of the Tigris. The night was too keenly frosty for any dreams of Paradise, even in this classic Chaldæa, and under a sky blazing down to the level horizon with the countless stars which were not to outnumber the children of "Faithful Abraham."
Four hours after leaving Kornah we passed the reputed tomb of Ezra the prophet. At a distance and in the moonlight it looked handsome. There is a buttressed river wall, and above it some long flat-roofed buildings, the centre one surmounted by a tiled dome. The Tigris is so fierce and rapid, and swallows its alluvial banks so greedily, that it is probable that some of the buildings described by the Hebrew traveller Benjamin of Tudela as existing in the twelfth century were long since carried away. The tomb is held in great veneration not only by Jews and Moslems but also by Oriental Christians. It is a great place of Jewish pilgrimage, and is so venerated by the Arabs that it needs no guard.4
Hadji brought my breakfast, or as he called it, "the grub," the next morning, and I contemplated the Son of Abraham with some astonishment. He had discarded his turban and abba, and looked a regular uncivilised desert Ishmaelite, with knives and rosaries in his belt, and his head muffled in a kiffiyeh, a yellow silk shawl striped with red, with one point and tassels half a yard long hanging down his back, and fastened round his head by three coils of camel's-hair rope. A loose coat with a gay girdle, "breeks" of some kind, loose boots turned up at the toes and reaching to the knees, and a striped under-garment showing here and there, completed his costume.
The view from the hurricane deck, though there are no striking varieties, is too novel to be monotonous. The level plains of Chaldæa, only a few feet higher than the Tigris, stretch away to the distant horizon, unbroken until to-day, when low hills, white with the first snows of winter, are softly painted on a pure blue sky, very far away. The plains are buff and brown, with an occasional splash, near villages as buff and brown as the soil out of which they rise, of the dark-green of date gardens, or the vivid green of winter wheat. With the exception of these gardens, which are rarely seen, the vast expanse is unbroken by a tree. A few miserable shrubs there are, the mimosa agrestis or St. John's bread, and a scrubby tamarisk, while liquorice, wormwood, capers, and some alkaline plants which camels love, are recognisable even in their withered condition.
There are a few villages of low mud hovels enclosed by square mud walls, and hamlets of mat huts, the mats being made of woven sedges and flags, strengthened by palm fronds, but oftener by the tall, tough stems of growing reeds bent into arches, and woven together by the long leaves of aquatic plants, chiefly rushes. The hovels, so ingeniously constructed, are shared indiscriminately by the Arabs and their animals, and crowds of women and children emerged from them as we passed. Each village has its arrangement for raising water from the river.
Boats under sail, usually a fleet at a time, hurry downstream, owing more to the strong current than to the breeze, or are hauled up laboriously against both by their Arab crews.
The more distant plain is sparsely sprinkled with clusters of brown tents, long and low, and is dotted over with flocks of large brown sheep, shepherded by Arabs in kiffiyehs, each shepherd armed with a long gun slung over his shoulder. Herds of cattle and strings of camels move slowly over the brown plain, and companies of men on horseback, with long guns and lances, gallop up to the river bank, throw their fiery horses on their haunches, and after a moment of gratified curiosity wheel round and gallop back to the desert from which they came. Occasionally a stretch of arable land is being ploughed up by small buffaloes with most primitive ploughs, but the plains are pastoral chiefly, tents and flocks are their chief features – features which have changed little since the great Sheikh Abraham, whose descendants now people them, left his "kindred" in the not distant Ur of the Chaldees, and started on the long march to Canaan.
Reedy marshes, alive with water-fowl, arable lands, bare buff plains, brown tents, brown flocks, mat huts, mud and brick villages, groups of women and children, flights of armed horsemen, alternate rapidly, – the unchanging features are the posts and wires of the telegraph.
