view might be described as more
+wooded than the Tigris. There are some delightful glimpses of waterside
+verdure and rush-covered shores. To the archaeologist and the historian
+Mugheir is intensely interesting, for the great mound discloses the site
+of the ancient Ur--Ur of the Chaldees--from which Abraham set out
+towards Canaan.
+
+Up till now, upon a map of the world in Abraham's time, the good little
+_Shushan_ would still be at sea. She would be approaching the coast at
+the mouth of the river Euphrates, the Tigris flowing-out some fifty
+miles further east. Dockyards and busy workshops would proclaim the
+vicinity of this capital, the greatest of all the cities of Chaldea.
+
+Since these prosperous days the sea has receded about 150 miles, and
+left Ur a nondescript heap to be disputed over by professors.
+
+At length, when we had said good-bye to the _Shushan_ and taken to a
+motor-boat, we arrived at Hillah, bent on finding the house of the
+irrigation officer. We landed on the wrong side of the river and rashly
+let the boat go back. Brown maintains now that this was my idea, but as
+a matter of fact it was one of his attempts at a picturesque
+approach--for my benefit. Brown has a vivid imagination, and sees so
+clearly in his mind how a place _ought_ to be that he really believes
+it is so. In this case he pictured us approaching Hillah and looking
+down upon miles and miles of fruitful gardens intersected with little
+waterways--a sort of landscape-garden Venice. This view could only be
+obtained from a high cliff, and as there was no cliff in lower
+Mesopotamia, except in Brown's imagination, it was natural that he would
+be disappointed.
+
+A sudden white fog, moreover, took away any chance of a view of any
+kind, and we were soon hopelessly lost. Some soldiers we met on the way
+told us to keep straight on and then turn to the left by some palm
+trees. As we soon encountered some palm trees every few yards we
+wondered whether they intended to be humorous. I don't think they did,
+however. The optimism of you-can't-possibly-miss-it type is too general.
+The man who says "turn down by some trees" knows the place well, and can
+see certain trees in his mind's eye. He will turn when he sees the right
+trees, but you will probably get lost.
+
+Needless to say, everything went wrong with our scheme of approaching
+the irrigation works from a picturesque angle. The dense fog thickened
+and shrouded the neighbourhood of the river in impenetrable mystery. We
+kept turning down by palm trees as directed, but to no purpose. We
+struck the river bank again after much wandering and kept to it, hoping
+the mist would clear. A man in a goufa appeared from nowhere and floated
+away out of sight into nowhere like a ghostly visitant from another
+world. The sun began to show through the fog and blue sky appeared
+overhead. Soon the steaming vapours dispersed, showing a view of
+buildings among palm trees and a bridge of boats.
+
+[Illustration: Hillah.]
+
+Here again we were held up while countless mahailas passed through, but
+we succeeded in getting over at last and eventually found the house of
+the Wise Men, the headquarters of the irrigation officers.
+
+Had we been ambassadors on a diplomatic visit to Hillah, we could not
+have been more hospitably entertained or given greater facilities for
+getting about in a most fascinating region of the world for any one who
+felt the glamour of history in this once highly civilized country.
+
+Great buildings like Ctesiphon near Baghdad or traces of the vast
+irrigation works of the past are full of interest, but for romance and
+mystery there is no piece of the world more fraught with meaning than
+this site of the city of Nebuchadnezzar, nearly 200 square miles in
+extent, and now, but for the comparatively small tract of irrigated
+land, a desert.
+
+"Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of
+devils."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON
+
+[Illustration: Ctesiphon.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON
+
+The irrigation officers at Hillah were ideal hosts, not only from the
+commonly accepted standpoint, but from that of an artist. They let me
+roam about and sketch what _I_ wanted, not what _they_ wanted. They gave
+me every means of transport, and such suggestions as they made as to
+possible subjects were excellent and offered with such tact that there
+was no difficulty in abstaining from sketching or going on with
+something else.
+
+How often does the unfortunate painter suffer from the well-meaning
+host, who with an admiration for his calling, which is both extremely
+flattering and tremendously inconvenient, tries to do him
+well--especially if he dabbles a little in water-colour painting
+himself. An organized attack on all the real or supposed picturesque
+bits in the neighbourhood is planned and the members of his family outdo
+each other in praiseworthy endeavours to help on the great cause of Art.
+The campaign is prefaced by a violent discussion at G.H.Q. as to the
+best landscape within easy reach, and Millie, who has had lessons in
+pastelles, prevails over Mollie, who merely does pen painting. The
+wretched painter is then hauled triumphantly into a car surrounded by
+the artistic, who regard him with almost heathen veneration and feel
+thrilled by the fact that they, too, observe that the sky is blue and
+the trees are green. Arriving at the chosen scene and viewing it from
+the spot "from which they always take it," the unfortunate artist is
+stood or seated down, book in hand, complete with paintbox and water,
+and expected to begin. _He_ does not have any voice in the choosing of
+the view. It is high noon. The sun is right in front of him and
+everything is so hard that even Turner could make nothing of it. The
+worshippers at the shrine of art stand round in awed anticipation,
+waiting for the masterpiece.
+
+It is useless for him to protest that the conditions are impossible.
+"After such kindness that would be a dismal thing to do." So he
+contrives to make some sort of a drawing which dims the lustre of his
+reputation in their eyes for many years to come.
+
+[Illustration: ON THE EUPHRATES, EARLY MORNING]
+
+The major took us in his car to various points along the river and
+explained the means employed in irrigation. On the Euphrates there are
+two methods used for local irrigation apart from the system of canals
+flowing from the river. One is the water-wheel, a curious contrivance
+built out on stone piers. It consists of a huge paddle-wheel with
+buckets like those of a dredger, that fills a trough that runs down into
+the fields.
+
+The other is a water-raising device that is worked by bullocks. A large
+leather skin is hauled up from the river by a rope over a wheel. This
+rope is harnessed to a bullock which walks backwards and forwards
+hauling up the water-skin and letting it down again. When the full skin
+reaches the top it hits against a bar and pours itself out into a
+trough. These two systems, as can be easily imagined, are good only for
+the land in the immediate vicinity of the river bank, as the supply of
+water is necessarily not large. Above Hit the frequency of the
+water-wheels with their stone piers causes so much obstruction that
+navigation for any large boats is impossible. In one place there are
+seven wheels abreast.
+
+At last we arrived at an old bridge crossing one of the ancient canals,
+which branched off from the river in a westerly direction. I have
+sketched it on page 57. It is extremely interesting as an
+example of the resuscitation of the old waterways of Babylonia. The
+banks of this channel here take almost a mountainous character for so
+flat a country. This piling up of mounds has been caused by clearing
+the silt from the entrance to the intake of the canal.
+
+From the vantage point of this high ground we could see a goodly
+prospect, and on the one side the river, here called the Hindeyeh canal,
+with its green shore and on the other a belt of date palms and beyond
+the illimitable desert. Some five or six miles away there appeared a
+mound surmounted by a tower, a curious object alone in the great expanse
+of flat land.
+
+"What is that thing," I asked, "that looks like a ruined castle on the
+Rhine?"
+
+"The Tower of Babel," replied the major, "or rather that is its popular
+name. It is Birs Nimrud on the map." Brown wanted to start straight away
+and "discover" it, but we persuaded him to assent to lunch first. The
+major was too busy for such an escapade, but he suggested lending us a
+Ford car which would do anything with the desert and which we could not
+break, so we returned to Hillah.
+
+After lunch we set out on our expedition, Brown very silent and full, no
+doubt, of romantic projects, and arrived back again at the bridge where
+I made my sketch. It appears that the route was not direct as far as the
+car was concerned, owing to the crossing of some water channels, but
+that on foot we should be able to do it. I knew Brown was concocting
+something, and he soon let out what it was. His scheme was to send the
+car round to meet us at the Tower of Babel and we would walk. I think he
+rather liked the idea of saying "Tower of Babel" to the driver instead
+of "home." I consented, rather against my better judgment, for I fear
+Brown's enthusiasm for dramatic settings. His pathetic belief that my
+next picture for the R.A. would be entitled "The Tower of Silence," and
+that I should achieve a masterpiece in depicting the blood-red ruin at
+sunset across the desert was somewhat disarming. He forgot in his
+enthusiasm that if the sun _did_ set when we were in the required
+position we should be benighted on the plain without food or shelter,
+and not at all in the mood for painting pictures.
+
+[Illustration: Ancient irrigation channel near Hillah.]
+
+Practical difficulties still existed, inasmuch as we were for a long
+time unable to explain to the native driver that he was to meet us at
+Birs Nimrud, and feared, if we were not very explicit, he would return
+to Hillah and we might never be heard of again. Brown's pantomimic
+attempts at direction were obscure even to me, and I am sure the driver
+thought he had gone out of his mind. They consisted in his stooping down
+with his hand on the ground, then rising slowly, turning round and
+round, his hand describing a spiral curve, till it shot up straight over
+his head. Then he pointed to the car. There was evidently some implied
+connection between the spiral curve and the car. How long this would
+have gone on I do not know had I not tried the words "Birs Nimrud." The
+driver understood this and I think we made it clear that whatever
+happened he was to be at Birs Nimrud and wait for us. So we started off
+on foot.
