DOWN THE TIGRIS TO MOSUL
Diarbekr at first sight strikes the stranger as a remarkably clean,
bright, busy city, with streets unusually broad for the East, enormous
bazaars, not roofed as in other Oriental cities, but merely rows of
windowless shops lining the ways. Two main thoroughfares intersect
the town at right angles, with gates at each end, and the whole is
surrounded by the huge wall of basalt built in its present form by
Justinian. The population seems for the most part Kurd, wild men of
great stature, from the north and east, with high felt hats, like
those of the ancient Persians of the Sasanian sculptures, their zouave
jackets of sheepskin with the hair outside, the scarlet shoes forming
parts of a distinctive costume. The fierce look that a Kurd invariably
acquires, the thin bony face, the long stride, mark the hillman, who
walks in these peaceable, if noisy, streets with a hand on his rifle
and dagger.
We put up in a two-storeyed caravanserai, near the north gate, a place
clean and roomy, boasting the luxury of glass to its windows, one or
two of which contained a chair and table. These were not for Kurdish
Hajis, however, and I humbly took my upper room, thankful that I had a
window whence I could survey the lordly effendi as he crossed the yard
to his “European” room. Upon the board floor (another luxury this, in
a country whose floors are of mud) I spread my rag of carpet and threw
my bedding, and, following the coachman, retired to a coffee-house
outside for a cup of tea, and the ordeal of questions that pour upon
the stranger.
[Sidenote: A SCORPION DOCTOR]
The coffee-house was a big barn-like place, black with the smoke of
innumerable water-pipes, and furnished with broad benches, just too
high to sit on and let one’s feet touch the ground. They are, of
course, made to be squatted upon. The place was very full, and we
had to squeeze in on one already occupied; and I found myself next a
holy man, a yellow individual in the long cloak denoting a priest,
and the green turban that is the sign of a Sayyid, or descendant of
the Prophet. This sanctity of course called for greetings from us,
the plebeians, the insignificant, and with humility we tendered our
“Salamun ’alaikum,” receiving the “’Alaikum as salam” in sonorous tones
before we sat down.
The first questions came quickly enough.
“Whence do you come? whither going? what nationality? why travelling?”
which were answered by the responses I had resolved to adhere to.
“From Aleppo to Persian Kurdistan, a Shiah Musulman travelling back to
my country.”
This I said in Kurdish, for the man was ignorant of Turkish, which
became less known as we went farther east.
Himself he was an Arab, a native of Mosul. In the lands of Islam, where
knowledge and religion are inseparable, it is the divinity student
that becomes the doctor, the lawyer, the judge. This priest was by
profession a petty lawyer, and gained a kind of livelihood by settling
disputes. To this he added the profession of healer of scorpion
bites, which he remedied by applying to the wound the oil extracted
from the black scorpion. Conversing pleasantly of this science, he
produced a cigarette box and played with the lid as one who waits to
finish speaking before taking a smoke. He ceased his dissertation
upon scorpions, and nonchalantly opened his box, to display two large
scorpions writhing within and scraping their horny legs and claws
against its tin sides. He lifted one out, disregarding its furious
blows upon his fingers, let the reptile crawl up his arm, picked it
off, replaced it in the box, smiled at me a toothless and sinister
smile, slipped off his seat and left the café.
My coachman had watched the performance. He knew the man well, he said;
he had practised his trades in Diarbekr for years, always a buyer of
good black scorpions at fourpence each, and a seller of the oil at
a mejidie for ten drops. His remarkable performance with the live
scorpions was possible owing to his practice, when catching scorpions,
of nipping off the sting of the tail with a pair of scissors.
There was a fresh briskness, a hearty feeling in the air of Diarbekr,
that took the fancy. The new springtime exactly achieved that mean of
temperature wherein man feels at his best in the Mesopotamian plains,
that scorch the life out, and make the strongest languid during the
long summer.
The place was crowded and busy; the Kurds, released from their
snow-bound mountains, were coming in to buy summer clothing; the
Armenians, who are the craftsmen of Diarbekr, were enjoying a period of
immunity from the terror in which they often exist.
The broad street of the town, that lets in the breeze and the sun, gave
it a cheerfulness in that season that many another town, whose winter
mud is just beginning to congeal in dark alleys, lacks.
I took the earliest opportunity to get outside the north gate, which
was but a few yards from the caravanserai door, to inspect the curious
stones that are embedded in the walls, stones bearing images of birds
and beasts, relics of a wall that perhaps encircled the city during
pre-Christian times. Yet with all the evidence of importance, with its
old church towers turned to minarets, where the bells that called to
the worship of the Trinity are replaced by the call of them that cry to
the Indivisible Unity, where Roman ruled later than in any other city
of the East, and where the Christian was predominant till Islam, borne
upon the shoulders of Arabs from the south, drove him out and subdued
him: with all this, Diarbekr has figured less in the ancient annals
than many a village and mound that to-day passes unnoticed.
[Sidenote: DIARBEKR]
All the nations that passed over the lands have fought for and owned
it. Assyria knew it not by name, though if it existed then, it was
an outpost of the empire. Armenians, Persians, Parthians, and Romans
fought over it, but the chronicles tell us little. In Christian times
the Persian leader Kawad (Sasanian) practically destroyed it; in A.D.
507 and in A.D. 1124 seven hundred persons of the Assassin or Ismailia
sect were massacred. It fell into Turkish hands in A.D. 1056, when
Tughril Bey of the early Seljuq dynasty captured it.
It was not on the main road from Syria to Babylon, nor Europe to
Persia; the hosts of invaders and defeated passed too far to the
south, and left Amid in her corner, where she trembled at the noise
of the battle that sometimes ruined her. Tigran, one of the greater
Parthic-Armenian kings, took the place when he subdued Gordyene, upon
whose southern borders it still stands, and he built a capital a little
north of it, ignoring its claims to importance.
The present city has, as already described, four gates in its massive
walls, but the Turks have knocked out a wicket gate in the north wall,
and called the Yengi Qapu, “The New Gate.” Also, a Turkish governor,
offended at the sight of so substantial a monument of a race greater
than his--and pagan--attempted to destroy the architecture neither
he nor all his kind could ever emulate, and succeeded in defacing a
portion of the north wall. Demolition of such a monument, however,
proved too great a task for this mean vandal, and he desisted, and has
gone his insignificant way. A few of the old churches still exist,
which, in my character of Muhammadan, I was prevented from viewing.
