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 Chaldæa 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