+
+[Illustration: BABYLON: THE EXCAVATIONS AT EL KASR]
+
+[Illustration: Tower of Babel (Fig. 1).]
+
+When we were well under way, I asked Brown, who is a freemason, if he
+was endeavouring to reach the understanding of the native by means of
+some mystic Eastern ritual unknown to me. He was quite scornful of my
+want of intelligence and explained that his movements were intended to
+describe the tower that had been built from earth to reach up into
+heaven. It was perfectly clear, he maintained, that if he first
+indicated the Tower of Babel and then the Ford car, the driver would
+see, had he been reasonably intelligent, that he was to take the car to
+the tower.
+
+The journey over the plain towards the mound and tower was not so
+eventful as we had expected it to be. Beyond jumping many small
+watercourses or negotiating muddy patches left by the recent rain, we
+found no difficulty in keeping a straight course. A herd of camels
+trotted away as we approached and we started up a fox. Otherwise we came
+across no sign of life. As we advanced mile upon mile the mysterious
+tower seemed to get further away, an illusion possible in flat
+countries. I have often observed a similar phenomenon in Holland.
+Perhaps in this case mirage had something to do with it.
+
+A mosque or tomb became visible and then, almost suddenly, we seemed to
+get to close quarters with everything. A ridge rose up from the flat
+land and from this point of vantage, known as the tomb of Abraham, we
+could look across a level zone a few hundred yards wide to the long,
+irregular hummock about a hundred feet high, although in this setting it
+looked a great deal more. The east side of this small range is scored
+with miniature wadies washed out by rain, and the crowning ruin appeared
+(as in sketch, Fig. 1), casting a long shadow down the slope of the
+hill.
+
+Leaving the high ground we skirted the foot of the mound, going
+southwards and seeing it from the point of view indicated in Fig. 2, and
+then as at Fig. 3. A group of Arabs bargaining about coins and
+attempting to sell curios to two British officers, who had dismounted
+from their horses, made a tremendous hubbub and, as Brown noted, gave
+the right local colour as to the confusion of tongues.
+
+I am ill-equipped with books of reference out here, but in one of
+Murray's handbooks I have unearthed the following note--all I can find
+about this place:--
+
+[Illustration: The Tower of Babel.]
+
+[Illustration: Tower of Babel (Fig. 2).]
+
+"BIRS NIMRUD, about 21/2 hours from Hillah, is a vast ruin
+crowned apparently by the ruins of a tower rising to a height of 1531/2
+ft. above the plain, and having a circumference of rather more than 2000
+feet. The Birs, which was situated within the city of Borsippa, has been
+wrongly identified with the Tower of Babel. It is the temple of Nebo,
+called the 'Temple of the seven spheres of Heaven and Earth,' and was a
+sort of pyramid built in seven stages, the stairs being ornamented with
+the planetary colours, and on the seventh was an ark or tabernacle. The
+Birs was destroyed by Xerxes and restored by Antiochus Soter. The Tower
+of Babel was possibly the Esagila of the inscriptions, or the
+E-Temenanki--a tower not yet identified. Not far from Birs Nimrud are
+the ruins of Hashemieh, the first residence of the Abbaside Khalifs."
+
+Brown would have none of this. Anything is anathema to Brown which
+destroys topographical romance. He is a fierce enemy to "higher
+criticism," which does away with the whale in the book of Jonah or the
+snow-clad summit of Mount Ararat as the resting-place of the ark. It is
+quite exciting, he maintains, to picture the ark stuck on the perilous
+ice-peaks of a glacier, with Noah and his family endeavouring to get the
+elephants and giraffes safely down a ravine like the Mer de Glace to the
+more temperate regions of the plains below. How much better than
+thinking of it stuck fast on some wretched mound by the Euphrates, 30
+feet high.
+
+[Illustration: AN OLD WORLD CRAFT, A TYPE OF BOAT UNCHANGED SINCE THE
+DAYS OF SINBAD]
+
+[Illustration: Tower of Babel (Fig. 3).]
+
+Here was a find, too good to be lost, a high tower on a mound visible
+from afar and unrivalled by any equally picturesque claimant. It looked
+the part splendidly, so the Tower of Babel it should be as far as Brown
+was concerned.
+
+As a matter of fact, Brown "let himself go" with historical speculations
+and discovered not only that this was the Tower of Babel, but that it
+was the site of Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace, with evident signs, from
+a fragment of calcined brick, which he bore away in triumph, that it had
+been heated seven times hotter on some occasion.
+
+We climbed about the ruin, unearthed several coins, which seemed quite
+plentiful in one place where the rain had washed down the side of a
+small mound, and found obvious signs of some great conflagration. Brown
+says that, as no one has got any better explanation of this fire than
+he has, he will stick to his furnace theory.
+
+The native driver turned up all right with the car and took us back to
+Hillah. From there we crossed the river by the bridge of boats and at a
+distance of about five miles came upon the scene of the great
+excavations, which, although the city is said to have extended over an
+area of some 200 square miles, is generally known as the site of
+Babylon. It was in 1899, that the German archaeologist, Dr. Koldeway,
+began excavations on a large scale and with systematic care.
+
+Although Babylon was a site occupied by some city in prehistoric times,
+as stone and flint implements denote, the earliest _houses_ of
+which there are any traces belong to about 2000 B.C. It was
+Nebuchadnezzar, however (605--562 B.C.), who rebuilt the city
+and made it very splendid, and it is to this period of his reign that
+the greater part of the ruins of the great city belong. The mound Babil
+is thought to be the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II. An inscription reads:
+"On the brick wall towards the north my heart inspired me to build a
+palace for the protecting of Babylon. I built there a palace, like the
+palace of Babylon, of brick and bitumen."
+
+[Illustration: BELLAMS UNDER SAIL]
+
+The principal excavations are in the Kasr, at one time a vast block of
+buildings where are still the traces of a great and broad street used as
+a processional road to the temple of E-Sagila, which lies to the south
+about 700 yards away. Some of the stones of this road are in their
+original places, and there are pieces of brick pavement, each bearing
+cuneiform characters. If you take up a brick and look at it casually,
+you might think that it had "Jones & Co." or the "Sittingbourne Brick
+Co." stamped upon it and it does not look at all old. It is rather
+startling to be told that the letters read:--
+
+"I am Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon; I paved the Babel Way with blocks
+of _shadu_ stone for the procession of the great lord Marduk. O Marduk,
+Lord, grant long life."
+
+These mounds of the Kasr have suffered by successive generations of
+brick getters. Half Hillah is said to be built out of bricks from the
+ruins of Babylon, and bricks are still taken for any building operations
+that occur within easy access of these well-nigh inexhaustible supplies.
+In one place, the Temple of Nin-Makh, the Great Mistress, there are to
+be found an immense number of little clay images, thought to be votive
+offerings made by women to the great Mother Goddess.
+
+In the Mound of Amram, according to Major R. Campbell Thompson, are
+traces of the E-Temenanki referred to in Murray's handbook as not yet
+identified. [My Murray's handbook is 15 years old.] He writes, in a most
+useful little book published in Baghdad, 1918, "History and Antiquities
+of Mesopotamia":--"A hundred yards north of the north slope of Amram is
+the ancient _zigurrat_ or temple-tower of the famous E-Temenanki: 'the
+foundation stone of Heaven and Earth' (the Tower of Babylon). The
+enclosing wall forms almost a square, and part has been excavated, but
+all the buildings have suffered from brick-robbers. The remains of the
+actual Tower are towards the south-west corner.
+
+"Many ancient restorations were carried out here. Professor Koldeway
+found inscriptions of Esarhaddon and Sardanapalus and thereafter
+inscriptions of Babylonian Kings. Herodotus calls the group of buildings
+'the brazen-doored sanctuary of Zeus Below,' and he describes the
+zigurrat as a temple-tower in eight stages. The cuneiform records of
+Nabopolassar relate how the god Marduk commanded him 'to lay the
+foundation of the Tower of Babylon ... firm on the bosom of the
+underworld while its top should stretch heavenwards.'"
+
+The first impression of the Kasr is that of a shelled town or mined
+flour mill, where nothing remains but the lower walls of buildings. From
+a painter's point of view, the scene of this great city, about which he
+has pictured so much, is somewhat disappointing. There is such an
+absence of anything suggestive of palaces and streets. Frankly, the
+ruins of the cement works at Frindsbury are, pictorially, far more
+suggestive. I have always said that the hanging gardens of Borstal
+knocked spots off the hanging gardens of Babylon, and now I know it. So
+much for a first impression.
+
+After awhile, however, wandering amongst these hummocks and pits, with
+here and there a suggestion of a gateway or pavement, the glamour of it
+all begins to return.
+
+[Illustration: BABYLON THE GREAT IS FALLEN, IS FALLEN]
+
+It is not to the eye that the appeal of poetry is made, but to the
+imagination.