The modern population, apart from the Kurds and Mosul Arabs, is
composed of Christians, of whom there are more varieties than in other
towns of Asiatic Turkey. The Armenians are in the majority, and form
the whole of the large section engaged in the manufacture of copper
vessels, for which Diarbekr is famous. There are Greeks, relics of
the rule of Byzantium, divided into three or four sects, Syrians, or
Christian Arabs as they prefer to call themselves, some belonging to
the Syrian Church and others Catholics. There are Chaldeans, who glory
in the assertion (never disproved) that they are lineal descendants of
Nebuchadnezzar and the later Assyrians, speaking an ancient dialect
which is nearer to the inscription-language than any other.
The Roman Catholics have been busy among all the sects, notably
among Armenian and Chaldean here, and many of both own allegiance to
the Pope. Every sect--and none can tell how many there are--is as
certain of its own particular salvation as of the perdition of all the
others, and a hatred reigns over this Christian “centre” among the
various kinds of Christians that puts in the shade any length of the
detestation for Islam.
It is unfortunate that the Asiatic Christian is, as a rule, a very
undesirable creature, more bigoted than the most fanatical Muhammadan,
of a craft and infidelity seldom witnessed in other lands, and of an
attitude towards his co-religionists of different tenets that can be
only described as traitorous. It may be reckoned a heretical statement
to put forward, but the dweller in the East is bound to confess that
among the greater part of the peoples of Western Asia, Islam produces
a better man than Christianity. The temperament of the middle Eastern
Semitic is ultra-utilitarian. The ideals that Christianity puts
before him have too slender a hold upon a nature that craves for the
substance, and the latitude allowed in daily life by the Western faith
accords ill with the temperament that seeks set rule and law, that
may govern the manner of his rising and sitting, of his eating and
sleeping, and by the observance of which he may accumulate the merit
that may secure to him the acquisition of ideals almost mundane. The
high soul and spirit required by Christianity is too far above these
material minds, and the hazy and ill-understood ideal cannot hold
their endeavours as do the needs of life and the almost unconquerable
cupidity of the Semitic nature. So we see the spiritual and
intangible, the higher head and sign of their religion lost sight of,
in the struggles that rage about leadership of their minor saints, and
points of doctrine and dogma that tear asunder the Christian community.
Islam is material, her ideals are powerful and simple, there is through
all that unification of leader and led that all can appreciate. One
God, one Prophet, one Book, each in its own rational relation to the
other, a simple doctrine, powerful in its direct appeal to the unity,
a leader, a prophet who lays down with the despotism understood of
the ancient Semitic spirit, law and letter for all things; that is a
creed that the Arab mind sees as tangible, if such an expression be
permissible; a law for all and a reward attainable by the observance
of its well-defined canons, demanding not too much of the man in his
daily life, yet holding him--as all who know the East must know--with a
mysterious and invincible power that calls upon his life when it wills,
and finds it ever ready for the sacrifice.
[Sidenote: THE NATIVE CHRISTIAN]
Persecution has doubtless made the Christian crafty and distrustful,
and is often quoted as an excuse for the many undesirable qualities
he possesses which the Musulman does not share. Alone among these
Christian sects stand the Chaldeans of the north, whose pride of
race and tongue has done something to keep them above the Armenians,
Syrians, and Greeks they despise, and to preserve alive in their
breasts the sentiment of the ruling race from whom they profess to
spring, and which saves them from many a littleness which is an
integral part of the nature of the other Christians.
The persecution of the Christians--of which Diarbekr has too often been
the theatre--excites the sympathy of all nations, and rightly too; for
whatever be their quibbles, they hold fast to Christianity through
all the massacres and terror that Turkish vindictiveness has incited
and paid for. I say paid for, because it is, among the underworld of
western Kurdistan and northern Mesopotamia, a common subject of talk
in the cafés how much the Sultan and the Government paid the ruffians
of the towns to do their dirty work, and how much the Kurdish Aghas
presented to the authorities to be allowed to finish unhindered the
blood-feuds that existed between themselves and Armenians sheltering in
Diarbekr and the towns of Armenia. A very reign of terror overshadows
the apparently peaceful and prosperous town.
None ever know when the Turks will permit the looser part of the
Musulman population to slaughter, or call down from the hills those
terrible Kurds that hold Christian and Musulman alike in fear.
It is impossible not to notice here the universal law that forces the
weak to imitate the appearance of the strong, as a protective measure.
The Christians of Diarbekr and the outlying country have adopted the
dress of the town Musulmans, the long tunic and the waistband, the felt
cap surrounded by a blue handkerchief, to such effect that the stranger
cannot distinguish one from the other at first, and only learns to pick
out the slight difference in the arrangement of the head-handkerchief
after some time.
So too at Mosul, where the Christians and Muhammadan Arab are not
visibly different, except where the former has adopted a fez; and in
southern and Persian Kurdistan, where Kurd and Chaldean dress precisely
alike, and where the Chaldean speaks perfect Kurdish, and, happy to
relate, is usually on excellent terms with his ferocious neighbours,
who have none of the detestation for them that they have for the
treacherous Armenians.
From Diarbekr I purposed to travel as far as Mosul down the Tigris
on a kalak, or raft of skins and poles. The few Europeans who have
adopted this pleasant method of travelling, usually hired half the
raft, erected a booth or tent and carried a cook and servants,
travelling tranquilly, with no more to do than admire the scenery and
take snapshot photographs. In my assumed character I could not go in
for this style of luxury, and had to look out for a passage by a kalak
carrying cargo, upon the top of which I might be allowed to sit, for a
consideration.
[Sidenote: A TRAVELLING COMPANION]
However, I was to have a tent after all, and it came about thus:--
I was eating my frugal lunch of dry bread and lettuces one day in the
caravanserai, when an aged man in the long garments and felt waistcoat
of a southern Kurd came up to my room, and entering with a salutation,
sat down, and accepted my invitation to share the meal. He introduced
himself as Haji Vali, a native of Erbil, on the western marches of
Kurdistan, a Baba Kurd, returning from his seventeenth journey to
Mecca. He, like me, sought a passage to Mosul, and came with the news
that a kalak was ready; and, moreover, possessed a shelter of sticks
and calico which had been made for an effendi now unable to travel, and
which could be bought for a mejidie or so. The old man knew a little
Persian, and spoke, besides his native Kurdish in which we conversed,
Turkish and Arabic. The assurance with which he had joined me at my
meal, and the certainty he seemed to feel that I should become a
partner with him in our passage to Mosul, I found a feature of all his
doings.
