A Dweller in Mesopotamia | Page 6

up here.
As I approached it one evening, with the sun going down, it looked
most gorgeous. Palms and gardens on the right and the buildings of the
town on the left, and boats approaching, dream-like In the sunset glow.
I have sketched the effect roughly in the line drawing on page 21.

Some of the regions up these creeks are extremely beautiful. For once
there was nothing disappointing even in comparison--although
comparisons, as we have seen, are odious--with Venetian waterways.
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 sunshine and water, vistas of
orange-laden trees overtopped with palms and all reflected in the still
canal. I have known seven kinds of fruit to overhang the banks of one
creek at the same time.
[Illustration: Sunset, Old Basra.]
I hired a bellam manned by two fearsome-looking pirates and explored
unending waterways in and around Basra. The main thoroughfares run
at right angles to the river, but there are numerous narrow branches
communicating from 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 date palm plantations, with the
ground just covered, is strange. Hundreds of palms seem to be growing
up out of a lake, and the glades reflected in the still water is dream-like
and enchanting, recalling Tennyson's nocturne--
"Until another night in night I enter'd, from the clearer light, Imbower'd
vaults of piller'd palm."
The pirates were quite jolly fellows who pointed out various things to
me as being worthy of interest. By this time the natives have got up, in
a most superficial way, the things which they think will interest the
Englishman. Every group of palm trees more than 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 house in Mesopotamia in which Sinbad the
Sailor had not lived would be equivalent to one of England's ancient
country mansions in which Queen Elizabeth had never slept. The fact
that Sinbad the Sailor is a literary creation doesn't discourage the Arabs
in the least.

During this voyage of mine by bellam through the multitudinous creeks
of Basra a remarkable thing happened. Under the circumstances it was
a providential happening. I ran into Brown.
[Illustration: ".... THE SOLEMN PALMS WERE RANGED ABOVE,
UNWOO'D OF SUMMER WIND"--Recollections of the Arabian
Nights]
Now I do not expect the readers of some previous notes of my
sketching escapades[1] to believe this. It is almost too wonderful that a
chronicler of travels in desperate need of some comic relief to save his
book from 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 last heard of him in France in the Naval Division. That we
should both have travelled half across the world to meet with a crash in
a backwater at Basra was one of the strangest freaks of fortune I have
come across.
My two pirates were poling along quite merrily when we took a right
angle turn in fine style. It is evident that the low foliage had hidden the
side channel into which we shot, and they had not seen what became
evident too late, a motor-boat at right angles across the creek,
apparently stuck fast.
I had just time to observe two naval officers and the native coxswain
struggling with poles to turn the boat round, or free it from its
unserviceable position 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 me by means of a somersault into
the launch. Somewhat stunned I lay gazing up at a piece of blue sky in
which I could discern the green leaves of palm trees.
When in the midst of this blue dome above I beheld Brown perched on
the top of a palm tree exhibiting with a look of blank astonishment on
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. Without
doubt Brown, whom I had last heard of in France, had been killed and

was now doing his best to welcome