sank, and after riding fifteen miles we halted near the mud village of
Orta Khan, a place with brackish water and no supplies but a little
brackish sheep's milk. The caravanserai was abominable, and we rode on
to a fine gravelly camping-ground, but the headman and some of the
villagers came out, and would not hear of our pitching the tents where
we should be the prey of predatory hordes, strong enough, they said,
to overpower an officer, two _zaptiehs_, and three orderlies! Being
unwilling to get them into trouble, we accepted a horrible
camping-ground, a mud-walled "garden," trenched for dates, and lately
irrigated, as damp and clayey as it could be. My _dhurrie_ will not be
dry again this winter. The mules could not get in, the baggage was
unloaded at some distance, and was all mixed up, and Hadji showed
himself incapable; my tent fell twice, remained precarious, and the
_kanats_ were never pegged down at all.
The _dhurrie_ was trampled into the mud by clayey feet. Baggage had to
be disentangled and unpacked after dark, and the confusion apt to
prevail on the first night of a march was something terrible. It
opened my eyes to the thorough inefficiency of Hadji, who was so dazed
with opium this morning that he stood about in a dream, ejaculating
"_Ya Allah!_" when it was suggested that he should bestir himself,
leaving me to do all the packing, groaning as he took up the tent
pegs, and putting on the mule's bridle with the bit hanging under her
chin!
The night was very damp, not quite frosty, and in the dim morning the
tent and its contents were wet. Tea at seven, with Baghdad rusks, with
a distinctly "native taste," two hours spent in standing about on the
damp, clayey ground till my feet were numb, while the men, most of
whom were complaining of rheumatism, stumbled through their new work;
and then five hours of wastes, enlivened by caravans of camels, mules,
horses, or asses, and sometimes of all mixed, with their wild, armed
drivers. The leader of each caravan carries a cylinder-shaped bell
under his throat, suspended from a red leather band stitched with
cowries, another at his chest, and very large ones, often twenty-four
inches long by ten in diameter, hanging from each pack. Every other
animal of the caravan has smaller bells, and the tones, which are
often most musical, reach from the deep note of a church bell up to
the frivolous jingle of sleigh bells; jingle often becomes jangle when
several caravans are together. The _katirgis_ (muleteers) spend large
sums on the bells and other decorations. Among the loads we met or
overtook were paraffin, oranges, pomegranates, carpets, cotton goods,
melons, grain, and chopped straw. The waste is covered with tracks,
and a guide is absolutely necessary.
The day has been still and very gloomy, with flakes of snow falling at
times. The passing over rich soil, once cultivated and populous, now
abandoned to the antelope and partridge, is most melancholy. The
remains of canals and water-courses, which in former days brought the
waters of the Tigris and the Diyalah into the fields of the great
grain-growing population of these vast levels of Chaldaea and
Mesopotamia, are everywhere, and at times create difficulties on the
road. By road is simply meant a track of greater or less width,
trodden on the soil by the passage of caravans for ages. On these two
marches not a stone has been seen which could strike a ploughshare.
Great ancient canals, with their banks in ruins and their deep beds
choked up and useless, have been a mournful feature of rather a dismal
day's journey. We crossed the bed of the once magnificent Nahrwan
canal, the finest of the ancient irrigation works to the east of the
Tigris, still in many places from twenty-five to forty feet deep and
from 150 to 200 feet in breadth.
For many miles the only permanent village is a collection of miserable
mud hovels round a forlorn caravanserai, in which travellers may find
a wretched refuge from the vicissitudes of weather. There is a
remarkable lack of shelter and provender, considering that this is not
only one of the busiest of caravan routes, but is enormously
frequented by Shiah pilgrims on their way from Persia to the shrines
of Kerbela.
After crossing the Nahrwan canal the road keeps near the right bank of
the Diyalah, a fine stream, which for a considerable distance runs
parallel with the Tigris at a distance of from ten to thirty miles
from it, and falls into it below Baghdad; and _imamzadas_ and villages
with groves of palms break the line of the horizon, while on the left
bank for fully two miles are contiguous groves of dates and
pomegranates. These groves are walled, and among them this
semi-decayed and ruinous town is situated, miserably shrunk from its
former proportions. We entered Yakobiyeh after crossing the Diyalah
by a pontoon bridge of twelve boats, and found one good house with
projecting lattice windows, and a large entrance over which the head
and ears of a hare were nailed; narrow, filthy lanes, a covered bazar,
very dark and ruinous, but fairly well supplied, an archway, and
within it this caravanserai in which the baggage must be waited for
for two hours.