+
+There is a figure of a stone lion trampling on a man, but this was
+unearthed and set up by a French engineer, and is not explanatory of any
+scheme of sculptural work. It is merely a monument. There is also a
+brick pillar, the bricks being uncommonly like London stock bricks,
+which might be part of a fallen chimney in a ruined factory. These are
+the only architectural signs at first visible.
+
+On descending to the passages and ways made by the base walls of
+buildings, lions and monsters moulded in the brickwork appear, but they
+are only to be seen at close quarters, and in one part of this vast
+wilderness of brick, and do not affect in any way the general character
+of the place--a place of loneliness and of utter desolation. The whole
+area is like a small range of hills, down the slopes of which are steep
+descents to clefts sometimes filled with reeds and rushes and stagnant
+pools of water. The site of the world-renowned hanging gardens is now
+marked by a series of nondescript lumps. The great temple of Marduk is a
+dusty heap of brick rubbish, and the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar appears as
+a mean slag heap looking down upon a land desolate and empty.
+
+This is Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees.
+
+"It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from
+generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there;
+neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.
+
+"But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall
+be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there and satyrs
+shall dance there.
+
+"And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses,
+and dragons in their pleasant palaces."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+ARABIAN NIGHTS IN 1919
+
+[Illustration: GOUFAS ON THE TIGRIS]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+ARABIAN NIGHTS IN 1919
+
+
+Somewhere in Mesopotamia, in the desert country that lies between the
+Euphrates at Felujeh and the Tigris, and in the neighbourhood of a
+walled-in group of buildings known as Khan Nuqtah, in the month of
+February of this year, and on a singularly miserable and rainy
+afternoon, there might have been seen a dark object moving very slowly
+across the uninteresting field of vision. At a distance it would not
+have been very easy to make out the nature of the thing, and a newcomer
+to the scene, with no local knowledge of circumstantial evidence to
+guide him, would have hesitated between a buffalo or a hippopotamus and
+finally given a vote in favour of it being some slime-crawling saurian
+that we come across in pictures of antediluvian natural history.
+
+A closer view, however, would have made clear to him that it was no
+animal, but some species of tank, coated and covered with mud,
+accompanied by three similarly encased attendants, probably human
+beings, staggering and skidding about in its immediate vicinity. From
+time to time, one of these three would mount on the head or fore-part of
+this object, with the effect of causing it to slide and plunge forward
+for a few yards to stick again and again, snorting and panting and
+unable apparently to make any further progress.
+
+A detective, equipped with a certain amount of motor knowledge, might
+have been able to discern that the mud-encrusted monster was a Ford car.
+A tailor, whose technical training would help him to penetrate the
+disguise of thick slime, might have been able to recognize by the cut of
+their clothes that the first of the three figures was an R.A.F. driver
+and the other two were naval officers. As a matter of fact one of these
+forlorn representatives of our boasted sea-power was Brown, and the
+other one, although I think he would have hesitated to swear to his
+identity at the time, was the unfortunate writer of these chronicles.
+
+There was no doubt about it; we were done.
+
+"At the present rate of progress we shall reach Baghdad in about ten
+days," said the driver, "and it's getting worse."
+
+[Illustration: A STREET IN KHADAMAIN]
+
+A few more hours' rain and no power on earth would move the car an inch.
+We knew from experience that nothing could be done for four or five
+days, so we faced the situation philosophically, shouldered a bag each
+and staggered in the sliding mud in the direction of the Khan. We
+started off with no illusions as to our fate if we encountered rain, and
+were therefore quite prepared for this. There was nothing for it but to
+camp out somehow until the sun had been given a chance. The fact that we
+had been able to reach this point with the Khan and railway close at
+hand was a piece of luck for which we were thankful.
+
+Brown was by far the best exponent of this art of walking in mud while
+carrying weight. The driver was quite good at it, having had
+considerable practice on similar occasions. I was uncompromisingly bad.
+I sat down three or four times to the driver's once. Brown did not sit
+down at all, but he did some amazing movements in skidding, reminding
+one in a somewhat vague way of the tramp cyclist of the music-hall
+stage.
+
+I have often thought since these days of mud in Mesopotamia that a vast
+fortune might be made by some one who could find a commercial use for a
+substance, as slippery as oil, as indelible in staining properties as
+walnut juice, and as adhesive as fish glue. Large quantities of
+Mesopotamian mud could be shipped to London and made up into tubes. Then
+all that would be necessary would be three distinctive labels. One could
+describe it as a wonderful lubricant and cheap substitute for machine
+oil. Another could proclaim to the world a new washable distemper. A
+third could laud it as a marvellous paste or cement that would adhere to
+anything whatsoever.
+
+"There is one comfort," Brown gasped in an interval between two very
+energetic spells of sliding, "if we can't move the Ford, nobody else
+can!"
+
+In the circumstances of the moment I cannot say that I felt much
+"comfort" in contemplating the car's condition. In fact I didn't care in
+the least whether I saw the thing again or not. All I cared about was
+reaching the Khan and putting down my bag. We found tracks where some
+scrubby plants were growing, where the surface was passable, but as we
+neared the entrance to the Khan, where carts and horsemen had made a
+veritable quagmire, we stuck, all three, without apparently any prospect
+of getting on at all unless we abandoned our baggage. However, some
+Arabs came to our assistance and relieved us of our burdens, so that we
+gained our objective.
+
+Beginning our toilet by scraping each other down with a ruler, so that
+we could see which was which, we soon evolved into something like our
+normal selves. We had a few clothes to change into, but neither Brown
+nor I had a complete set of everything. The result was that Brown looked
+like a naval officer that had taken up cement making and I appeared to
+be a cement worker, finished off, as the eye followed me downwards, with
+very smart trousers and regulation naval boots.
+
+[Illustration: MOONLIGHT, BAGHDAD]
+
+The Khan was a poor enough shelter as far as accommodation went, but we
+managed to make up a good fire and get tolerably dry. Some tea, made by
+the ever resourceful driver, raised our spirits considerably, and we
+talked over plans for the immediate future. Enquiries revealed the fact
+that we were in great luck about trains, which appeared at intervals of
+several days, as one was due in a few hours that would reach Baghdad the
+same night. The driver had found others held up with their cars, so we
+left him to stand by till better weather made movement possible and
+decided to put in a few days at Baghdad instead of waiting here.
+
+At about 7 o'clock, a train of miscellaneous construction steamed in
+from the direction of Dhibban, bound for Baghdad. This bit of line runs
+from Baghdad to the Euphrates and is important because it links up the
+two great waterways and is always available when motor transport is
+impossible on account of the state of the roads.
+
+We clambered into a covered van, specially reserved--a sort of
+Mesopotamian Pullman car. It contained a great litter of odd baggage and
+two Hindu officers who were very luxuriously fitted up with beds and a
+table. Divesting ourselves of our wet trench-coats, for it was still
+raining, we made some sort of a seat of our bags and were tolerably
+comfortable. Brown, who, now that he was dry and warm and well fed, was
+in the highest spirits, prophesied that our arrival in the enchanted
+city of the Arabian Nights was well timed, for it was Friday night, when
+all the mosques would be lighted up.
+
+  "A million tapers flaring bright
+   From twisted silvers look'd to shame
+   The hollow-vaulted dark, and stream'd
+   Upon the mooned domes aloof
+   In inmost Bagdat, till there seem'd
+   Hundreds of crescents on the roof
+     Of night new-risen."[2]
+
+So sang Brown, with a map spread out, proving to me that we must alight
+at Baghdad South to get the best effect as we gazed entranced at the
+night glory of Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold and walked on to find
+romance and mystery by many a shadow-chequer'd lawn.
+
+"So much better," he argued, "to approach it gradually like this instead
+of arriving in a matter-of-fact way by train." It was still raining
+hard, and I had grave doubts about the splendour we were enjoying so
+much in anticipation, but I did not throw all cold water on his scheme,
+especially as much of it was planned for my benefit. Art would be the
+richer, although we, its humble devotees, might be the wetter.
+
+I forget now, very clearly what did happen when we arrived at Baghdad
+South, because we had stopped some time, shunting about, and did not
+know that we were there. When at last we discovered that we were at the
+station the train was just moving off. Brown shouted to me to jump out
+and take our bags. I did so as best I could, but found myself up to my
+ankles in liquid mud, not a good position at any time for catching heavy
+baggage at a height, but singularly awkward in view of the fact that
+Brown in the dark could not see where I was and hurled the bags just out
+of reach, but sufficiently near to me to cover me with a kind of soup.
+
+[Illustration: A NOCTURNE OF BAGHDAD]
+
+My next recollection is that of Brown, dark against the sky, describing
+a parabolic curve and alighting further up the line. The train had gone,
+and a sloppy gurgling noise mingled with muffled exclamations growing
+more distinct indicated that Brown was endeavouring to walk in my
+direction. These were the only sounds that interrupted the steady noise
+of pouring rain. There was nothing in sight. Not only was it that we
+could not see the splendour of Baghdad; we could not see each other.
