Letters from Mesopotamia | Page 9

combining the architectural features of a dock with the
natural amenities of a desert. The only decent spot was a Zoo and even
that had a generally super-heated air.
The thirty-two lost sheep turned up at Karachi, having been forwarded
by special train from Bombay. No fatted calf was killed for them: in
fact they all got fourteen days C.B. and three days pay forfeited; though,
as Dr. Johnson observed, the sea renders the C.B. part rather otiose.
All Friday we coasted along Baluchistan and Persia. It is surprising
how big a country Persia is: it began on Friday and goes right up into
Europe. On Saturday we reached the Straits of Ormuz and to-day
(Sunday) we are well inside the Gulf, as the mention of Fars doubtless
conveyed to you.
It is getting pronouncedly hotter every hour. It was a quarter to one
when I began this letter and is now half-past twelve, which is the kind
of thing that is continually happening. Anyway the bugle for lunch has
just gone, and it is 96° in my cabin. I have spent the morning in
alternate bouts of bridge and Illingworth on Divine Immanence: I won
Rs three at the former: but I feel my brain is hardly capable of further
coherent composition until nourishment has been taken. So goodbye for
the present. It will take ages for this to reach you.
* * * * *
"P.S.S. KARADENIZ," BASRA.
Friday, August 27th, 1915.
TO HIS MOTHER.

I wrote to Papa from just outside the bar, which is a mud-bank across
the head of the Gulf, about seventeen miles outside Fao. We anchored
there to await high tide, and crossed on Tuesday morning.
Fao is about as unimpressive a place as I've seen. The river is over a
mile wide there, but the place is absolutely featureless. In fact all the
way up it is the same. The surrounding country is as flush with the river
as if it had been planed down to it. On either side runs a belt of date
palms about half a mile wide, but these are seldom worth looking at,
being mostly low and shrubby, like an overgrown market garden.
Beyond that was howling desert, not even picturesquely sandy, but a
dried up marsh overblown with dust, like the foreshore of a third-rate
port. The only relief to the landscape was when we passed tributaries
and creeks, each palm-fringed like the river. Otherwise the only notable
sights were the Anglo Persian Oil Works, which cover over a hundred
acres and raised an interesting question of comparative ugliness with
man and nature in competition, and a large steamer sunk by the Turks
to block the channel and, needless to add, not blocking it.
There was a stiff, warm wind off the desert, hazing the air with dust
and my cabin temperature was 100°. Altogether it was rather a
depressing entrée, since amply atoned for so far as Nature is concerned.
We reached Basra about 2 p.m. and anchored in midstream, the river
being eight hundred yards or so wide here. The city of Basra is about
three miles away, up a creek, but on the river there is a port and native
town called Ashar.
The scene on the river is most attractive, especially at sunrise and
sunset. The banks rise about ten feet from the water: the date palms are
large and columnar; and since there is a whole series of creeks, parallel
and intersecting--they are the highways and byeways of the place--the
whole area is afforested and the wharves and bazaars are embowered in
date groves. The river front and the main creeks are crowded with
picturesque craft, the two main types being a large high prowed barge,
just what I picture to have taken King Arthur at his Passing, but here
put to the prosaic uses of heavy transport and called a mahila; and a

long darting craft which can be paddled or punted and combines the
speed of a canoe with the grace of a gondola and is called, though why
I can't conceive, a bhellum. Some of the barges are masted and carry a
huge and lovely sail, but the ones in use for I.E.F.D. are propelled by
little tugs attached to their sides and quite invisible from beyond, so
that the speeding barges seem magically self-moving.
Ashore one wanders along raised dykes through a seemingly endless
forest of pillared date palms, among which pools and creeks add greatly
to the beauty, though an eyesore to the hygienist. The date crop is just
ripe and ripening, and the golden clusters are immense and must yield a
great many hundred dates to the tree. When one reaches the native city
the streets are unmistakably un-Indian, and strongly reminiscent of the
bazaar scene in