A Dweller in Mesopotamia Part 2

After a few days among the waterways of Mesopotamia one can get hardened against surprises. The most amazing and outrageous types of craft soon meet the eye as commonplaces of river life. Things that would make a Thames waterman sign the pledge proceed up and down without arousing any comment. Noah's ark, with its full complement, could ply for hire between Basra and Baghdad, and the lion's roaring would be accepted as the necessary accompaniment of a somewhat old type of machinery resuscitated for the war.

I have seen boats jostling each other cheek by jowl that might have been taking part in a pageant ent.i.tled "Ships in All the Ages." There were Th.o.r.n.ycroft motor-boats and Sennacharib goufas, mahailas and Thames steamboats, an oil-fuel gunboat and a stern paddler that could have come out of a woodcut of the first steamboat on the Clyde--and all these in the same reach. I travelled in this last extraordinary vessel for a short time. She was in charge of a sergeant of the Inland Water Transport, with an Indian pilot and miscellaneous crew, and my adventurous cruise called to mind both the travels of Ulysses and the Hunting of the Snark.

The sergeant could not speak Hindustani and the pilot could not speak a word of English. Mistakes of the most frantic nature were common, especially when we were being whirled round and round by the stream at a difficult corner. In the midst of controversy unrelieved by any glimmer of understanding on the part of anybody present we would slide gracefully into a state of rest on a mudbank or b.u.mp violently against the sh.o.r.e. Luckily, it seemed as easy to get off the mudbank as to get on it, and we finally got into positions we wanted to for making sketches of various points. The pantomimic violence of the sergeant, together with diagrams in my sketch-book, were ultimately successful.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BEND IN "THE NARROWS" OF THE TIGRIS]

Nearly all the Tigris steamers proceeding up river have loaded lighters on each side of them. These act as fenders at the corners and take the b.u.mp whenever the bank is encountered. The progress is slow and there is often a good deal of waiting, for in the region between Ezra's tomb (above Kurna) and Amara there is not room for two steamers thus enc.u.mbered to pa.s.s with safety. These waters are known as the Narrows.

Signal stations are placed at various intervals, and a signal is made to clear the way, generally for the down-river boat, the up-river craft, which, with the stream against them, will not have to turn round in stopping, tying up to the bank. This manoeuvre is done in a few minutes. The steamer that is to stop runs alongside the bank and natives with stakes jump out and drive them into the marsh ground. She moors to these until the other vessel has pa.s.sed downwards.

The sketch facing page 30 was done from a steamer bound up-river, which had tied up under these conditions. The paddler coming down has a lighter on each side of her as the one sketched on page 38.

She will come down toward the leading marks shown on the right-hand side of the picture, and then slide along the bank, using the lighter on the port side as a fender. Then she will leave the bank and shoot across to the other side of the river, taking the next turn with her starboard lighter.

This drawing will serve to show the general nature of most Mesopotamian river scenery, dead flat, with nothing or little to relieve the monotony, a great expanse of muddy waters and featureless dust, with just a suggestion in one direction of a low line of blue--very faint.

It tells of the far-away Persian mountains and of snow.

The great feature of the Narrows, however, and one which all our dwellers in Mesopotamia will remember vividly as long as they live, is the egg-sellers from the Marsh Arab villages on the banks. Although a steamer proceeding up-river may be kicking up a great fuss in the water and apparently thumping along at a great rate, it is, in reality, making only about four knots on the land. Consequently, when it sidles into the bank, with one of its lighters touching the marsh, the natives who are selling things can keep up, and a running--literally running--fire of bargaining is maintained between the ship's company and the Arabs.

They are all women who do the selling--weird figures in black carrying baskets of eggs and occasionally chicken. Gesticulating, shouting, shrieking, they rush along beside the up-going steamer and keep even with it. In the middle of a bargain the steamer may edge away until a great gulf is fixed between the bargainers. Sometimes it will slide along the other bank and a fresh company of yelling Amazons will try and open up negotiations for eggs while the frenzied and now almost demented sellers left behind rend their clothes and shout imprecations at their rivals. Another turn of the current, however, and the vessel again nears the sh.o.r.e of the original runners and the deal is finished.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Sirens of the Narrows.]

One girl kept up for miles and at last sold her basket of eggs. She got a very good price for them, but apparently she wanted her basket back again. The buyer insisted that the basket was included, and the seller shrieked frantically that it was not. She kept up with us for some miles, making imploring gestures, kneeling down with her arms outstretched as though she was begging for her life, and yelling at the top of her voice, tears streaming down her cheeks. The basket would be worth twopence or less and she had made many shillings on the deal.

Finally, a soldier good-naturedly threw it to her and it fell in the water about three feet from the sh.o.r.e. She hurled herself upon it waist deep in the water and seized it, then waved her arms and leaped about in a dance of ecstatic triumph that would have made her fortune at the Hippodrome.