+
+After an interval of groping about and finding bearings, we began to get
+accustomed to the gloom and discerned some sheds or buildings up the
+line. Thinking this was the station we plodded on as steadily as
+possible through the mud. Dimly, through the rain, we could make out
+some palms and what appeared to be a domed building and a minaret. Then
+we reached a large wooden shed out of the shadow of which loomed an
+engine. It evidently had steam up, so we stopped and gave it a hail.
+
+I think I shall never forget the surprise of the next few minutes. As if
+in answer to our hail, a door opened in the dark mass of the shed and
+revealed a workshop brilliantly lighted. Out of this stepped an Arab
+with a lamp in his hand, and gave us an answering shout We stepped into
+the light. I don't know which was most surprised, the native at seeing
+such curious figures staggering under large bags through the mud, or we,
+at beholding in the beam of light from the shed a magic vignette of
+palms, Eastern buildings and a large South Western Railway engine.
+
+Brown was delighted.
+
+"The slave of the lamp," he cried, "calling up spirits from the vasty
+mud. I don't believe this engine is real, but it will do to get us into
+Baghdad."
+
+And it _did_. We found a soldier driver and a stoker, got leave from
+headquarters to use the engine to run into Baghdad West, hurled our bags
+on to the coal in the tender and were transported unscathed by further
+mud to the quay by the waters of the Tigris. It was too dark to see
+much. A multitude of steamboats and mahailas lined the shore. The river
+was in flood and looked black and forbidding, and it was impossible to
+see across to the other side. The only light was supplied by a few
+electric lamps at intervals along the road. It still rained dismally and
+we made for a canteen close at hand. Here we felt quite at home, for
+there were several other arrivals as muddy as we were and even worse.
+Considering this was only a restaurant attached to a rest camp, we fared
+very well. Our baggage we left there and set out on foot to try and
+reach Navy House, which was the other side of the river. There were two
+boat-bridges we were told, and the upper one would lead us into the
+right quarter. The old Navy House, near to G.H.Q., was now used by some
+one else, and the British Navy, shrunk to very small proportions as
+far as Baghdad was concerned, "carried on" in a back street.
+
+[Illustration: "A magic vignette of palms, Eastern buildings and a large
+South Western Railway engine."]
+
+Our first check was at the bridge. Owing to the river being in flood, it
+was open, that is, the middle section had been floated out, for fear
+that the hawsers would not stand the strain and the only road across was
+the Maude Bridge lower down.
+
+Brown was delighted. The rain had stopped and he anticipated adventure.
+The idea of getting across the river in a _goufa_ flashed across his
+mind, but a glance at the foaming, tearing water was sufficient
+deterrent even to an optimist like Brown. It might be done in daylight,
+but at night it would be suicide.
+
+We decided to make our way through the narrow streets that led by the
+side of the river until we struck the main road that approached the
+bridge of boats half a mile or so down. In theory this sounded very
+feasible, but in practice, owing to the tortuous nature of the ways and
+to the fact that it was very dark, we soon got lost. Twice, when we
+thought we were progressing well, we came upon the same place again.
+Then we struck the river, more or less by accident, and took fresh
+bearings of the general direction we were to pursue.
+
+We plunged into a covered way, arched overhead like a cloister. This had
+the advantage of being dry and our speed increased considerably. From
+time to time a dim light gave a glimmer to show us the way.
+
+[Illustration: "Suddenly we came upon a scene of strange beauty and
+dramatic effect."]
+
+It was late and there were few people about. The figures that flitted
+by were silent and mysterious. A window here and there was lighted up,
+but for the most part the houses were dark and without sign of life. We
+found no "splendours of the golden prime of good Haroun Alraschid," but
+for all that the narrow streets looked romantic and weird. The sky had
+cleared and the moonlight had given a glamour of phantasy to the vistas
+of the street.
+
+Suddenly we came upon a scene of strange beauty and dramatic effect. A
+turn in this narrow and cloister-like way brought us to an arched
+opening, with some steps leading to the water. It was a sheltered inlet
+from the surging and swirling stream of the Tigris, a kind of pocket
+built round by crazy old balconied buildings. This was filled with
+goufas, the weird round boat of the upper river, and the animated scene
+of people either embarking or disembarking made a strange people. We saw
+this scene for a few moments only, as we made our way through the crowd
+at this point. I have since wondered where all these goufas were going.
+They could not have intended to cross the river under present
+conditions. I think the rapidly rising river must have upset all
+calculations as to mooring boats at this point and their owners were
+making sure that they were secure. The noise and apparent excitement was
+probably nothing but the usual Eastern custom of making a great fuss
+about nothing.
+
+[Illustration: MAHAILAS AND MARSH ARAB'S BELLAM]
+
+At last, after much marching and counter-marching, we struck the main
+thoroughfare leading to the Maude bridge, which we crossed. The thick,
+seething waters foamed and struggled against the pontoons and swept down
+between them like roaring devils. We were very glad to get over, for it
+looked as though a little more force would have carried the whole thing
+away. Once clear of the bridge we found ourselves in New Street, the
+thoroughfare made since the British occupation, and incidentally we ran
+into a cheery naval officer who picked us up and deposited us again at
+Navy House, whither he was bound. Had we not received this timely aid I
+think we should have gone on looking for Navy House all night. A more
+amazing situation for it could not have been found, if you searched the
+world over.
+
+Wedged in, cheek by jowl, with buildings that might have figured in the
+tall streets of old London, it lay nowhere near the water, down a very
+narrow and crooked lane, where mules and men, camels and beggars jostled
+each other on their lawful occasions.
+
+When we had settled down there and had fine weather for several days,
+Brown, loath to waste the romance of old Baghdad during glorious
+moonlight nights, insisted on some mysterious expeditions which were for
+the purpose of adventure, but ostensibly arranged to give me an
+opportunity of sketching. He produced an Arab, arrayed in strange
+garments, to carry a light and generally act as a guide. We called him
+the slave of the lamp. I am quite certain that he thought Brown was
+mad, but this belief on the whole was rather an advantage, as he treated
+him with all the more respect because of his affliction, which he
+regarded as a special visitation of Allah.
+
+[Illustration: "By garden porches on the brim,
+                The costly doors flung open wide."]
+
+[Illustration: "All round about the fragrant marge,
+                From fluted vase and brazen urn,
+                In order, Eastern flowers large."]
+
+
+I was surprised that he seemed to take great delight in my sketching,
+and several times, when I was making notes of some quaint latticed
+windows overhanging the narrow road, so that they nearly met, he became
+quite excited, chuckling and laughing to himself, as if in the enjoyment
+of some tremendous joke.
+
+I discovered afterwards that Brown's native servant had been pulling the
+leg of our worthy slave, by telling him that these nightly expeditions
+were for the purpose of carrying off some ravishingly beautiful lady
+from one of the harems. No doubt he thought my sketching merely a blind.
+Measurements with a pencil were obviously part of some incantation.
+
+While on the subject of sketching, especially quick note-taking under
+difficult conditions, I want a word with my fellow-craftsmen should they
+chance to take up this book. The difficulties of drawing by twilight,
+lamplight, and the still greater difficulty of drawing in colour under
+blazing sunlight, cannot easily be exaggerated. How many times has a
+sketch done in a failing light looked strong in tone, only to go to
+pieces when seen under normal conditions? How often the sunlight on your
+paper flatters your colours, so that you think you are improvising in a
+most joyous way, and when you get home you find nothing but dinginess
+and mud!
+
+[Illustration: "By Baghdad's shrines of fretted gold,
+                High-walled gardens, green and old."]
+
+Probably you have thought it out and found some solution as I did, but
+in case these difficulties are still formidable I will tell you of _one_
+way to reduce them to impotence. I take with me, on all occasions where
+there is to be great uncertainty of light, some coloured chalks. About
+six colours, picked to suit the kind of work attacked; either chalk
+pencils or hard pastilles will give you certain colour values in
+whatever light you find yourself, and even if you can hardly see what
+you are drawing these _must_, to some extent, standardize your values,
+so that your rough work can be washed over and brought up to any pitch
+of detail subsequently, without danger of the main tones of your sketch
+being wrong. The speed with which a sketch can be carried forward in
+this way, and the "quality" obtained by the rapid fusion of the chalk
+with the colour wash, are both pleasant surprises when experimenting in
+this medium.
+
+Night after night we sallied forth and roamed about the narrow ways and
+tortuous turnings of old Baghdad. The bazaars are mostly covered in with
+arched masonry, and the effect is that of a long side aisle in a very
+untidy and greatly secularized cathedral. From time to time glimpses of
+the dark-blue, star-filled sky showed through openings overhead, and
+sometimes a quaintly framed view of a dome or minaret.
