A Dweller in Mesopotamia

A Dweller in Mesopotamia

The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Dweller in Mesopotamia, by Donald Maxwell
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

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

Release Date: March 20, 2006 [eBook #18031]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DWELLER IN MESOPOTAMIA***
E-text prepared by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Janet Blenkinship, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreaders Europe (http://dp.rastko.net) from page images and digital files generously made available by the University of Georgia Libraries (http://fax.libs.uga.edu/)

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 18031-h.htm or 18031-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/8/0/3/18031/18031-h/18031-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/8/0/3/18031/18031-h.zip)
Images of the original pages are available through the University of Georgia Libraries. See http://fax.libs.uga.edu/DS49x2xM465D/

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 EUPHRATES, EARLY MORNING 52
BABYLON, THE EXCAVATIONS AT EL-KASR 56
AN OLD WORLD CRAFT: A TYPE OF BOAT UNCHANGED SINCE THE DAYS OF SINBAD 60
BELLAMS UNDER SAIL 62
BABYLON THE GREAT IS FALLEN, IS FALLEN 64
A STREET IN KHADAMAIN 70
MOONLIGHT, BAGHDAD 72
A NOCTURNE OF BAGHDAD 74
MAHAILA AND MARSH ARAB'S BELLAM 80
A MOONLIGHT FANTASY: KUT, FROM THE RUINS OF THE LICQUORICE FACTORY