This first experience of a Turkish inn is striking. There is a large
square yard, heaped with dirt and rubbish, round which are stables and
some dark, ruinous rooms. A broken stair leads to a flat mud roof, on
which are some narrow "stalls,"--_rooms_ they cannot be called,--with
rude doors fastening only from the outside, for windows small round
holes mostly stuffed with straw near the roof, for floors sodden
earth, for fireplaces holes in the same, the walls slimy and
unplastered, the corners full of ages of dusty cobwebs, both the walls
and the rafters of the roof black with ages of smoke, and beetles and
other abominations hurry into crannies, when the doors are opened, to
emerge as soon as they are shut. A small hole in the wall outside each
stall serves for cooking. The habits of the people are repulsive, foul
odours are only hybernating, and so, mercifully, are the vermin.
While waiting for the "furniture" which is to make my "unfurnished
apartment" habitable, I write sitting on my camp stool with its back
against the wall, wrapped up in a horse-blanket, a heap of saddles,
swords, holsters, and gear keeping the wind from my feet. The Afghan
orderly smokes at the top of the stair. Plumes of palms and
faintly-seen ridges of snowy hills appear over the battlements of the
roof. A snow wind blows keenly. My fingers are nearly numb, and I am
generally stiff and aching, but so much better that discomforts are
only an amusement. Snow is said to be impending. I have lunched
frugally on sheep's milk and dates, and feel everything but my present
surroundings to be very far off, and as if I had lived the desert
life, and had heard the chimes of the great caravans, and had seen the
wild desert riders, and the sun sinking below the level line of the
desert horizon, for two months instead of two days.
Yakobiyeh is said to have 800 houses. It has some small mosques and
several caravanserais, of which this is the best! It was once a
flourishing place, but repeated ravages of the plague and chronic
official extortions have reduced it to decay. Nevertheless, it grows
grain enough for its own needs on poorly irrigated soil, and in its
immense gardens apples, pears, apricots, walnuts, and mulberries
flourish alongside of the orange and palm.
_Kizil Robat, Jan. 14._--It was not very cold at Yakobiyeh. At home
few people would be able to sit in a fireless den, with the door open,
on a January night, but fireless though it was, my slender camp
equipage gave it a look of comfort, and though rats or mice ate a bag
of rusks during the night, and ran over my bed, there were no other
annoyances. Hadji grows more dazed and possibly more unwilling every
day, as he sees his vista of perquisites growing more limited, and to
get off, even at nine, I have to do the heavy as well as the light
packing myself.
There was a great "row," arising out of an alleged delinquency of the
_katirgis_ concerning payment, when we left Yakobiyeh the following
morning. The owners of the caravanserai wanted to detain us, and the
archway was so packed with a shouting, gesticulating, scowling, and
not kindly crowd, mostly armed, that it was not easy for me to mount.
The hire of mules always includes their fodder and the keep of the
men, but in the first day or two the latter usually attempt to break
their bargain, and compel their employer to provide for them. So long
as Arabic is spoken Hadji acts as sole interpreter, and though
soldiers and _zaptiehs_ were left with him he was scared at being left
behind with the baggage. The people stormed and threatened at the top
of their voices, but doubtless it was not so bad as it sounded, for we
got through the bazars without molestation, and then into a perplexing
system of ancient water-courses whose high broken banks and deep
waterless beds intersect each other and the road. In contrast to this
magnificent irrigation system there are modern water-channels about a
foot wide, taken from the river Diyalah, which, small as they are,
turn the rich deep soil into a "fruitful field."