+
+On one occasion we embarked in a goufa, and floated down the rapidly
+flowing river, keeping close to the left bank and taking advantage of
+every eddy and corner of slack water made by projecting buildings, lest
+we should be swept down too far and lose control of our curious and
+difficult craft. The level of the water was far above the usual height
+and came up to the very thresholds of these riverside houses. We floated
+on, sometimes under the walls of dark gardens, sometimes getting
+glimpses of interiors--interiors which in this glamour of night romance
+suggested something of the splendour of Baghdad's old glory:--
+
+  "By garden porches on the brim,
+   The costly doors flung open wide,
+   Gold glittering through lamplight dim."
+
+We landed by the Maude bridge and explored further afield, finding
+"high-walled gardens" where we beheld
+
+  "All round about the fragrant marge,
+   From fluted vase and brazen urn,
+   In order, Eastern flowers large."
+
+By day, Baghdad is not so impressive. Too much squalor is apparent. Yet
+there are quaint street scenes.
+
+Ancient windows, overhanging the street in one quarter, reminded me
+strongly of pictures of old London. The feature that I could not help
+noticing, not only in Baghdad but in all Mesopotamia, was the absence of
+local colour. It is true that the sun gives a blazing and confused
+suggestion of colour to objects by contrast with bluish shadows,
+especially in the evening, but there is often very little colour in
+things themselves. The East is supposed to be full of blazing colour and
+the North gray and drab. Yet compare a barge in Rotterdam or Rochester
+with one in Baghdad. The former is picked out in green and gold and
+glows with rich, red sails, while the latter, for all its sunshine, is
+the colour of ashes--not a vestige often of paint or gilding. Some
+mahailas I found with traces of rich colouring, blue and yellow (see
+sketch facing page 34), but this was exceptional. Perhaps the scarcity
+of paint during years of war may have had something to do with this
+noticeable absence of colouring in regard to both houses and boats. In
+spite of this slovenliness in detail there is colour and light in all
+recollections of Baghdad's dusty streets.
+
+Somehow the discomfort and squalor is soon forgotten and the romance and
+picturesqueness of these far-off streets remains as a very pleasant
+memory amidst the winter fogs and coldness of our northern lands.
+
+[Illustration: Showing the simplicity of Mesopotamian domestic
+architecture. Tigris.]
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+IN OLD BAGHDAD
+
+[Illustration: BAGHDAD]
+
+[Illustration: "Puffing Billy in Bagdad."]
+
+
+
+
+IN OLD BAGHDAD
+
+
+I suppose there is no city to be found anywhere in the world that would
+quite reach the standard of dazzling splendour of the Baghdad that we
+conjure up in our imagination when we think of the City of the Arabian
+Nights in the romantic days, so dear to our childhood, of
+Haroun-al-Raschid. We expect so much when we come to the real Baghdad,
+and we find so little--so little, that is, of the glamour of the East.
+Few "costly doors flung open wide," but a great deal of dirt. Few dark
+eyes of ravishingly beautiful women peering coyly through lattice
+windows, but a great deal of sordid squalor. Few marvellous
+entertainments where we can behold the wonderful witchery of Persian
+dancing girls, but a theatre, the principal house of amusement in
+Baghdad--and lo, a man selling onions to the habitues of the stalls!
+
+Of all the deadly dull shows I have ever seen I think the one I saw at
+Baghdad furnished about the dullest. There were two principal dancing
+girls--stars of the theatrical world of Mesopotamia--and a few others
+forming a kind of chorus. The orchestra, on the stage, consisted of a
+guitar, a sort of dulcimer, and a drum. The musicians made a most
+appalling noise and rocked to and fro, as if in the greatest enjoyment
+of the thrilling harmonies they were creating. The stars came on one at
+a time, the odd one out meanwhile augmenting the chorus, and sang a few
+verses of a song to a tune that can only be described as a Gregorian
+chant with squiggly bits thrown in. Of course I was unable to understand
+the words, but can bear witness to the fact that the tune did not vary
+the whole evening, and every gesture and attitude of the singer was
+exactly the same again and again as she went through the performance,
+and the dance which concluded each six or eight verses was also exactly
+the same every time. After this had been going on for about an hour the
+other girl came to the footlights. It was natural to expect a change;
+but no, she went through it all as if she had most carefully
+understudied the part. Neither of these girls was pretty or in the least
+attractive to look at. All I could assume, as the audience seemed quite
+satisfied, was that the words must have been extraordinarily brilliant
+or that the Baghdad public was very easily entertained.
+
+[Illustration: A bit of Old Baghdad.]
+
+The journey from Basra to Baghdad takes nearly a week in a "fast"
+steamer. It can be done, however, express, by taking the train from
+Basra to Amara, leaving Basra about five in the evening and arriving at
+Amara in the morning. Then the journey is continued by boat to Kut, and
+thence from Kut in the evening by train, arriving in Baghdad in the
+early morning--the whole distance within two days. The railway does not
+run the whole way. The journey from Amara to Kut sounds a mere link
+across the river, as the full name of Kut is Kut-el-Amara, and most
+people naturally suppose Amara is part of Kut. This is another Amara,
+however. The Amara from which we embark for Kut, a day's journey in a
+fast boat, is a large camp, and quite a town for Mesopotamia, captured
+from the Turks, early in the war, by sheer bluff. The Turkish commandant
+surrendered to a naval launch under the impression that about half the
+sea-power of the British Empire lay in the offing. As a matter of fact
+no other help of any kind arrived until the next day, and all the
+surrendered forces were kept on good behaviour by a Lieutenant and a
+marine--I think with one revolver between them.
+
+Kut looks quite an imposing place from across the river. The sketch at
+the top of this article shows it when the water of the Tigris was
+particularly high. It is drawn from the site of the famous liquorice
+factory, which is now represented by a few mud heaps and one rusted
+piece of machinery. The long arcade with brick pillars runs along the
+margin of the river, suggestive of some ancient Babylonian city from
+this distance, and is but a sorry enough place in reality.
+
+[Illustration: A MOONLIGHT FANTASY: KUT FROM THE RUINS OF THE LICQUORICE
+FACTORY]
+
+Very little of the Baghdad as we know it to-day is old. By tradition it
+was founded in 762 A.D., and became the renowned capital of
+the Arab empire. It is said that the city grew till it covered some 25
+square miles, reaching its high-water mark of splendour and magnificence
+under the Sultan Haroun-al-Raschid. The fame of its schools and learning
+was world-wide, and Baghdad became to the East what Rome became in the
+West.
+
+For some five centuries this pre-eminence continued, until the Turkish
+nomadic tribes from Central Asia came on to the stage. They conquered
+Persia, Mesopotamia, and Syria.
+
+The Turks extended their conquests to Egypt, and Baghdad, now on the
+decline, kept her head above water for another century. But Chingiz
+Khan, the Mongol, appeared on the scene, and his son and successor,
+Ogotay, overran the Caucasus, Hungary, and Poland. Baghdad was sacked by
+Hulagu in 1258, and the irrigation works of Mesopotamia were destroyed.
+
+In spite of her decline and fall Baghdad is still a holy place to all
+faithful Mohammedans. It is the Mecca of the Shiah Mussulmans. Kerbela
+and Nejef are the great places of burial for the faithful, and among the
+common sights of the plains of Mesopotamia are endless caravans of
+corpses from the Persian hills or from the distant north.
+
+The British occupation of Baghdad has been responsible for one broad
+street through the city, possible for ordinary traffic, but most of the
+bazaars are long covered-in ways, arched like cloisters and very
+picturesque at night. There are some wonderful blues on domes and
+minarets, but it is not until you see the golden towers of Khadamain
+that you get any glimpse of the splendour of the golden prime of good
+Haroun-al-Raschid. Khadamain is a great place of pilgrimage, and so
+zealously guarded is the place that it is said no Christian would ever
+be allowed to come out of the great mosque alive. A golden chain hangs
+across the entrance. This can be seen in frontispiece sketch of this
+book. All good Mussulmans kiss this chain as they enter the sacred
+precincts.
+
+From many delightful points of view the gleaming towers of this place,
+seen through the palms and reflected in the flooded lagoons at the
+margin of the river, do indeed give us something of the colour and
+romance that we had expected to see and yet so rarely find in the
+sun-baked lands of Mesopotamia.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+PARADISE LOST
+
+[Illustration: "Blossoms and fruit at once of golden hue Appeared, with
+gay enamelled colours mixed." --_Paradise Lost, IV_.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+PARADISE LOST
+
+
+The statement often made that Mesopotamia is a vast desert through which
+run two great rivers, bare but for the palm trees on their banks and
+flat as a pancake, is true as far as it goes. It is possible, however,
+to picture a land entirely different from Mesopotamia and still stick to
+this description. I have met countless men out there who have told me
+that they had built up in their minds a wrong conception of the country
+and a wrong idea of its character simply by letting their imagination
+get to work on insufficient data.