He had an abrupt, dictatorial manner, which he tempered with bluff
heartiness, and, used to the respect which his seventeen journeys to
Mecca had earned for him, was not accustomed to receiving a refusal
to any of his propositions. So when he proposed to me--whom he called
Musa--addressing me as “his beloved son,” that we should share all
expenses, I agreed. No sooner was this settled than he departed, to
return later with his goods and chattels, some being saddle-bags, and
little sacks of charcoal, a tin samovar, and a packet of letters and
papers which he entrusted to me, as being more secure in the pocket
of my overcoat; for in the fashion of the long tunic of the East
he possessed no pockets, but two wallets hanging at his sides, and
must needs thrust any valuables in his breast. The kalak owner now
appeared with the Armenian doorkeeper as witness and intermediary in
the negotiations. This kalak owner was a gaunt Kurd, pretty well seven
feet tall, a cadaverous-looking giant who, squatting on the ground,
seemed an ordinary man’s height. An impediment in his speech and a
single fierce-looking eye make him a fearsome-looking fellow. He was
very easy to haggle with, though, and started by demanding six mejidies
for transporting us to Mosul, we to be allowed to use the tent, which
should become his property at the journey’s end. We held out for five
mejidies, and half the proceeds of the sale of the tent at Mosul.
Eventually, after the consumption of many cigarettes, and after he had
three several times risen and got half-way down the stairs in apparent
indignation at our inflexibility, with the Armenian as disinterested
go-between, we arranged on the price of two mejidies each, the tent
being the Kurd’s property. The kalak was to start next morning, and we
must transport ourselves and our belongings outside the town to a spot
where a stone bridge crosses the river some mile below Diarbekr.
In the meantime we must purchase food for some days; the journey, if
we received no checks, would occupy five days, but if high winds arose
or much rain fell we must be resigned to twelve days or even longer.
So we visited the bazaar. First to a baker’s, where we ordered a sack
full of thick flaps of bread, that he would cook by noon, and half
toast besides, making them as it is called, “firni,” which prevents
the bread going mouldy. Then to buy sugar, at which operation my
knowledge of “European”--as Haji Vali called an ability to read Latin
characters--was needed, for the Armenian shopkeeper tried to pass off
upon us as “English sugar” some inferior produce of Austria, and his
surprise and Haji Vali’s delight were about equal when I exposed the
fraud by reading the label.
To buy anything was a great nuisance. When I was alone I never had the
patience to beat the seller down to the last farthing, and would pay
an eighth of a penny more for an article than its proper price; but
old Haji Vali would have none of this. He knew the price of everything
in every city from Medina to Bagdad, and woe betide the Christian
who swore to a false price. At last, however, we actually did finish
our purchases, which, if I remember, were as follows: a sack each of
charcoal and bread, ten pounds of rice, one pound of tea, three sugar
loaves, six pewter teaspoons, seven pounds of clarified butter, odd
quantities of lentils and pease, three long strings of dried “lady’s
fingers,” a little vegetable; pepper and rock salt; some dried fruits.
These we carried to the caravanserai, bent double under the sacks and
bags we shouldered. The purchase of these things took us from nine
in the morning till nearly sunset, and involved as much talking and
argument as a session of parliament.
[Sidenote: A SENTIMENTAL KURD]
Having locked up our purchases and tied up our goods, ready to be taken
away next morning, we went out for a last look at Diarbekr; but the old
man, sick of bazaars, surprised me by a request, unlike what one would
expect from one of a people that usually expresses so little regard for
the aspect of things natural, and the beauties of the world we live in.
Taking my arm, he said:
“Musa, my son, after the day’s toil, let us go outside the gate to a
quiet spot among the trees upon the cliff, where we can sit and look
upon the view.”
So, very gratefully, I consented, and we took our way by the gate,
turned to the right, and passing the hideous military school, came
to the cliff that overhangs the Tigris. We descended a little by
a footpath, and found a clump of trees on a narrow ledge, whence,
sheltered from the view of passers above, we could look out northwards,
across the plain, and to the ever dark hills of Kurdistan. The old man
sat silent for a long time, but at last expressed his sentiments in one
long “Allahu akbar!” (“God is great”).
And then he pointed out to me the beauties of the great rushing stream,
the vivid colouring of its yellow banks, and the light green of the
groves of trees that sprang with a new year’s life far below us.
Again he sat silent, and gazed with narrowed eyes at the far mountains,
and when he spoke again, it was the soul of the Kurd and of the
mountaineer that threw the harsh words of his dialect from his tongue:
“God! and God! and God! He, the Indivisible, His glories are manifest
to our eyes, and His mercies to our hearts and minds. Yet my son, think
not that these mountains--upon which the body roams, while the soul,
soaring above, meets the Unknown in a medium pure[7] as the snow-field
that stretches above--are His masterpiece. For verily, as these mighty
hills are the greatest of His works here, yet they are but as the
pebble upon their flanks compared to His works in Heaven.
“See this work, how it exists. Who are we to boast of the power He gave
us, Who takes it away after our four days of transition? See these city
walls, the great among us made them, and they shall fall in a space of
time incalculably small in His sight, yet the stones of them are His
handiwork, and long enduring, have endured, even as those hills. And
when the walls shall sink, one, building the sign of his ambition with
the ruin of another’s, shall use these same stones, remembering the
former builder of walls.
“Ah! that he forget not the Maker of the stones that last, and the
hills that endure.”
The old man spoke quietly, yet as he spoke, the blue eyes dimmed
and the voice shook--indeed there are anomalies in this world, dual
personalities, among the sons of the East that one never suspects.
This old man, who had spent his life in an occupation we should deride
as hypocritical--for he was a guide to Mecca, and while overcharging
the uninitiated, achieved spurious merit--had yet in his old heart a
spot where the poetry that lives in the Aryan breast yet lurked, and
emanated, ascribing everything to that fearful Omnipotence that the
Muhammadan worships.
In the Persian I have often met this dual personality--the hard,
cautious man, who descends to any trickery and deception, even crime,
for the meanest ends, and in a revulsion of feeling reviles himself,
sees himself as others see him, in the purest poetry of language and
thought expresses the most beautiful sentiment, and falls to earth
again.