After these glimpses of a prosperity which once was and might be again
(for these vast alluvial plains, which extend from the Zagros
mountains to the Euphrates and up to the Syrian desert, are capable
with irrigation and cultivation of becoming the granary of Western
Asia), the road emerges on a level and somewhat gravelly waste, on
which after a long ride we were overtaken by a _zaptieh_ sent by the
Persian agent in Yakobiyeh, to say that the baggage and servants were
being forcibly detained, but shortly afterwards with a good glass the
caravan was seen emerging from the town.
The country was nearly as featureless as on the preceding day, and on
the whole quite barren; among the few caravans on the road there were
two of immense value, the loads being the best description of Persian
carpets. There were a few families on asses, migrating with all their
possessions, and a few parties of Arab horsemen picturesquely and very
fully armed, but no dwellings, till in the bright afternoon sunshine,
on the dreariest stretch of an apparently verdureless waste, we came
on the caravanserai of Wiyjahea, a gateway with a room above it, a
square court with high walls and arched recesses all round for goods
and travellers, and large stables. A row of reed huts, another of Arab
tents, and a hovel opposite the gateway, where a man with two guns
within reach sells food, tobacco, and hair ropes, make up this place
of horror. For, indeed, the only water is a brackish reedy pool, with
its slime well stirred by the feet of animals, and every man's hand is
against his brother.
We proposed to pitch my tent in a ruined enclosure, but the headman
was unwilling, and when it was suggested that it should be placed
between the shop and the caravanserai, he said that before sunset all
the predatory Arabs for ten miles round would hear that "rich
foreigners were travelling," and would fall upon and plunder us, so we
must pitch, if at all, in the filthy and crowded court of the
caravanserai. The _balakhana_, or upper room, was too insecure for me,
and had no privacy, as the fodder was kept in it, and there was no
method of closing the doors, which let in the bitterly cold wind.
We arrived at 3 P.M., and long before sunset a number of caravans came
in, and the courtyard was full of horses, mules, and asses. When they
halted the loads were taken off and stacked in the arched recesses;
next, the great padded pack-saddles, which cover nearly the whole
back, were removed, revealing in most cases deep sores and ulcers.
Then the animals were groomed with box curry-combs, with "clatters"
like the noise of a bird-scarer inside them. Fifty curry-combs going
at once is like the din of the cicada. Then the beasts were driven in
batches to the reedy pool, and came flying back helter-skelter through
the archway, some fighting, others playing, many rolling. One of them
nearly pulled my tent over by rolling among the tent ropes. It had
been pitched on damp and filthy ground in a corner of the yard, among
mules, horses, asses, dogs, and the roughest of rough men, but even
there the damp inside looked like home.
After this brief hilarity, the pack-saddles, which serve as blankets,
were put on, the camels were made to lie down in rows, most of the
mules and horses were tethered in the great stable, where they
neighed, stamped, and jangled their bells all night, and others were
picketed in the yard among the goats and donkeys and the big dogs,
which wandered about yelping. Later, the small remaining space was
filled up with sheep. It was just possible to move, but no more, and
sheep and goats were even packed under the _flys_ of my tent. The
muleteers and travellers spread their bedding in the recesses, lighted
their fires of animal fuel, and cooked their food.
At sunset the view from the roof was almost beautiful. Far away, in
all directions, stretched the level desert purpling in the purple
light. Very faintly, on the far horizon to the north-east, mountain
ranges were painted in amethyst on an orange sky. Horsemen in
companies galloped to tents which were not in sight, strings of camels
cast their long shadows on the purple sand, and flocks of big brown
sheep, led by armed shepherds, converged on the reedy pool in long
brown lines. The evening air was keen, nearly frosty.
The prospects for the night were not encouraging, and on descending
the filthy stair on which goats had taken up their quarters, I found
the malodorous, crowded courtyard so blocked, that shepherds, with
much pushing, shouting, and barking of big dogs, with difficulty made
a way for me to pass through the packed mass of sheep and goats into
the cold, damp tent, which was pitched on damp manure, two or three
feet deep, into which heavy feet had trampled the carpet. The uproar
of _katirgis_ and travellers went on for another two hours, and was
exchanged later for sounds of jangling bells, yelping and quarrelling
dogs, braying asses, bleating sheep, and coarsely-snoring men.