Another feature of the Narrows is the reed villages. This, of course, does not exclusively belong to this region, but it is here, when tied up to the bank, that the best opportunity of a close view is taken.

That houses can be built in practically no time and out of almost anything has been abundantly claimed at home by numerous enterprising firms by ocular demonstration at the Building Trades and Ideal Home Exhibitions. Cement guns and climbing scaffolding, we are a.s.sured, will raise crops of mansions at a prodigious pace, and the housing problem is all but solved. If we have not noticed many new houses it is not for want of inventors. Yet the best of these efforts is elaborately c.u.mbersome compared with housing schemes on these flat lands bordering the Tigris and Euphrates. Not only has the Marsh Arab evolved a style of dwelling that can be built in a night, but he can boast of a device still more alluring in its naivity and utility--the _Portable Village!_

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MARSH ARAB REED VILLAGE]

I once made a sketch of a Marsh Arabs' village at evening (reproduced facing p. 34), and on returning thither on the following morning to verify certain details, I found it had gone! I succeeded in tracking it down again by the afternoon, about ten miles from its former situation, and found the mayor (or whatever the Marsh-Mesopotamian equivalent may be) inspecting the finishing touches being made to the borough. Of course it is frightfully muddling, all this moving about of villages, to the stranger who is not keeping a sharp look-out and marking well such impromptu geographical activity.

Along the sh.o.r.es of the rivers of Mesopotamia and in the innumerable lagoons and backwaters that abound can be found large areas of tall reeds, ranging from quite slight rushes to canes twenty feet high. It is with such material the Marsh Arab builds. The long rods he bends into arches like croquet hoops. On this skeleton, not unlike the ribs of a boat turned upside down, he stretches large mats woven out of rushes. At the ends he builds up a straight wall of reed straw bound up in flat sheaves. An opening is left for an entrance, a mat, sometimes of coloured material, doing duty for a door.

So much for the princ.i.p.al and removable part of the village. However, the town planner will add to this by improvising mud enclosures for animals, and an occasional wall and "tower." The mud is mixed with cut gra.s.s and reeds, quickly drying into a hard substance, and sufficiently permanent for anything that such a temporary village requires.

In the bright sunlight of the Mesopotamian plains, and probably also on account of their prominence at a distance over the flat land, some of these mud buildings look quite imposing. I remember once approaching a city with ramparts, towers, and formidable walls which, on close inspection, turned out to be a small mud enclosure of the most decrepit kind.

Great changes have been made in the rule of the waterways of Mesopotamia. Sinbad the Sailor has given place to Sinbad the Soldier, the Inland Water Transport.

We have learnt, as we were advised to do in regard to the things of Mesopotamia, to think amphibiously.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Noah's Ark, 1919.]

IV

THE WISE MEN FROM THE WEST

[Ill.u.s.tration: Upward bound on the Tigris.]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE WISE MEN FROM THE WEST

The story of Mesopotamia is a story of irrigation. "It is not improbable," writes Sir William Willc.o.c.ks, the great irrigationist, "that the wisdom of ancient Chaldea had its foundations in the necessity of a deep mastery of hydraulics and meteorology, to enable the ancient settlers to turn what was partially a desert and partially a swamp into fields of world-famed fertility." The civilizations of Babylon and a.s.syria owed their very life to the science of watering the land, and even in the later times of Haroun Alraschid their great systems had been well maintained. It is said of Maimun, the son and successor of this monarch, that he exclaimed, as he saw Egypt spread out before him, "Cursed be Pharaoh who said in his pride, 'Am I not Pharaoh, King of Egypt?' If he had seen Chaldea he would have said it with humility."

Allowing for a certain amount of patriotic exaggeration, the exclamation at least shows at what a high degree of excellence the irrigation system of Mesopotamia was maintained in the 10th century A.D. Yet Mesopotamia is to-day a desert except for the regions in the immediate vicinity of the rivers. You can go westwards from Baghdad to the Euphrates, and every mile or so you will have to cross earthworks, not unlike irregular railway embankments, showing a vast system of irrigation channels both great and small. But there is not a drop of water near and not a tree and no sign of any life. How came the change and how can such a network of channels have ceased to work entirely?

The reason is to be found in some past neglect of the ancient dams that kept the water on a high level, so that it could flow by means of artificial ca.n.a.ls at a greater height (and consequently at a slower rate) than the rivers themselves. The Tigris and Euphrates are rivers fed by the melting snow in the mountains of Armenia. The hotter the season and the more necessary a plentiful supply of water, the greater is the amount brought down. The rivers, however, when they reach the flat alluvial plain between the region round about Baghdad and the Persian Gulf, when left to themselves are always bringing down a deposit and choking themselves up and then breaking out in a new direction, causing swamps and turning much of the land into useless marsh. Consequent also upon this silting-up process the banks of the rivers are higher than the surrounding country, and there is a gentle drop in the level of the land as it recedes from the river.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MUD HOUSES ON THE TIGRIS]

The object of the ancient irrigationists was to tap the rivers at the higher part of this plain, and then, by means of great ca.n.a.ls, lead the water where they wanted it. Large reservoirs and lakes for storing surplus water were made, and thus the uneven delivery of water by the rivers was checked and a more regular and manageable supply maintained.