[Sidenote: PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE]
The mountains, always the mountains, held the old man’s gaze. There
is a fascination about them that it is not necessary to be a Kurd or
a Persian to be able to acquire. The impassive monuments of old-time
glacier and volcanic upheaval, relics of convulsions that rent
continents, that rise straight up from the flat, broad plains, may
well seize upon all that is impressionable in anyone, and inspire the
dullest with that craving to penetrate the mysteries of their deep
valleys, and view the world from their blanched heads.
Truly, Diarbekr, that looks out from its fine bluff upon the lands of
four old empires--Assyria to the south, Armenia to the north, Media
to the east, and Rome to the west, might have much to meditate upon,
were it allowed time for meditation between the continual rebellion and
persecution that tear it.
Sunset, that meant gates closed, forced us to return, and once
within the gates, Haji forgot his mood, and recommenced his talk
of the journey, of the prices of our various purchases, of the
unscrupulousness of Armenians, and the exaction of the Turks, who sent
up the price of everything.
Next morning early we roused up, and while I went out into the streets
to find a porter, Haji busied himself arranging the goods for carrying.
A sturdy Kurd, whom I found in a mosque yard, arranged to carry our
things for five piastres (10d.), and we loaded him up with a box and
the saddle-bags, upon which we cast our bedding. The rest we must carry
ourselves, for Haji, who would spend as little as possible himself,
would not allow me to waste a coin where it could be saved.
It took us a little while to convince the Armenian keeper that a couple
of shillings was enough for five days’ occupation of his room; but this
once done, he helped to load us up, and at length we departed. Haji’s
load was the sack of charcoal, and a bag containing the rice and some
sundries, while I shouldered the bread and suspended from myself bags
containing tea and sugar loaves, odds and ends of all descriptions, and
a charcoal brazier that picked pieces out of me wherever it struck its
many sharp corners. The whole length of Diarbekr we struggled, for the
south gate was our first objective, and not till then did I realise the
size of the place. The straight street ran on as it seemed to infinity,
but the gate (so like the gate from Winchelsea to the Romney marshes)
did appear at last, and by some extraordinary providence the police did
not worry. The sun was getting up at the pace he always does in the
East, which I am sure is greater than anywhere else, and we sweated and
panted as we waddled along, bent double under our loads. The porter,
with the strength of his kind, outdistanced us, and with his steady
march was soon lost among the trees that border the winding road.
Haji’s breath gave out here, and we had to rest, but at last we did get
to the bank of the river, and threw our loads down upon some bags of
apricots that were to go to Mosul.
And now, since we are arrived at the kalak, a description of the
ingenious craft is necessary. Briefly, two hundred inflated goatskins
arranged in the form ten by twenty, are bound to a few thin transverse
poplar trunks above them. Over these again seven or eight more
tree-trunks not more than 7 inches thick, are placed crosswise, and
upon these, to form a deck, is placed a layer of bales. Between two
pairs of these bales a basket-work affair is fixed, which, with a
stake, forms a rough thole-pin. A pair of enormous sweeps swings on
these, and the oarsmen, standing upon one bale, build a bridge of twigs
across to the next row, and wield the sweeps standing. Under the sweeps
an empty space is always left across the raft, where the skins are
visible between the rafters.
The raft, from its shape and construction, cannot be propelled, and
the _raison d’être_ of the oars is for turning, by which the kalak is
directed into the right currents, and to pull the craft out of the
danger that rocks standing in the stream often threaten. In the upper
river, between Diarbekr and Mosul, particularly during the springtime,
progress at night is impossible, for the side-currents which sweep
round the rocky banks at the velocity of a galloping horse would
hopelessly smash the raft. Wind, too, naturally exerts a great driving
force upon a craft that draws but three inches of water, and its
strength, too much for oars to fight against, often compels a halt.
[Sidenote: FELLOW PASSENGERS]
When we arrived, Kurdish porters were loading up the last of the
cargo, dried apricots and rice mostly, from round about Urfa. The crew
were busy blowing up partially deflated skins with a tube which they
inserted into a protruding leg of the skin. Our tent, or “tenta” as the
Arabs called it, was wedged between two walls of bales, and entering,
we found it had a plank floor laid over the tree-trunks forming the
raft.
We had two fellow-passengers--one an Arab merchant of Mosul, a man
of tremendous piety, who spent his whole time smoking cigarettes and
calling on the Lord. The other was as diametrically opposite to him in
character as possible: a time-expired soldier, a youth of twenty-three,
who was returning from the Hejaz Railway, where he had formed part of
the military police guard, to Kirkuk, his native town. Foul-mouthed,
blasphemous, a thief, possessing no money and expecting us to keep him,
he was a type of what the Turk becomes when the army has moulded him to
its standard of ruffianism.
The crew of the raft was composed of two Kurds, little men of the Zaza,
a tribe that lives in the high mountains round the upper Tigris valley
and headwaters. These people are different in appearance and manners
from nearly all other Kurds. They are short men, of a shy, quick
temperament, very sharp, and excellent workers, speaking a dialect
which, while Kurdish, denotes by its form a very high antiquity. It is
possible that these are lineal descendants of the hill-tribes that the
Assyrians had so much trouble in controlling, and whom the Parthians
and Romans of a later age never subdued. In the high, pointed felt cap
and long-toed shoes they still preserve part of a dress familiar from
the sculptures of the southern Armenian mountains.
The skipper of our craft was known as one of the most skilful of all
the river men, and in the dreadful weather that followed he showed by
his ability his claim to that reputation.
We cast off from the bank at ten o’clock this sunny morning, a light
breeze from the north both assisting our progress and keeping the
temperature at a degree of perfect comfort. Under such conditions,
fine weather and a broad river that runs at a steady pace without too
many shallows and rapids, there is probably no more pleasant method
of travelling than by kalak. As it proceeds, the raft turns round and
round slowly, giving a view of every side.
There is an ease and comfort about it all that only the traveller fresh
from the road can appreciate. The abundance of cool, clean water is the
chief delight of the journey, contrasting with the ever-present trouble
of the road, with its water often enough scarce, and always obtained
only at the expense of considerable manual labour. The dust and filth,
the long, wearying stages, the trouble of loading and unloading and of
seeking food in obscure bazaars when one is dead tired, the awakening
from a sleep all too short in the dark before dawn, all these are past,
and all there is to do is to lie at full length upon the bales and give
oneself up to the luxury of pure laziness and enjoyment of the view.