At 9 P.M. the heavy gates, clamped with iron, were closed and barred,
and some belated travellers, eager to get in from the perils of the
outside, thundered at them long and persistently, but "the door was
shut," and they encountered a hoarse refusal. The _seraidar_ said that
400 horses and mules, besides camels and asses, 2000 sheep, and over
70 men were lodged in the caravanserai that night.
The servants were in a recess near, and Hadji professed that he
watched all night, and said that he fired at a man who tried to rob my
tent after the light went out, but I slept too soundly to be
disturbed, till the caravans and flocks left at daybreak, after a
preliminary uproar of two hours. It was bitterly cold, and my tent and
its contents were soaked with the heavy dew, nearly doubling their
weight.
I started at 9 A.M., before the hoar-frost had melted, and rode with
the _zaptieh_ over flat, stoneless, alluvial soil, with some
irrigation and the remains of some fine canals. There are villages to
be seen in the distance, but though the soil is rich enough to support
a very large population, there are no habitations near the road except
a few temporary reed huts, beside two large caravanserais. There was
little of an interesting kind except the perpetual contrast between
things as they are and things as they were and might be. Some large
graveyards, with brick graves, a crumbling _imamzada_, a pointed arch
of brick over the Nahrud canal, a few ass caravans, with a live fowl
tied by one leg on the back of each ass, and struggling painfully to
keep its uneasy seat, some cultivation and much waste, and then we
reached the walled village of Sheraban, once a town, but now only
possessing 300 houses.
Passing as usual among ruinous dwellings and between black walls with
doors here and there, by alleys foul with heaps of refuse, and
dangerous from slimy pitfalls, in the very foulest part we turned into
the caravanserai, its great courtyard reeking with filth and puddles,
among which are the contaminated wells from which we are supposed to
drink. The experience of the night before was not repeated. There were
fairly good rooms, mine looking into a palm garden, through a wooden
grating, cold truly, but pleasant. I fear we may never have such
"luxury" again. I remarked to my fellow-traveller that our early
arrival had fortunately given us the "choice of rooms," and he
replied, "choice of pig-styes,--choice of dens!" but my experience at
Wiyjahea has deprived me of the last remnants of fastidiousness!
I walked through the ruinous, wretched town, and its poor bazar, where
the very fine _physique_ of the men was in marked contrast with their
wretched surroundings, and gives one the impression that under honest
officials they might be a fine people. They are not genial to
strangers, however. There was some bad language used in the bazar, and
on the roads they pass one in silence at the best, so unlike the
Tibetans with their friendly _Tzu_. At Sheraban one of the muleteers
forced his way into my room, and roughly turned over my saddle and
baggage, accusing me of having taken his blanket! Hadji is useless
under such circumstances. He blusters and fingers his revolver, but
carries no weight. Indeed his defects are more apparent every day. I
often have to speak to him two or three times before I can rouse him
from his opium dream, and there is a growing inclination to shirk his
very light work when he can shift it upon somebody else. I hope that
he is well-meaning, as that would cover a multitude of faults, but he
is very rough and ignorant, and is either unable or unwilling to learn
anything, even how to put up my trestle bed!
Open rooms have sundry disadvantages. In the night a cat fell from
the roof upon my bed, and was soon joined by more, and they knocked
over the lamp and milk bottle, and in the darkness had a noisy quarrel
over the milk.
The march of eighteen miles here was made in six hours, at a good
caravan pace. The baggage animals were sent off in advance, and the
_zaptieh_ led a mule loaded with chairs, blankets, and occupations. I
ride with the _zaptieh_ in front of me till I get near the
halting-place, when M---- and his orderly overtake me, as it might be
disagreeable for a European woman to enter a town alone.
The route lies over treeless levels of the same brown alluvial soil,
till it is lifted on a gentle gravelly slope to a series of low
crumbling mounds of red and gray sandstone, mixed up with soft
conglomerate rocks of jasper and porphyry pebbles. These ranges of
mounds, known as the Hamrin Hills, run parallel to the great Kurdistan
ranges, from a point considerably below Baghdad, nearly to Mosul and
the river Zab. They mark the termination in this direction of the vast
alluvial plains of the Tigris and Euphrates, and are the first step to
the uplifted Iranian plateau.
