E-text prepared by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Janet Blenkinship, and the
Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreaders Europe
(http://dp.rastko.net) from page images and digital files generously made
available by the University of Georgia Libraries (http://fax.libs.uga.edu/)
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 18031-h.htm or 18031-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/0/3/18031/18031-h/18031-h.htm)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/0/3/18031/18031-h.zip)
Images of the original pages are available through
the University of Georgia Libraries. See
http://fax.libs.uga.edu/DS49x2xM465D/
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 mediæval 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 Maimûn, 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 Nahrwân. 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 Témeraire,_
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 _Espiègle_, _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 archæologist 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.