For two days we floated down between flat banks, passing a few
villages, all Kurdish. At night we tied up, gathered some sticks,
made a fire, and cooked rice. Haji and myself were regarded as the
first-class passengers, possessing, as we did, a tent, and living upon
cooked food. The others had but dry bread and cheese, of which they had
brought a sufficient supply to last. As the custom of Islam generally,
and of the Kurd particularly, demands a fraternal fellowship among all
travellers, we entertained the passengers and crew at our evening meal
every night. The class distinction that asserts itself in every land
on earth, whether it be the difference made by breeding, position, or
hard cash, became apparent on the first evening. I had cleaned and
washed the rice, boiled it, and produced a pilau, turning it out into
our one dish, which was but a big copper saucepan-lid. We invited the
company to partake, refusing to eat under any other conditions. The
crew, however, were too shy, and asserting their own unworthiness,
said they would eat afterwards. The Arab merchant, too, hung off with
polite phrases, but was eventually forced to join. The soldier needed
no encouragement, and would have sat down and begun without waiting
for us to put out our hands to the dish, a terrible gaucherie; but for
some reason both Arab and Kurd, who had conceived a strong dislike
to him, fairly beat him off, saying that he was not of our class and
rank, and might wait and eat afterwards. So, with very bad grace, he
retired to sulkiness and cigarettes. A hearty appetite, helped by the
pity-to-waste-it kind of sentiment, assures the total disappearance of
a cooked meal among all the people of road and river in the East, so
there were never any leavings, and the washing up of the one dish was
always undertaken by the crew. Morning and afternoon, we made tea upon
the raft, precedence in the dispensing of it being strictly observed.
First myself, for all had given me the title of effendi, on the
strength of a fez and overcoat, and regarded me as the aristocrat of
the party, then Haji Vali my partner, then the Arab, and after we had
each partaken of the regulation three glasses, the crew received their
two, the soldier getting his share last of all.
[Sidenote: MEALS _EN VOYAGE_]
The third day, great mountains began to rise high before us, stretching
away across the course of the river, far to the east and west. The
second night we tied up at a Kurdish village just before reaching some
high cliffs that were the sentinels of the terrific gorges we were to
pass later, and here our luck turned. First we learned that a section
of the Kurdish tribe in the hills we could see ahead had rebelled, a
quite usual occurrence, and to show their defiance of authority, were
shooting at passers-by on the river. This was certainly disquieting,
but a prospective danger is sometimes dwarfed by present discomfort.
In the pouring rain that set in at sunset, we forgot all about robbers
and rebels. A strong gale arose, with torrential rain, which wet our
tent through, threatening to tear it away altogether. The Kurdish
crew, who feared to leave their craft to the mercy of a wind and
ever-strengthening current, that might carry it away and shatter it
against rocks, were bound to sleep aboard, and in a piercing cold they
lay sodden, rivulets running from their thin garments, and tried to
sleep. We in the tent were not much better off. All our bedding got
soaked, thick cotton quilts which take hours to dry; our rice and
charcoal became pulp and mud respectively. Streams falling from pools
in the calico roof spouted upon us, now on our faces, now in the nape
of our necks. Pools formed upon our coverings, and soaked through. Our
clothing could absorb no more, nor our bedding, and at last we, like
the unfortunates outside, resigned ourselves to becoming shivering
bodies wrapped in spongy swathings, our only advantage over them
being a little shelter from the stinging wind. In the black darkness
we had to crawl out over bales of apricots, slippery with the juice
and wet that oozed from them, to secure our flimsy house: every few
moments a new place had to be found for such valuables as matches,
whose ever-changing refuge was invaded by the rain with a malignant
persistency as regularly as we devised it.
Morning brought us no relief, and indeed made our case worse, for had
we stayed at the village we could have taken shelter in its houses. By
an irony of the elements, the wind held off at sunrise, and despite the
rain we cast off. An hour downstream, where it narrowed among the hills
and ever-rising cliffs, the wind swept down again, and we tied up by
a strip of beach under a precipice, and so cut ourselves off from any
chance of shelter. For three days and nights it rained and blew. Even
our bread, the only thing we had to eat, became sodden. Haji developed
rheumatism, and a temper so irritable that I migrated to the bales
outside, and slept two nights upon the apricots, covered by soaked and
clammy things that, while they kept the wind off, were so chill as to
make their advantage problematical.
[Sidenote: STORMY WEATHER]
The fourth morning, however, broke fine, and in half an hour the
clouds had torn to rags, the wind had gone overhead, driving the rack
at a tremendous pace; but below, the river ran blue between its yellow
cliffs, now a good two hundred feet high, and we steamed in the welcome
warmth; and now we saw how the three days’ torrent had altered the
condition of affairs. Our mooring-stakes were a couple of feet under
water, and the river, which from here runs in a gorge through the
mountains--a gorge ever narrowing--was flying along at express speed.
Our courageous skipper cast off, and we commenced to race along. The
river pursues a remarkable course here. The reaches are straight and
short, and owing to the similarity in colouring of the opposite banks
it is impossible to see the turn--often less than a right angle--till
right upon it. Huge hills rise up beyond their lower slopes covered
with trees, and above all we could see snow-capped peaks. In these wild
gorges, of a beauty of spring verdure, of a magnificence indescribable,
we felt--as in all effect we were--but a chip swept along the great
river. At every turn the current, setting towards the far bank, would
sweep round, roaring against the vicious-looking rocks, and all hands
were called to the oars to keep the raft from dashing upon them, and
being torn to pieces. The river, narrowing between points sometimes,
or running over submerged rocks at others, breaks up in high curling
swell, and the current doubles its speed. Here we would experience
the greatest excitement in guiding the raft to the exact centre of
the converging ridges of waves and shooting through between them at
a tremendous velocity, to rush upon the boiling commotion where they
met. The raft would undulate, its non-rigid construction prevents its
rocking, and waves would roll up, drenching us and our goods, and
our half-dried garments, while the raft cracked ominously. At such
points Haji and the Arab merchant, grasping the nearest firm object,
would ejaculate fervently, “Ya Rebbi! Sahl! Ya Rebbi!” (“Oh God,
help! Oh God!”), and passing the danger spot, utter equally fervent
thanksgiving. As we proceeded, the hills and cliffs got higher and
steeper, great mountain sides rose at a slope apparently impossible
to climb, to dizzy heights. Here and there would occur a narrow point
of land, around which the stream curved, and upon every such was a
little Kurdish village, the house of the head-man, well built of stone,
with a loop-holed tower standing up on slightly higher ground. Once
or twice shots were fired, but our pace took us far beyond the reach
of the sportsmen, almost before they could reload. Seeing these great
hills, these constant precipices, it was easy enough to understand why
the armies of the old Powers of Mesopotamia in their marches northward
always took the westerly plain roads, and left these hills to the
tribes that have inhabited them ever since Central Asia poured out its
hordes of Aryans far back in the years before history, to people the
Western world.