Arid and intricate ravines, dignified by the name of passes, furrow
these hills, and bear an evil reputation, as Arab robbers lie in wait,
"making it very unsafe for small caravans." A wild, desolate,
ill-omened-looking region it is. When we were fairly within the pass,
the _zaptieh_ stopped, and with much gesticulation and many
repetitions of the word _effendi_, made me understand that it was
unsafe to proceed without a larger party. We were unmolested, but it
is a discredit to the administration of the province that an organised
system of pillage should be allowed to exist year after year on one of
the most frequented caravan routes in Turkey. There were several
companies of armed horsemen among the ranges, and some camels
browsing, but we met no caravans.
From the top of the descent there was a striking view over a great
brown alluvial plain, watered by the Beladruz and the Diyalah, with
serrated hills of no great height, but snow-covered; on its east side
a silent, strange, weird view, without interest or beauty as seen
under a sullen sky. There are no villages on this march, but ancient
canals run in all directions, and fragments of buildings, as well as
of brick and pottery, scattered over the unploughed surface, are
supposed by many to mark the situation of Dastagird, the residence of
Khosroe Parviz in the seventh century. I have no books of reference
with me, and can seldom write except of such things as I see and hear.
Farther on a multitude of irrigation ditches have turned a plain of
dry friable soil into a plain of mud, through which it was difficult
to struggle. Then came a grove of palms, and then the town or village
of Kizil Robat (Red Shrine), with its _imamzada_, whose reputation for
sanctity is indicated by the immense number of graves which surround
it. The walls of this decayed and wretched town are of thick layers of
hardened but now crumbling earth, and on the east side there is an old
gateway of burned brick. There are said to be 400 houses, which at the
lowest computation would mean a population of 2000, but inhabited
houses and ruins are so jumbled up together that one cannot form any
estimate.
So woe-begone and miserable a place I never saw, and the dirt is
appalling even in this dry weather. In spring the alleys of the town
are impassable, and people whose business calls them out cross from
roof to roof on boards. Pools of filthy water, loathsome ditches with
broad margins of trodden slime full of abominations, ruins of houses,
yards foul with refuse, half-clothed and wholly unwashed children, men
of low aspect standing in melancholy groups, a well-built brick bazar,
in which Manchester cottons are prominent, more mud and dirt, some
ruinous caravanserais, and near the extremity of the town or village
is the horrible one in which I now am, said to be the best, with a
yard a foot deep in manure and slush, in the midst of which is the
well, and around which are stables and recesses for travellers.
At first it seemed likely that I should fall so low as to occupy one
of these, but careful investigation revealed a ruinous stair leading
to the roof, up which were two rooms, or shall I say three?--an arched
recess such as coals are kept in, a small room within it, and a low
wood hole. The open arch, with a _mangel_ or iron pan of charcoal,
serves as the "parlour" this January night, M---- occupies the wood
hole, and I the one room, into which Hadji, with many groans and
ejaculations of "_Ya Allah!_" has brought up the essential parts of my
baggage. The evening is gray and threatening, and low, snow-covered
hills look grimly over the bare brown plain which lies outside this
mournful place.
_Khannikin, Jan. 15._--This has been a hard, rough march, but there
will be many worse ahead. Rain fell heavily all night, converting the
yard into a lake of trampled mud, and seemed so likely to continue
that it was difficult to decide whether to march or halt. Miserable it
was to see mules standing to be loaded, up to their knees in mud,
bales of tents and bedding lying in the quagmire, and the shivering
Indian servants up to their knees in the swamp. In rain steadily
falling the twelve animals were loaded, and after the usual scrimmage
at starting, in which the _bakhsheesh_ is often thrown back at us, we
rode out into a sea of deep mud, through which the mules, struggling
and floundering, got on about a mile an hour.
After a time we came to gravel, then relapsed into deep alluvial soil,
which now means deep mire, then a low range of gravelly hills on
which a few sheep and camels were browsing on artemisia and other
aromatic herbs gave a temporary respite, then again we floundered
through miles of mud, succeeded by miles of gravel and stones. The
rain fell in torrents, and there was a cold strong wind to fight
against. There was that amount of general unpropitiousness which is
highly stimulating and inspiriting.