+
+To begin with, the word "desert" generally suggests sand. People who
+have been to Egypt or seen the Sahara naturally picture a sandy waste
+with its accompanying oases, palms and camels. Mesopotamia, however, is
+a land of clay, of mud, uncompromising mud. The Thames and Medway
+saltings at high tide, stretching away to infinity in every
+direction--this is the picture that I carry in my mind of the riverside
+country between Basra and Amara. No blue, limpid waters by Baghdad's
+shrines of fretted gold, but pea-soup or _cafe au lait_. Even the
+churned foam from a paddle wheel is _cafe au lait_ with what a
+blue-jacket contemptuously referred to as "a little more of the _au
+lait!_" At a distance it can be blue, gloriously blue, by reflection
+from the sky, but it will not bear close examination.
+
+The railway skirts the river here, running from Ezra Tomb to Amara
+having started from Basra. Amara must not be confused with Kut-el-Amara.
+The names are a source of great confusion to newcomers. When I was told
+that the railway did not go any further than Amara, I lightheartedly
+pictured myself making my way across the river in a goufa or bellam and
+scorned the suggestion that I might have to wait some time for a steamer
+to Kut. I thought Kut was on one side of the river and Amara on the
+other. It is, however, a twenty-four hours' journey in a fast boat.
+
+It is perfectly true that the country is "as flat as a pancake" in
+original formation, but the traces of ancient irrigation systems, to say
+nothing of buried cities--Babylon is quite mountainous for
+Mesopotamia--make it a very bumpy plain in places.
+
+[Illustration: DAWN AT AMARA]
+
+Now that the British are in occupation of the land instead of the Turk,
+the natural assumption of every patriotic Briton is that the desert will
+immediately blossom as the rose and the waste places become inhabited.
+But the difficulties, which are many--finance being, perhaps, the least
+of them--arise on all sides, when a study of the subject goes a little
+deeper than the generalizations popularly made about irrigation and its
+revival in a land which was once, before all things, dependent for its
+prosperity upon this science.
+
+Of the two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, the banks of the
+Euphrates are the more wooded and picturesque and the Tigris is the
+busier. The backwaters, creeks and side channels of both are exceedingly
+beautiful, and here one can get a glimpse of the fertility that must
+have belonged to Mesopotamia when it was a network of streams and when
+the forests abounded within its borders. Centuries of neglect and the
+blight of the unspeakable Turk have dealt hardly with this country. It
+is indeed a Paradise Lost and it will be many a long day before it is
+Paradise Regained.
+
+A beginning, however, has been made. Our army of occupation includes
+"irrigation officers," and gradually the work of watering the country is
+extending. Hardly any tree but the palm is found, yet this is only for
+want of planting. The soil is good, and with an abundance of water,
+everything, from a field of corn to a forest, is possible.
+
+I made some study of the irrigation work in progress, and picked up a
+little rudimentary information concerning this problem of the watering
+of the land, although I lay no claim to technical knowledge on the
+subject. The chief difficulty does not seem to be that of making the
+desert blossom as the rose, but that of causing the waste places to be
+inhabited. What the Babylonians with slave labour could do, modern
+machinery and science can quite easily achieve; but the difficulty of
+finding sufficient people to live in this resuscitated Eden will be
+great. Mesopotamia is not a white man's country. India would appear to
+be the direction in which to look for colonists, but it is an
+unfortunate fact that the Arab does not like the Indian and the Indian
+does not like the Arab. Sooner or later there would be trouble.
+
+[Illustration: A BACKWATER IN EDEN]
+
+In the creeks the water is much clearer than in the river, as it
+deposits the silt when it flows more placidly than in the turmoil of the
+main stream. Oranges, bananas, lemons, mulberries abound, and vines
+trailing from palm to palm in some of the backwaters. In one narrow arm
+near Basra, a sort of communication trench between two canals, I saw
+orange bushes overhanging the water, and, growing with them, some plant
+with great white bells. I have sketched the effect on page 98, and
+incidentally show a bellam in which an old Arab is pushing his way
+through the overhanging shrubs. On page 105 is a goufa, a type of
+round wicker boat in vogue two thousand six hundred years ago and still
+in use. Talk about standardization: here is a craft standardized before
+the days of Sennacherib! Assyrian sculptures in the British Museum show
+this boat in use exactly as it is to-day, and although we have no
+records, it probably was in use for ages previously. Noah, possibly, had
+one as dinghy to the Ark. The goufa is made like a basket and then
+coated with bitumen. This type of boat gives a touch of fantasy to the
+scenery of the Tigris and Euphrates, especially when filled with
+watermelons and paddled by a man whose appearance suggests Abraham
+attempting the role of Sinbad the Sailor for "the pictures."
+
+Of all the things I saw in my travels in Mesopotamia, I think a goufa
+was about the most satisfactory. It is a delightful shape and a
+fascinating colour--a sort of milky blue-grey--somewhere between the
+colour of an elephant and an old lead vase. It satisfies that craving
+for mystery which we are led to expect when we travel to the East. When
+we first see a goufa we do not know quite what it is. It may be
+something to do with magic.
+
+Another curiosity of the Upper Tigris is the raft of light wood and
+air-inflated skins which comes down from the north to Samara and
+Baghdad. On this section of the river there are many shallows, sometimes
+caused by traces of old rubble weirs. Consequently any kind of craft
+which drew more than a few inches would be always in trouble. These
+rafts, made of light saplings lashed together, are rendered buoyant by
+being packed underneath with goat-skins inflated with air. Thus they
+require only a very slight depth of water to float them, and they are
+sufficiently tough to stand bumping and scraping over shoals and
+shallows.
+
+The men who manoeuvre these strange craft have some sort of tent or
+shelter to protect them from the sun, and they row with huge paddles.
+This rowing is sufficient to keep some sort of steering way on the raft,
+enough to enable it to get from one bank of the river to the other as it
+floats down.
+
+Wood is scarce in the Baghdad region, and the material of these rafts is
+sold together with the cargo on its arrival at its destination. The crew
+proceed back by road to Diarbekr or some up-river town to bring down
+another raft.
+
+The glamour of the East is felt mostly in the West. In an atmosphere of
+fog and wet streets, sun-baked plains with endless caravans and belts of
+date-palms by Tigris' shore seem the most delightful of prospects.
+Memory and imagination, those two artists of never-failing skill, leave
+out of the picture all dust and squalor--and insects! Yet to those who
+are sojourning by the Waters of Babylon or resting in sight of the
+golden towers of Khadamain romance and mystery would seem to dwell in a
+glimpse of Waterloo Bridge, with ghostly barges gliding silently by a
+thousand lamps, or in the grey cliffs of houses that make looming vistas
+down a London street.
+
+[Illustration: "High, eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit Of vegetable
+gold;"--_Paradise Lost, IV._]
+
+Of all places in the world, Baghdad, the city of Haroun-al-Raschid, is
+the one around which cling the romantic ideas of the enchanted East.
+For this reason "Chu Chin Chow" will probably be still running in ten
+years' time. It is a play which has become almost a symbol of Eastern
+romance. In Mesopotamia I observed that it was a standard of comparison.
+"Like 'Chu Chin Chow'" or "quite the Oscar Asche touch" were expressions
+frequently heard among our men who were describing something picturesque
+they had seen.
+
+Now I may as well confess before I go any further, that I have not seen
+"Chu Chin Chow." I have never been able to get in. During the war, leave
+in London was an opportunist affair, with no notice in advance to allow
+for advance booking, and so I never succeeded in my quest of the glamour
+of the East--on the stage. But war, which brought with it so many
+disadvantages brought also many opportunities. Although I was unable to
+get into His Majesty's Theatre, I succeeded in getting into Baghdad.
+
+I found streets through which beggars and British officers, camels and
+Ford cars jostled each other, often in vain attempts to get on. You can
+imagine the state of things on a busy morning. By day there is so much
+more rubbish and dirt to take the romance away from the picturesque, but
+at night, especially by moonlight, the quaint streets of old Baghdad do
+give an element of mystery and adventure that the Arabian Nights and the
+stage lead us to expect.
+
+[Illustration: PUFFING BILLY ON THE TIGRIS]
+
+I came upon a wonderful group of buildings by the banks of the Tigris.
+It appears to have been a disused mosque. The minarets are shorn of
+their tops, and look like huge candlesticks. A dark passage, vaulted
+like the aisle of a cathedral, led down to covered bazaars.
+
+Again, at Basra, the House of Sinbad in Ashar Creek has quite the effect
+of a wonderfully staged production. The huge, high-prowed mahailas, the
+crazy wooden galleries skirting the river, the quaint, squat minaret
+appearing over the flat roofs, and the dim light of lamps reflected in
+the still water made a picture at twilight that it would be difficult to
+beat for mystery and romance. A man in black with a fire of brushwood in
+the bow of a mahaila added a touch of magic to the scene.
+
+I don't know in the least what he was doing with this pillar of fire,
+but it was extraordinarily effective, and it made you feel you were
+getting your money's worth out of the show.
+
+Or, again, for mystery and romance, here is another scene on the Tigris
+between Amara and Kut.
+
+The evening is still. No breeze stirs the sliding surface of the river.
+On every side immeasurable plains stretch from horizon to horizon, "dim
+tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom of leaden-coloured even,"
+save where the misty blue ridge of the Persian mountains links heaven to
+earth, gleaming with a ghostly chain of snow beneath a rose-flushed sky.
