A Dweller in Mesopotamia

A Dweller in Mesopotamia

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Title: A Dweller in Mesopotamia Being the Adventures of an Official
Artist in the Garden of Eden
Author: Donald Maxwell

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Language: English
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A DWELLER IN MESOPOTAMIA
Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden
by
DONALD MAXWELL
With Sketches in Colour, Monochrome, and Line

+-------------------------- + | | | BY THE SAME AUTHOR | | |
+-------------------------- + | | | THE LAST CRUSADE | |
ADVENTURES WITH A | | SKETCH BOOK | | | | WITH BIBLE
AND BRUSH | | IN PALESTINE | | [In preparation] | | |
+-------------------------- + | | | THE BODLEY HEAD | | |
+-------------------------- +

[Illustration: THE GOLDEN TOWERS OF KHADAMAIN]

[Illustration]

London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, Vigo Street New York: John

Lane Company MCMXXI William Clowes and Sons, Limited, London
and Beccles, England.

PREFACE
Few adventurous incidents in our lives seem romantic at the time of
their happening, and few places we visit are invested with that glamour
that haunt them in recollection or anticipation. I remember comparing
the colour scheme of a barge in Baghdad with that of one in Rochester.
It was a comparison most unfavourable to Baghdad--a thing the colour
of ashes with a thing of red and green and gold. Yet now that I am back
in Rochester, the romance lingers around memories of dusty mahailas.
It is easy to forget discomfort and insects and feel a certain glamour
coming back to things which, at the time, represented the
commonplaces of life. There certainly is a glamour about Mesopotamia.
It is not so much the glamour of the present as of the past.
To have travelled in the land where Sennacherib held sway, to have
walked upon the Sacred Way in Babylon, to have stood in the great
banquet hall of Belshazzar's palace when the twilight is raising ghosts
and when little imagination would be required to see the fingers of a
man's hand come forth and write upon the plaster of the wall, to wander
in the moonlight into narrow streets in Old Baghdad, with its
recollections of the Arabian Nights: these things are to make enduring
pictures in the Palace of Memory, that ideal collection where only the
good ones are hung and all are on the line.
Although it was for the Imperial War Museum that I went to
Mesopotamia, these notes are not about the War, but they are a series of
impressions of Mesopotamia in general. The technical side of my work
I have omitted, and any account of the campaign in this field I have left
to other hands. The sketches here collected might be described as a
bye-product of my mission in Mesopotamia; but most of them are the
property of the Imperial War Museum, and it is by the courtesy of the
Art Committee of that body that I have now been able to reproduce
them.

THE BEACON, BORSTAL, ROCHESTER.
June 12, 1920.

CONTENTS
PAGE I. THE FIERY FURNACE 1
II. THE VENICE OF THE EAST 15
III. SINBAD THE SOLDIER 27
IV. THE WISE MEN FROM THE WEST 37
V. BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON 49
VI. ARABIAN NIGHTS IN 1919 67
VII. IN OLD BAGHDAD 89
VIII. PARADISE LOST 97
IX. THE DESERT OF THE FLAMING SWORD 109
X. THE KINGS OF THE EAST 119

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES IN COLOUR AND MONOCHROME
THE GOLDEN TOWERS OF KHADAMAIN Frontispiece
ABADAN, PERSIA, THE OIL QUAYS 4
H.M.S. MANTIS, ONE OF THE MONITORS ON THE TIGRIS 12
HOSPITAL HULKS AT BASRA 18

"THE SOLEMN PALMS WERE RANGED ABOVE, UNWOO'D OF
SUMMER WIND" 22
THE HOUSE OF SINBAD THE SAILOR, BASRA 24
A BEND IN "THE NARROWS" OF THE TIGRIS 30
A MARSH ARABS' REED VILLAGE 34
MUD HOUSES ON THE TIGRIS 40
A MAHAILA OF THE INLAND WATER TRANSPORT 42
EZRA'S TOMB 44
ON THE