The Tigris in parts is wonderfully tortuous, and at one great bend, "The Devil's Elbow," a man on foot can walk the distance in less than an hour which takes the steamer four hours to accomplish. The current is very strong, and the slow progress is rendered slower at this season of low water by the frequent occurrence of sand-banks, of which one is usually made aware by a jolt, a grinding sound, a cessation of motion, some turns astern, and then full speed ahead, which often overcomes the obstacle. Some hours' delay and the floats of one paddle-wheel injured were the most serious disasters brought about; and in spite of the shallows at this season, the Tigris is a noble river, and the voyage is truly fascinating. Not that there are many remarkable objects, but the desert atmosphere and the desert freedom are in themselves delightful, the dust and débris are the dust and débris of mighty empires, and there are countless associations with the earliest past of which we have any records.
Aimarah, a rising Turkish town of about 7000 people, built at a point where the river turns at a sharp angle to the left, is interesting as showing what commerce can create even here, in less than twenty years. A caravan route into Persia was opened and Aimarah does a somewhat busy trade. Flat-faced brick buildings, with projecting lattice windows, run a good way along the left bank of the river, which is so steep and irregular that the crowd which thronged it when the steamer made fast was shown to great advantage – Osmanlis, Greeks, Persians, Sabeans, Jews of great height and superb physique, known by much-tasselled turbans, and a predominating Arab element.
We walked down the long, broad, covered bazar, with a broken water channel in the middle, where there were crowds, solely of men, meat, game, bread, fruit, grain, lentils, horse-shoes, pack saddles, Manchester cottons, money-changers, silversmiths, and scribes, and heard the roar of business, and the thin shouts of boys unaccustomed to the sight of European women. The crowds pressed and followed, picking at my clothes, and singing snatches of songs which were not complimentary. It had not occurred to me that I was violating rigid custom in appearing in a hat and gauze veil rather than in a chadar and face cloth, but the mistake was made unpleasantly apparent. In Moslem towns women go about in companies and never walk with men.
We visited an enclosed square, where there are barracks for zaptiehs (gendarmes), the Kadi's court, and the prison, which consists of an open grating like that of a menagerie, a covered space behind, and dark cells or dens opening upon it, all better than the hovels of the peasantry. There were a number of prisoners well clothed, and apparently well fed, to whom we were an obvious diversion, but the guards gesticulated, shouted, and brandished their side-arms, making us at last understand that our presence in front of the grating was forbidden. After seeing a large barrack yard, and walking, still pursued by a crowd, round the forlorn outskirts of Aimarah, which include a Sabean village, we visited the gold and silversmiths' shops where the Sabeans were working at their craft, of which in this region they have nearly a monopoly, not only settling temporarily in the towns, but visiting the Arab encampments on the plains, where they are always welcome as the makers and repairers of the ornaments with which the women are loaded. These craftsmen and others of the race whom I have seen differ greatly from the Arabs in appearance, being white rather than brown, very white, i. e. very pale, with jet-black hair; large, gentle, intelligent eyes; small, straight noses, and small, well-formed mouths. The handsome faces of these "Christians of St. John" are very pleasing in their expression, and there was a dainty cleanliness about their persons and white clothing significant of those frequent ablutions of both which are so remarkable a part of their religion. The children at Aimarah, and generally in the riparian villages, wear very handsome chased, convex silver links, each as large as the top of a breakfast cup, to fasten their girdles.
The reedy marshes, the haunts of pelicans and pigs, are left behind at Aimarah, and tamarisk scrub and liquorice appear on the banks. At Kut-al-Aimarah, a small military post and an Arab town of sun-dried bricks on the verge of a high bank above the Tigris, we landed again, and ragamuffin boys pressed very much upon us, and ragamuffin zaptiehs,5 grotesquely dressed in clothes of different
Sir A. H. Layard describes the interior of the domed building as consisting of two chambers, the outer one empty, and the inner one containing the Prophet's tomb, built of bricks covered with white stucco, and enclosed in a wooden case or ark, over which is thrown a large blue cloth, fringed with yellow tassels, the name of the donor being inscribed in Hebrew characters upon it. – Layard's
A year later in Kurdistan, the
