War in the Garden of Eden | Page 7

glamour of the East. Now glamour is a delicate substance. In the all-searching glare of the Mesopotamian sun it is apt to appear merely tawdry. Still, a goodly number of years spent in wandering about in foreign lands had prepared me for a depreciation of the "stuff that dreams are made of," and I was not disappointed. It is unfortunate that the normal way to approach is from the south, and that that view of the city is flat and uninteresting. Coming, as I several times had occasion to, from the north, one first catches sight of great groves of date-palms, with the tall minarets of the Mosque of Kazimain towering above them; then a forest of minarets and blue domes, with here and there some graceful palm rising above the flat roofs of Baghdad. In the evening when the setting sun strikes the towers and the tiled roofs, and the harsh lights are softened, one is again in the land of Haroun-el-Raschid.
The great covered bazaars are at all times capable of "eating the hours," as the natives say. One could sit indefinitely in a coffee-house and watch the throngs go by--the stalwart Kurdish porter with his impossible loads, the veiled women, the unveiled Christian or lower-class Arab women, the native police, the British Tommy, the kilted Scot, the desert Arab, all these and many more types wandered past. Then there was the gold and silver market, where the Jewish and Armenian artificers squatted beside their charcoal fires and haggled endlessly with their customers. These latter were almost entirely women, and they came both to buy and sell, bringing old bracelets and anklets, and probably spending the proceeds on something newer that had taken their fancy. The workmanship was almost invariably poor and rough. Most of the women had their babies with them, little mites decked out in cheap finery and with their eyelids thickly painted. The red dye from their caps streaked their faces, the flies settled on them at will, and they had never been washed. When one thought of the way one's own children were cared for, it seemed impossible that a sufficient number of these little ones could survive to carry on the race. The infant mortality must be great, though the children one sees look fat and thriving.
Baghdad is not an old city. Although there was probably a village on the site time out of mind, it does not come into any prominence until the eighth century of our era. As the residence of the Abasside caliphs it rapidly assumed an important position. The culmination of its magnificence was reached in the end of the eighth century, under the rule of the world-famous Haroun-el-Raschid. It long continued to be a centre of commerce and industry, though suffering fearfully from the various sieges and conquests which it underwent. In 1258 the Mongols, under a grandson of the great Genghis Khan, captured the city and held it for a hundred years, until ousted by the Tartars under Tamberlane. It was plundered in turn by one Mongol horde after another until the Turks, under Murad the Fourth, eventually secured it. Naturally, after being the scene of so much looting and such massacres, there is little left of the original city of the caliphs. Then, too, in Mesopotamia there is practically no stone, and everything was built of brick, which readily lapses back to its original state. For this reason the invaders easily razed a conquered town, and Mesopotamia, so often called the "cradle of the world," retains but little trace of the races and civilizations that have succeeded each other in ruling the land. When the Tigris was low at the end of the summer season, we used to dig out from its bank great bricks eighteen inches square, on which was still distinctly traced the seal of Nebuchadnezzar. These, possibly the remnants of a quay, were all that remained of the times before the advent of the caliphs.

II
THE TIGRIS FRONT
A few days after reaching Baghdad I left for Samarra, which was at that time the Tigris front. I was attached to the Royal Engineers, and my immediate commander was Major Morin, D.S.O., an able officer with an enviable record in France and Mesopotamia. The advance army of the Tigris was the Third Indian Army Corps, under the command of General Cobbe, a possessor of the coveted, and invariably merited, Victoria Cross. The Engineers were efficiently commanded by General Swiney. The seventy miles of railroad from Baghdad to Samarra were built by the Germans, being the only Mesopotamian portion of the much-talked-of Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway, completed before the war. It was admirably constructed, with an excellent road-bed, heavy rails and steel cross-ties made by Krupp. In their retreat the Turks had been too hurried to accomplish much in the