One afternoon, when we were favoured with good weather, we turned into
a long reach, and had before us one of the most remarkable sights the
Tigris has to offer. The right bank of the river rose in a vertical
cliff to a great height, and was faced across the broad stream by
fellow cliff not so high, but honeycombed with cave-dwellings. The
right hand cliff (which was the result of a hill-side cut off by the
river) was broken at one place and continued again, the ravine--but
a few yards across--coming down to the water’s edge. Upon the summit
of this continued portion we could see a considerable town, so high
up that human figures looked minute. Behind all, rose precipitous
hill-sides, between whose gorges and valleys could be seen yet wilder
crags and peaks. In the village or town two or three towers, narrow
and tall, of the dimensions of a factory chimney, rose, looking more
slender and high from the eminence upon which they stood. But most
remarkable of all were the great piers of a once colossal bridge, that,
springing from a lower point of the cliff, or rather from a spot upon
its slope down to the foreshore, spans the space to the opposite cliff,
bridging the Tigris further south than any existing stone bridge. Here
the stream is broad and deep, and the mighty piers that tower above
and shadow the passer-by in his humble kalak, speak volumes for the
perseverance and talent of people past and gone, and, by comparison,
the qualities of the Ottomans. And on both sides, on the left or east
bank, where the cliff growing ever lower still hedges the river, and
on the west, where receding it leaves a fertile foreshore, the faces
are pierced with cave-dwellings, rock forts that communicate with one
another. Curious chambers, open at the river-side, mere eeries, looked
down upon the stream, and it is only a near approach that reveals the
mode of access, a passage diving into the rock. From the village above
a staircase has been cut, zig-zagging down the cliff-face to where the
river laps the solid rock wall.
[Sidenote: HASAN KAIF]
This remarkable place, far off the track of any road, removed from
even the feeble influence of the Turk by its surrounding mountains, is
called Hasan Kaif. The name is modern, and tradition says that Hasan
Kaif[8] was a Kurdish brigand who established himself there and levied
toll upon all river passers, fortifying himself in a place that hardly
needs any artificial protection, so well has Nature fenced it about.
The bridge is said by most people to be Roman, but later experts than
those who started the theory--for want of a better--state that it is
Venetian, a relic of the old road to the East. In fact, I believe
traces of Venetians have been found also in the town, where there are
ruins. It is probable that the Venetians knew the place by reputation
and history before they ever established themselves there. The
population has probably been always Kurd, the Armenians that existed
there before the Armenian massacre having immigrated. Now the Kurds
have the place to themselves once more, and under the superlatively
corrupt and feeble government of to-day, its old reputation has
returned. Here, too, are some Yezidi, those ingenuous souls that,
instead of attempting to curry favour with the Almighty, regard the
evil power as more potential in this life, and seek to appease Satan,
which perhaps comes to the same thing in effect upon their daily lives.
We did not stop here, but allowed ourselves to be swept past, down a
wide reach where the hills opened out, and at nightfall tied up where
the river grew tremendously broad and turned sharply to the right.[9]
With night rain came on again, once more drowning us in our garments
and coverings. So much water had the cargo absorbed that the raft had
apparently sunk. At the start the skins were half out of water and had
to be constantly sprinkled with a spoon-like instrument of leather,
to prevent drying and cracking, but the last two days they had been
invisible, and now even the covering beams began to disappear. The
apricots, soaked by the first rain, had swollen and grown pulpy, a
day’s sun had partially dried the outsides of the sacks, and induced a
most unpleasant effluvium. Now everything became full of water to its
saturation point again, and on this occasion a freezing wind arose, the
reason for which we perceived at daybreak, for the hills were covered
with new snow.
We cast off at the second hour of daylight, and floated out into a
lake of swift-rushing eddies, crashing commotions of meeting streams.
Here the Buhtan Su--the largest of the streams that go to make up
the full Tigris--enters at a broad place, a bay among some abruptly
rising hills. For a mile or so the reach of the combined rivers sweeps
along broad and deep, then is forced to take the only possible outlet
through a narrow gorge, between where the speed is positively giddy.
As we approached the turn, a number of Kurds appeared, running down a
valley to the river, and as they neared opened fire upon us, hitting
nothing but a bale or two; but their attention was diverted most
opportunely by another party, which, appearing on high, commenced a
lively fusillade directed at our assailants. Very unfortunately we were
not in a position to stop and watch the developments, but as we were
hustled round a bend we saw that a brisk fight was in progress. It
interested me very much to note the behaviour of my fellow-travellers.
The crew seemed to think the affair very ordinary, and never ceased
rowing; in fact it would have been impossible to relinquish control of
the raft in this corridor full of rocks. The Arab and Haji, too, while
very careful to take shelter behind bales, knowing that we must soon be
carried beyond reach of danger, were very little perturbed, only the
Kurdish blood of the older man boiled to think that he had not a gun
to respond. The Turkish soldier disappeared at the first shot, having
wedged himself in among the apricot bags and the rafters, whence he at
length emerged wet and muddy.
[Sidenote: JAZIRA IBN UMAR]
We were not to go far that day, for rain and storm came on again, and
we had to tie up; but the morning came fine, and despite the precarious
condition of the raft, which was now floating under water, we resolved
to go on as far as Jazira, a small town at the foot of the mountains,
and reached there completely water-logged, and sinking deeper every
minute, a little after noon.
Here our crew were paid off and another couple taken over; the process
of handing over being to count everything on board, passengers
included, when the new man, entering into possession, looked around and
was expected to carry out all necessary repairs, or rearrange cargo and
passengers as suited. He wasted no time, and plunged into the chilly
water, pulling out deflated skins, blowing up others, replacing faulty
ones, and tidying up generally till sunset.
We were to have started next morning, but again the weather came on,
and a worse downpour than ever drove all the loafers away and left us
forlorn upon the beach, whence we retired to a hole in the ruined wall
of the old citadel.
Jazira, or Jazira ibn Umar, once important, is now but a large and
excessively filthy and ruinous village, peopled by Arabs, Kurds,
Turks, and Christians of various kinds. Its importance is evidenced
by the existence of some police, and we were soon made aware of their
existence.