+A few marsh Arabs' reed huts and a distant fire are the only signs that
+the world is inhabited. A faint rhythmical beating is growing more
+distinct, the herald of the slow progress of an up-coming steamer.
+
+Before night is fallen she has passed--a strange object with high funnel
+and clattering stern paddle, an apparition it would seem from our
+Western world of a hundred years ago, moving slowly across the crowded
+stage of modern war's necessities. I observed her number was S 31, but I
+believe she is known by her intimate friends as "Puffing Billy."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE DESERT OF THE FLAMING SWORD
+
+[Illustration: THE WALLS OF HIT]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE DESERT OF THE FLAMING SWORD
+
+
+Since I have returned to England I constantly run up against people who
+ask me, sometimes jokingly and sometimes almost seriously, if I have
+brought back any sketches of the Garden of Eden, and a conversation
+invariably follows as to the authenticity or otherwise of the
+traditional site. Is it true that Mesopotamia was the cradle of the
+human race, and, if so, are the descriptions in the book of Genesis
+concerning the world known to Adam and Noah, however figuratively they
+may be taken, in keeping with the natural conditions of such a land?
+However much Paradise may have been lost, can the traveller see in
+Mesopotamia any signs of beauty and richness of verdure out of which the
+artist and the poet could visualize a garden of the Lord?
+
+The answer, as they say in Parliament, where no one could be expected to
+give a downright and straightforward "yes" or "no," is in the
+affirmative. The scenes of these early dramas are characteristically
+Mesopotamian. The well-ordered garden "planted" with the tree of life
+"in the midst," and a river to water it, the ark of Noah pitched "within
+and without with pitch" as the ancient goufa is still pitched, the Tower
+of Babel, built with brick instead of stone and with slime (_i.e._
+bitumen) for mortar--all these things belong to the flat, sun-baked
+lands of this alluvial plain. At Kurna, Arab tradition has placed Eve's
+Tree. It is a sorry looking, scraggy thing. It does not seem good for
+food, nor is it pleasant for the eyes and a tree to be desired. Another
+traditional Garden of Eden is at Amara, and the Eden of the Sumerian
+version of the story is thought by Sir William Willcocks to have been on
+the Euphrates between Anah and Hit.
+
+[Illustration: SUNSET ON THE TIGRIS]
+
+The "planting" of the garden and certain details brought out in the
+short description of its features suggest very strongly the things that
+would occur to the mind of a writer living in an irrigated country.
+Milton's gorgeous backgrounds are almost entirely northern. He has
+striven to give it an eastern touch here and there, but such stage
+management consists chiefly in bringing in a few palms from the
+greenhouse. His description "of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
+with thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild," and "of that steep savage
+hill," are entirely northern in feeling. The same northern wildness
+pervades the garden. Note the "flowers worthy of Paradise, which not
+nice Art in beds and curious knots, but Nature boon poured forth profuse
+on hill and dale and plain." In irrigation lands like Mesopotamia it is
+the combination of great heat and abundant water that makes for
+luxuriant growth. Milton conceives the most romantic and wild scenery on
+hill and dale and savage defile, suddenly brought into order for the use
+of man. The Bible story speaks only of features to be found in a land
+like Babylonia. Sir William Willcocks thinks that the word translated
+"mist" would probably be better rendered "inundation," and that the
+writer is speaking of a country where inundation rather than rainfall
+was the support of life to the vegetable world. Genesis ii. 5 and 6
+would then read:
+
+"For the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there
+was not a man to till the ground.
+
+"But there went up an inundation from the earth, and watered the whole
+face of the ground."
+
+The description of the planting of the garden is very suggestive of a
+tract of bare land to which irrigation has been brought. "And _out of
+the ground_ made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to
+the sight." The garden, too, is watered, not by rainfall, but by a river
+which parts into different heads, as do the Tigris and Euphrates when
+they spread out upon the flat alluvial land below Baghdad.
+
+Compare the "scenery" in St. John's Revelation with that of the writer
+of Genesis when the kings of the earth and the great men sought to hide
+from the wrath of God. They "hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks
+of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us and
+hide us."
+
+Adam and Eve could hide themselves only "amongst the trees" of the
+garden.
+
+[Illustration: SHEIK SAAD AND THE PERSIAN MOUNTAINS]
+
+
+The story of Noah and the flood has a very close parallel in a record of
+Berosus, the Babylonian priest Xisuthros had a dream in which the deity
+announced to him that on a certain day all men should perish in a deluge
+of water, and ordered him to take all the sacred writings and bury them
+at Sippar, the City of the Sun, then to build a ship, provide it with
+ample stores of food and drink and enter it with his family and his
+dearest friends, also animals, both birds and quadrupeds of every kind.
+Xisuthros did as he had been bidden. When the flood began to abate, on
+the third day after the rain had ceased to fall, he sent out some birds
+to see whether they would find any land, but the birds, having found
+neither food nor place to rest upon, returned to the ship. A few days
+later Xisuthros once more sent the birds out; but they again came
+back to him, this time with muddy feet. On being sent out again a third
+time they did not return at all. Xisuthros then knew that the land was
+uncovered, made an opening in the roof of the ship, and saw that it was
+stranded on the top of a mountain. He came out of the ship with his
+wife, daughter, and pilot, built an altar, and sacrificed to the gods,
+after which he disappeared together with them. When his companions came
+out to seek him they did not see him, but a voice from Heaven informed
+them that he had been translated among the gods to live for ever, as a
+reward for his piety and righteousness. The voice went on to command the
+survivors to return to Babylonia, unearth the sacred writings, and make
+them known to men. They obeyed, and, moreover, built many cities and
+restored Babylon.[3]
+
+An eminent authority on the history of Mesopotamia told me that he
+considered the deluge to have been a purely local catastrophe in the
+flat land of Babylonia. The Arabs use the same word alternately for
+mountain or desert. If such a use has come down from long ago the
+extraordinary statements in Genesis vii. 20: "Fifteen cubits upward did
+the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered," may be easily
+reconciled. It has always seemed to me that mountains which were covered
+by 24 feet of water must have looked very insignificant even in the flat
+land of Chaldea. If, however, the word "desert" will serve equally well
+for the word "mountain" we have an account of a flood that could easily
+destroy the "world" of Mesopotamia. The annual flood from which the
+nomadic inhabitants were used to escaping (as they do now by moving up
+to the higher ground) became a wide-spread inundation till the highest
+"desert" was covered and the population drowned.
+
+The Biblical account of the Ark suggests to any dweller in Mesopotamia
+that it was a gigantic mahaila. The pitching inside and out is still
+practised in putting together some of the Euphrates boats, and the
+method of making a goufa, covering it on both sides with bitumen, has a
+strong family likeness to the method of boat-building used in those
+primitive times.
+
+The Jew, however, was always a typical landlubber, and one would expect
+a specification for the building of a ship would lack nautical details.
+Not so, however, the Assyrian tablet relating to the Ark. It was, we are
+told, a true ship. It was decked in. It was well caulked in all its
+seams. It was handed over to a pilot. It was navigated in proper style.
+"I steered about the sea. The corpses drifted about like logs. I opened
+a port-hole.... I steered over countries which were now a terrible sea."
+The pilot made the land at Nizir and let her go aground.
+
+Near Ezra's Tomb on the Tigris I saw a boat very much like Noah's ark of
+the toy shop, and made a scribbled sketch of it, which is reproduced on
+page 36.
+
+[Illustration: HIT, KNOWN TO THE ARABS AS "THE MOUTH OF HELL"]
+
+Beside the fertile tract of country above Hit on the Euphrates--a
+land which has been identified as the Sumerian Garden of Eden--stretches
+a wild and desolate region, a place of bitumen and smoke of incrusted
+salt and sulphur, of rock and fiery heat--known to the Arabs as the
+Mouth of Hell. It guards the garden from approach by the nature of its
+inhospitable ground, and so I have called it, this burning wilderness,
+the Desert of the Flaming Sword, The town of Hit, evil smelling and
+grim, stands sentinel between the fertile river-bank and the
+ever-smoking plain.
+
+We reached this region in a car from Felujeh, travelling through
+Dhibban, where we crossed the Euphrates by a bridge of boats and on to
+Rhamadie. Thence the track is a rough one through desert country,
+undulating in places and becoming rougher. Some ridges of barren hill
+cut off the view from time to time as we approach Hit, and we surmount
+one of these, obtaining a goodly prospect of the river, to plunge down
+again into a wilderness glittering with crystals. At first sight we
+might be entering the valley of diamonds of the Arabian Nights, but,
+alas, a close inspection shows the glittering objects to be merely
+pieces of rock, a sort of white marble. Then we come to mounds of
+curious pale earth and ground yellow with sulphur, and then, far
+descried beneath its black coils of smoke, the walls of Hit.
+
+The car was boiling by this time, and owing to some breakage we had to
+stop, as we drew close to the town. We left the driver, however, to
+tinker about with the old Ford, and plunged into the wilds, Brown being
+particularly anxious to see what all the smoke was about.