The greatest of these ancient channels was the Nahrwan. A regulator, the ruins which are still traceable in the bed of the Tigris, turned sufficient water into this high-level river at Dura. It stretched southwards for about 250 miles along the left bank of the Tigris. It was the neglect of this ca.n.a.l that led to a fearful catastrophe which must have been responsible for the death of millions; a catastrophe which turned some 20,000 square miles of fruitful land, teeming with populous cities, into a dismal swamp.

The intake from the Tigris of this and other ca.n.a.ls evidently silted up, and thus enormous volumes of water, usually carried off by them in times of flood, helped to swell this river till, bursting its banks, it inundated the whole country. The result remains to-day--a vast tract of swampy land, barren and almost useless, except to a few wandering tribes of Arabs.

And now the land which sent its Wise Men to the West is looking towards the West again for aid. If its ancient prosperity is to be restored, if Chaldea is again to be a granary to the world, it is to the West that it must turn. Science and machinery shall again make the waste places to be inhabited and the desert blossom as the rose. Thus shall the wise men return to them--the Wise Men of the West. In every important agricultural centre are to be found irrigation officers--the first-fruits of British occupation.

There was only one subject of conversation in Mesopotamia in the winter of 1918-1919, and that was the chances of getting back home. There was very little to do at Basra except watch steamers load up with the more fortunate candidates for demobilization and give them a send-off. Brown had no difficulty in getting three weeks' leave to accompany me in some of my expeditions to gather up such fragments as remained of naval subjects on the rivers. We determined on a voyage of discovery up the Euphrates in search of the famous "fly-boats" which had figured so vividly in the early days of naval river fighting, and which now were more or less peacefully employed. I had to make many sketches of them for further use, and succeeded in finding a whole "bag" at Dhibban.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MAHAILA OF THE INLAND WATER TRANSPORT]

We embarked in an ancient-looking stern paddler named _Shushan_. As we had to camp out in a somewhat rough-and-ready way, with not a little discomfort owing to a spell of very cold weather, Brown insisted on referring to her as _Shushan the Palace_.

She had a tall funnel, like the tug in Turner's _Fighting Temeraire,_ and kicked up a tremendous wash with her paddle, the whole effect being faintly reminiscent of a hay-making machine. She pushed her way along, slightly "down by the head," as if she had suddenly thought of something and was putting on a spurt to make up for lost time. I cannot lay hands on a sketch of her, but the one reproduced at the head of this chapter will give some idea of her character. Take away one funnel and place it amid-ships, reduce her tonnage a little, and you have the _Shushan_ to the life.

This gallant little curiosity is no late conscripted product of the war.

She is one of the pukka ships of the Navy in Mesopotamia--one of the Old Contemptibles. Armed with a three-pounder which caused such havoc to her decks when fired that it is reported the ship had to be turned round after each round. Two shots in succession in the same direction would have wrecked the vessel.

A host of amusing stories of her exploits were told us by her C.O., who was an R.N.V.R. Lieutenant. Some practical joker produced a cylinder alleged to be in cuneiform writing. A translation of the inscription proved beyond doubt that the _Shushan_ was used by Nebuchadnezzar as a royal yacht, and is the last surviving link with the Babylonian navy.

When the Turks had fled from Kurna and we were chasing them up the river with an amazing medley of craft, like a nightmare of Henley regatta suddenly mobilized, the _Shushan_ was in the forefront of the battle.

Led by the sloops _Espiegle_, _Clio_, and _Odin_, the Stunt Armada came to Ezra's Tomb at twilight. The river was high and the land in between the great bends was a maze of rushes and lagoons. Hospital hulks like Noah's arks, little steamers, and loaded mahailas jostled each other in their endeavours to get up against the strong stream. The hulks and the barges were dropped at the bend shown in the sketch, facing page 46, and the _Odin_ anch.o.r.ed. We had captured already some Turkish barges, and prisoners had to be collected.

The rest pushed on. Across the bend, some two or three miles away, the Turkish gunboat _Marmaris_ was putting on every ounce of fuel she had, and a ma.s.s of mahailas and tugs were doing their best to escape the Nemesis that awaited them. Then the sloops opened fire, and a desultory cannonade was kept up as it grew darker and darker. At last it was too dark to get any sort of aim, and firing ceased. The _Marmaris_ had been set alight by her crew, but we captured the whole of the enemy's flotilla.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EZRA'S TOMB]