When we first arrived, as we were short of a few odds and ends, I went
and explored the bazaar, which is good and well stocked, considering
the size of the place. There is also a public bath, into which I put my
nose and fled. The bazaar sells rope (for which the place is locally
famous), dates, desiccated cheese, dried fruit and raisins, and the
usual imported articles. I wanted dates, I remember, and had a curious
time getting them, for the inhabitants, mostly Kurds, would not believe
that I was anything but a Turk, fez and overcoat being inseparably
connected with that race in the minds of a people who dress in pegtop
trousers of native cloth, shirts of the same, and felt waistcoats.
I had acquired sufficient Turkish to speak by now, but Kurdish came
more easily off my tongue, so at the first shop I reached, where I
saw dates exposed for sale, I asked the price in Kurdish, and was
answered in Turkish. Mentioning the price I professed to be ready to
give, I received the assurance of its impossibility in Turkish, with an
assertion, not made without pride, that the speaker knew that tongue.
“Very good,” said I; “but I don’t.”
“How? do you only know Arabic, then?”
“No, I don’t know Arabic; you must talk Kurdish.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Diarbekr and Aleppo and the cities of the West.”
“And don’t know Arabic?”
“No, nor would I speak it if I did, to a Kurd.”
“Then you must be a Kurd, but your language is not ours; where is your
country?”
“My country is one you never saw--Persia.”
“Persia!” he exclaimed, and shouted to his neighbours, “Here is a
Persian!”
Several collected about, anxious to see me, for it is a curious fact
that anywhere along the Tigris above Bagdad no Persians exist, nor
ever come, and are greater strangers in this out-of-the-way corner than
a Greek.
[Sidenote: A CHANGE OF CREW]
There was soon a small crowd around, and ignoring my need of dates,
the heartier ones took me off to a café, and I was kept there for an
hour or two answering questions about Persia, and learning a little
about Jazira, the chief feature of which was, according to them, the
bridge of boats which crosses the river during the summer only, and a
hill upon which the Ark is said to have grounded on its way north to
Ararat.[10] I at last escaped, and having purchased dates and rope, was
returning to the kalak, when I met our late skipper, who sought me, to
say good-bye, as he was returning on foot to Diarbekr.
I was proposing to give him a penknife I possessed, but he saw he
had nothing of equal value, and would only accept a handful of dried
dates, in exchange for which he gave a cake of sweet bread. He had
just received his pay for five days’ hard work, which required skill,
experience, and probity, the sum of two shillings. No wonder people
employ Kurds in preference to lazy and incompetent Arabs and Turks.
The third day an extra row of skins with three more rafters was added
to our raft, and half an hour before we were supposed to start, eight
soldiers of a Turkish regiment from Kharput calmly walked on board,
knocking the captain overboard, for he would have protested. These
creatures, by their behaviour and subsequent cowardice and brutality,
disgusted us to such an extent that had we foreseen the annoyance their
folly and bestiality would cause, I think we should have all got out
and walked from Jezira to Mosul.
However, we were trying to coax them to sit in such positions as would
not endanger the raft’s equilibrium, when upon the ruined wall above
two uniformed persons appeared, and a third, who came aboard with a
confidential serious air, told us the police required us. Haji, the
Arab merchant, the soldier, and myself, climbed the wall and were
ordered in a surly manner to produce passports. The others had not
theirs with them, but mine was ready, and I produced it, hoping that
affairs would pass off as easily as at Diarbekr.
Not so, the policeman read the whole thing, then turned sharply upon
me, and informed me that I had stolen an English tourist’s passport,
that I was obviously an Oriental, or why this method of travelling,
this dress, this acquaintance with Kurdish. In vain I protested, and he
asked me my name. With horror I heard the voice of Haji, just arrived,
answer:
“This is Musa Effendi, a Persian gentleman, for whom I vouch; my very
good friend and comrade, a good companion, and a devout Muslim.”
The policeman folded up the passport with a triumphant air, and
directed his two men to take me to the police office. A sudden thought
helped the situation. “I am a British subject,” I exclaimed; “touch me
at your peril; thank God we have a consul in Mosul who awaits me. If I
do not arrive, there will be the devil to pay.”
And heartily glad I was that the passport supported the statement of
British subjectivity.
“Then how comes it,” said the policeman, who never doubted that I was a
Muslim, “that you do not bear a Muhammadan name? and are described as
Protestant? which all know is a kind of Christian?”
[Sidenote: MORE PASSPORT DIFFICULTIES]
The feeblest bluff saved me; perhaps they distrusted the truth of the
details written there.
“As to the name,” I said, “the English law recognises only surnames;
if you are a native of Mosul, are you not called a Mosulli wherever
you go? are you not known among strangers as ‘the Mosulli’? so I am
described as of ‘Elisun,’ which is my native place. As to Haji’s
assertion that I am Persian, why, that is right enough, are there
not thousands of Persians born British subjects? and God knows why
the Kafir, the heathen Armenian clerk of the passport department in
Constantinople, called me Protestant, except that seeing I was an
English subject, imagined that, as the English nation is Protestant, I
must be also of that schism.”
The chief policeman thought it all strange, but I received unexpected
assistance from his lieutenant, who had apparently been to
Constantinople, and, to air the fact, asserted that he knew well the
English habits and laws, and that what I said was quite possible. My
now almost silenced assailants had yet one more kick left, and it was
obviously quite his trump card.
“Then if you are English by subjectivity,” he regularly shouted,
“produce your English passport.”
I did so, amid the silence that such a curious and formidable-looking
document produced, and it saved me. Without a word the Turkish
“tezkere” was handed back to me, and feeling now doubly triumphant, for
I had proved the disguise of language, manners I had adopted, almost
too perfect, and had, at the same time, demonstrated to a crowd of
unattached roughs and Turks, that bullying could not extort from me the
money which was the sole object of the policeman.
Half an hour later, Haji and the Arab merchant came back, cursing the
Turks. The old man had a passport which had been handed him when he
left the army thirty-five years before, in the days of Sultan Abdul
Aziz, and had been forced to pay a mejidie because it was so old. The
Arab had a similar document, and paid a similar sum.
With a feeling of great relief, that even the presence of our eight
soldiers could hardly quell, we cast off and commenced our journey to
Mosul.