+
+The sun heat was still intense, and it was difficult to tell the real
+size of anything owing to the mirage. A sort of temple seemed to detach
+itself from the ground, and it was apparently floating about in an
+ever-changing lake. Little black men were stoking a furnace, and a river
+of some black substance, well banked up with earth, was flowing at our
+feet. I think I have seldom seen so weird a sight.
+
+The ground is full of bitumen, and to make lime the Arabs stack up
+alternate stones and blocks of bitumen, setting fire to the pile. The
+effect of these kilns with their great columns of heavy, black smoke,
+writhing and coiling up into the still sky, was indescribable.
+
+The shadow of coming night crept across the desert, turning the gold and
+purple of the ground to the colour of ashes. The high walls of the town
+still caught the sunset and glowed dull red against the darkening sky. A
+fringe of palms, beyond, showed where the river flowed, the river that
+watered the garden where the land was green and good. But the grim
+ramparts of Hit stretched like a line of fire between, forbidding and
+impassable. Higher and higher the shadows climbed till the tall minaret
+stood out alone, a sentinel and a flaming sword. A hundred sooty figures
+toiled and grovelled in the ground.
+
+In the sweat of their faces shall they eat bread.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+THE KINGS OF THE EAST
+
+[Illustration: Hit.]
+
+[Illustration: SAMARA]
+
+
+
+
+THE KINGS OF THE EAST
+
+
+The future of Mesopotamia with its enormous productive potentialities is
+a subject fraught with great interest to all those who have studied her
+past. Will this country again become one of the granaries of the world,
+and will it ever be, like Egypt, an important asset of our Empire? At
+first, when the war had freed the country from the Turkish yoke, it was
+assumed that it would rise into unheard-of prosperity under the fatherly
+care of British protection. Schemes of irrigation, long planned and to
+some small extent begun, even under the Turkish regime, were to re-stock
+Eden and benefit the whole world. The Baghdad railway would bring the
+wares of the East quickly to our doors, and it had even been
+anticipated that Nineveh would become as much a resort for European
+tourists as Rome.
+
+All this, however, was foretold in the time when a new world was
+expected as soon as hostilities ceased. Another tune has been called
+now, and we find countless advocates of the policy to get out of
+Mesopotamia altogether and let well alone. Capitalization, like charity,
+we are told must begin at home, and thirty millions, estimated by the
+Inspector of Irrigation in Egypt, as necessary to turn Mesopotamia into
+a prosperous country with an annual revenue in fifty years time of ten
+millions a year, should be used for house building in England and not
+for empire building in Chaldea. On the other hand, wise men have told us
+that the Mesopotamian oilfields near Mosul are to be of great
+importance, like the Persian wells that have their pipe-line outfall at
+Abadan, and that a firm and fatherly hand is necessary to keep the
+country in a state of trade development. Should our sphere of influence
+be withdrawn from Mesopotamia things will revert back to chaos. Already
+trouble with the various tribes is brewing.
+
+Not the least of the problems in controlling the marauding activities of
+some of the nomadic tribes is the difficulty of meting out adequate
+punishment to peace-breakers. The fact that all the stock-in-trade of a
+township amounts to a few pots and pans and house material of cane
+matting and mud makes it impossible to impress them by destroying their
+houses. In a few days everything would be rebuilt as before. It could
+often happen that the punitive expedition arrived to find the town moved
+to some district not mentioned in the orders for the day.
+
+[Illustration: A BRITISH CRUISER IN THE PERSIAN GULF]
+
+Mesopotamia under the Turks was in some ways worse off than others of
+his badly governed possessions. The officials who were sent from
+Constantinople into various provinces regarded the job as a poor one, as
+far as the amenities of life were concerned, and one to be endured while
+making as big a pile as possible from the ground-down natives. I should
+imagine that one of these officials would be about as popular with the
+landowners as a publican was among the Jews.
+
+An ancient prophecy foretells that the great river Euphrates shall be
+dried up that the way of the kings of the East shall be prepared. The
+time has come, if the war was indeed Armageddon. German engineers in
+1914 had made a highway and effectively "dried up" the waters of the
+river for the passage of the armies. They themselves expected to be
+kings of the East although coming from the West, and some, it is
+interesting to note, explain the Prussians as of Oriental origin. At the
+same time the claims both of oil and empire kept us busy in the Persian
+Gulf. It looked as if we were to share this new kingdom or sphere of
+influence with Germany, until the war came and sorted things out.
+
+There are some who see in vast irrigation schemes a "drying up" of the
+Euphrates that shall bring colonists from the Far East so that the
+denizens of China or Japan shall begin, like the Saxons in Kent, to get
+a footing in the country and become, in very substance, the Yellow
+Peril.
+
+He is a rash man who would prophesy concerning the future of Mesopotamia
+as far as our empire is concerned. Perhaps before these pages are in
+print something decisive will have occurred. We read daily in our
+newspapers of rumours of war with restless tribes around Mosul, and of
+raids and skirmishes.
+
+The land of Shinar, where Abraham dwelt, with its silent traces of the
+great civilizations which it fostered, Babylonian and Assyrian, Persian,
+Greek and Arabian, is once more, by the chances of war, an open book,
+and time alone will show what is to be written therein.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] "Adventures with a Sketch Book."
+
+[2] Tennyson: "Recollections of the Arabian Nights."
+
+[3] From Ragozin's _Chaldea_.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
+
+ADVENTURES WITH A SKETCH BOOK
+
+With numerous Illustrations in colour and black and white by the Author.
+Crown 4to. 12/6 net.
+
+"Artistically, and from the literary point of view, it is one of the
+most delectable travel books that have been published for many a long
+day, for Mr. Maxwell has not only an eye for the picturesque, and a
+frank, clear style both of pen and brush, but he has the even rarer gift
+of finding old-world romance and adventure in places near at hand where
+their presence would never be suspected by the ordinary traveller....
+Mr. Maxwell's book is wholly free from any suspicion of guide-book
+padding, and is as interesting and exciting to read as a work of
+romantic fiction. The chief feature which should ensure it a permanent
+position on the library shelf are the very vital and expressive
+illustrations, the very spacing of which on the printed page is delight
+to the eye."--_Observer._
+
+"There is certainly no lack of vitality in Mr. Maxwell's sketches, and
+his adroit economic draughtsmanship, his keen observation, and the
+feeling of personal interpretation in his work give them genuine
+distinction."--_Sunday Times._
+
+"Mr. Maxwell is a most original traveller.... We have said so much of
+Mr. Maxwell the writer and traveller, that there is a danger of
+forgetting Mr. Maxwell the artist. All the work has character; most of
+it has that delicacy of colour and outline which we have learned to
+associate with the author."--_Athenaeum._
+
+"On page after page Mr. Maxwell delights the eye with views and 'bits'
+picturesque, quaint or amusing, while his anecdotes and adventures make
+us laugh and long to follow in his footsteps, for he has the gift of
+description in words as well as in pictures. This is one of the most
+thoroughly satisfactory artist-tourist books we have seen,
+and its publisher has done justice to the good material at his
+disposal."--_Morning Post._
+
+"A delightful survey of scenes. Mr. Maxwell's drawings are full of the
+right touch and insight, all faithfully conveyed and put into a
+sumptuous book."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
+"This is an exceedingly charming book. Mr. Maxwell's book is a genuine
+sketch book."--_Daily News._
+
+"Contains many clever drawings.... Charmingly sketched."--_Evening
+Standard._
+
+
+
+
+_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
+
+THE LAST CRUSADE
+
+1914-1918
+
+With 100 Sketches In Colour, Monochrome, and Line made by the author in
+the autumn and winter of 1918, when sent on duty to Palestine by the
+Admiralty for the Imperial War Museum. Crown 4to L1 5s. net.
+
+"Exceedingly interesting.... The letterpress is full of vitality and
+humour; the reader is irresistibly carried on from one incident to
+another without a dull moment."--_Saturday Review._
+
+"A very handsome book. It makes good reading, and a still better
+'picture book,' and it is a valuable addition to the vast literature of
+the war."--_Westminster Gazette._
+
+"Full of good matter. The pictures are finely done, and neither the
+Colour nor the black and white reproductions leave anything to be
+desired. It is indeed one of the best war books published."--_Outlook._
+
+"A very handsome souvenir of the Last Crusade."--_Pall Matt Gazette._
+
+"Mr. Maxwell has made a most delightful album of scenes in the Holy
+Land."--_Globe._
+
+"A very beautiful and inspiring book."--_Graphic._
+
+"Mr Maxwell's book is an exceedingly entertaining one both to read and
+to look at."--_Field._
+
+"Mr. Maxwell's sketches are extremely good and vivid, and the text is
+lively and readable."--_Land and Water._
+
+"The drawings possess great artistic merit. One of the most attractive
+books which the war has yet evoked."--Connoisseur.
+
+
+
+John Lane, The Bodley Head, Vigo St., W. 1.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DWELLER IN MESOPOTAMIA***
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