A Dweller in Mesopotamia / Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden

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ICE OF

were in a position to test the accuracy of the comparison, and so it aroused little comment. No Venetians had returned from Basra burning with ind

y palms and golden minarets. Other souls, like myself, less simple and sufficiently salted to know that these Turnerian dreams are generally the magical accidents of changing light and seldom the result of any intrinsic interest in the places themselves-even

itish India boats and other transports lying in the stream or berthed at the wharves might be at Gravesend and the grey-painted Cou

fisherman's dwelling on an obscure "back street" canal, in Basra there abounds a great deal of rickety rubbish that never had any interest in itself and which depends for its effect on the flattering gilding of the sun and the intangible glamour of Eastern twilight. In fact Basra might be described from an architectural point of view as a great heap of insanitary and ill-bui

HULKS A

nd-the boats and the canals. The bellam is a long, flat-bottomed boat not unlike a punt but narrowing at each end to a point, the stem and stern-post alike ending in a high curved piece suggestive of a

lly packed with craft from big mahailas, the type of vessel shown in the sketch facing page 16, to the ubiquitous bellam. Old Basra lies up here. As I approached it one evening, with the sun going down, it looke

rways. For once we have something that can surpass in beauty anything that Venice can show. Basra can boast no architecture, but Nature, coming to her assistance, can produce, between sunsh

, Old

one to the other, in some places forming a network of little channels. Some of these were beautiful beyond description. The tide is felt in all these waters, and sometimes, during a spring tide, the effect of some of these

other nig

from the cl

aults of pi

twenty in number is pointed out as the Garden of Eden, every bump of ground more than six feet high is the mount on which the Ark rested, and every building more than fifty years old is the one undoubted and authentic residence of Sinbad the Sailor. An old hou

us creeks of Basra a remarkable thing happened. Under the ci

ABOVE, UNWOO'D OF SUMMER WIND."-R

om dulness would be so lucky as to pick up such excellent copy as Brown, without previous intrigue. Nevertheless I do solemnly state that I had not the slightest idea where Brown was doing his bit in the war. I had

evident that the low foliage had hidden the side channel into which we shot, and they had not seen

tion with regard to the bank when the prow of my bellam took a flying leap over the motor-boat, precipitating my two boatmen into the water, and sending m

his face, waving an arm as if in a kind of bewildered greeting, I gave up the struggle for existence and became resigned to my fate. Withou

f bearing a palm branch by attempting to wave a whole palm tree, for this he seem

hen I found I was still in the land of the living I realized that he

rp, Gallipoli and France, and then been transferred for gunnery duties to the rivers of Mesopotamia, and was now Lieut. R.N.V.R. in the Dalhousie stationed at Basra. His occupation, when I came acr

to get a better geographical idea of the surrounding country by climbing a palm tree and shouting directions to the unfortunate occupants of the boat below, who

SINBAD THE

articularly characteristic of the East. Some of it might be by the Thames at Tilbury Docks. But by Khora Creek and in the lower reaches of the river at Basra, these old-world ships, wit

two thousand years ago or more. If this surmise be a correct one, then we can trace the poop tower of the Great Harry and the square windows and super-imposed galleries of the Victory's stern to this common ancestor. I wish I had been able to

ue surroundings, thoroughly looked the part. The tower of the mosque stood out against a

few boats glided silently down towards the open river. Lights began to appear and stars studded th

ws