A few words are necessary here of Jazira. It was occupied for a long
time by the Romans, who built the citadel, but before that its position
at the entrance to the mountain system of Masius gave it importance as
the outpost of the city of Nineveh, in Assyrian times, an importance
it retained till quite recently, when Turkish influence has killed it.
The ill-fated pretender Meherdates passed here in A.D. 49, on his way
south, and the Emperor Trajan, a century later, made it a depôt for
the wood he cut in the mountains, to build ships for the invasion of
Babylonia, then in Parthian hands. We are told that it suffered much
at the hands of wild Kurds, and later it has been the scene of many
bloody battles. For many years it was owned and ruled by the Khans of
the great Hakkiari tribe of Kurds, and was a Chaldean centre while they
ruled there. In the world of Oriental literature it claims a position
as the birthplace of Ibn ul Athir, a great Arabian historian, who was
born there A.D. 1230. To-day the mixed population has a reputation for
roguery, treachery, and lawlessness.
Here begins the great plain, which, occasionally broken by
insignificant hills, at last, below the Sinjar range south of Mosul,
drops to the dead level of the Mesopotamian plain, which, unrelieved by
even a mound, stretches right away to the Persian Gulf.
The passage from Jazira is usually, in springtime, reckoned as two
days, but we were not to be so fortunate. Our raft, very heavy to
row, presented a large surface to the wind, and the day after leaving
Jazira, a strong breeze drove us against the bank. We struck with a
terrifying crack of tree-trunks, and some skins burst, no serious
damage really occurring. It was sufficient, however, for the army. With
one accord, crying out curses upon the river and the wind, they rushed
to the edge of the raft nearest shore, and despite a 5-foot bank, past
which we were skimming at a high speed (for we had not stuck), they
leaped off, leaving coats, shoes, and food behind. Two or three had
near escapes from drowning, and all got partially immersed in the icy
water. Scrambling to the top, they attempted to pursue us, screaming
to us to stop--in their folly imagining it possible--but the thorns
and the pace at which we went, soon convinced them of the uselessness
of haste, and they desisted and were left standing in the desert--and
blaspheming.
[Sidenote: RUN AGROUND]
We had not come off quite unscathed. A corner of the raft was badly
broken, the loss of skins allowed a considerable portion to sink under
water. Moreover, a thole-pin was wrenched out of place, making rowing
very difficult. Worst of all, the current became very swift, and we
could find no place with water sufficiently slack to allow mooring.
Till sunset we had to go on, when a fortunate side-current--out of
which we foolishly tried our best to row--took us round the corner
to a quiet pool, and we tied up on the bank opposite to that of the
soldiers’ desertion.
All night we spent repairing, taking shares in the labour of walking
into the water and bringing ashore the heavy bags of apricots--spongy
with water. At dawn, tired, but hopeful of a safe arrival at Mosul
that afternoon, we set out, but a side-current of exceptional force
and speed caught us, and cast us upon a rock, against which the stream
fought and broke. We took it broadside on. The force overthrew our
tent and the samovar of boiling water for tea. Teacups, saucers, and
such small fry, leaped out into the stream, a bale rolled off, then a
box--of mine--skins popped or floated away detached, rafters smashed,
and we sailed away, carried along irresistibly, literally sinking. The
crew and passengers were busy trying to save the cargo, that threatened
to roll overboard. Rowing was impossible, for an oar was damaged, and
we could only sit and wait for the next crash, which we were certain
would come, and hope that it might be in shallow water.
We were saved this, for, drawing near the beach, the idea struck our
captain to swim ashore with a rope, the distance being some fifty
yards. One man’s strength, or two, was patently insufficient, so three
of us, the crew and myself, stripped and fell overboard with the rope,
notwithstanding the protest against my action from Haji, who thought
it _infra dig._ for an effendi, and even wondered how a person of
any comparative importance could be expected to help himself in an
emergency. We succeeded in getting a foothold about ten yards from
shore, and though dragged along, at last pulled the raft in and tied up.
The whole day we all worked, unloading the raft, repairing and
reloading, hindered by the soldiers, who turned up, refused to help,
and would have beaten the skipper had we not intervened.
Finally, after accusing us all of stealing a shoe that had fallen
overboard, they came to blows among themselves, and, assured that we
should be repairing for another three days, left for Mosul, cursing.
Next day we ourselves arrived, weary enough, our raft sinking, and an
hour or two after sighting the first garden of Mosul, floated down
past the sulphur spring and the old wall of the town to the lower
landing-place above the composite stone and boat-bridge, and, calling
porters, Haji and I installed ourselves in a caravanserai in the
bazaar, having been twelve days _en route_ from Diarbekr.
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER IV:
[7] He used the words “Sā o spī wakī wafraka lasar” (“Smooth and white,
like the snow above”).
[8] This legend is unfortunately flatly contradicted by the spelling of
the name. Hasan is not the name with which all travellers in Islamic
lands are familiar, but an Arabic word signifying an “impregnable
castle,” a name obviously suited to the old castle on its cliff.
Oriental students will appreciate the difference on learning that the
second consonant is Sād, and not Sīn.
[9] The old Arab name of the place was Ras ul Qawl, and it was in the
11th and 12th centuries under the government of Mardin. It was ceded
in A.D. 1263 to one of the Kurdish tribe of Al-i-Ayub (the tribe of
Saladin, famous in the Crusades), which was itself related to the great
Hakkari tribe residing in these districts. The place has been in the
hands of this family and its descendants ever since. Apparently the
castle is of a much earlier date, though we are told that the Al-i-Ayub
tribe rebuilt it.
[10] There is practically no doubt that the story of the Ark’s journey
is as inaccurate as that of Jonah and some other incomprehensible
narratives of the Jewish chronicles. Sir William Willcocks, whose work
in investigation of ancient waterways in the Euphrates valley will
soon achieve fame, has practically proved that Noah was flooded out in
an exceptional season that inundated the whole of the flat plains of
the lower Euphrates and Tigris, a district now flooded regularly every
year. The Ararat upon which he landed was Ur of the Chaldees, situate
upon a mound which, above the waste of water--which in flooded seasons
looks like an illimitable ocean--would have appeared a considerable
eminence. Furthermore, and completely refuting the possibility of
a journey to Ararat, is the fact that the strong prevailing wind
which blows, has blown for thousands of years during springtime from
a northerly direction, would have kept Noah south, even if we can
disregard the fact of the rush of water southwards to the Persian Gulf,
to say nothing of all the high mountains of Kurdistan and Armenia
between Chaldea and Ararat.