From the Indus to the Tigris

by H. W. Bellew

We arrived at Bácúba at 8.30 A.M., and found quarters in the sarae, which we found full of bales of merchandise, mules, and travellers, Indians and Arabs, Persians and Turks, with African slaves not a few.

10th July.—Bácúba to Baghdad, forty miles. We set out from the sarae at 7.30 P.M. yesterday, and passing through the town, crossed the Dyalla river by a bridge of boats. On the farther side we were delayed a while for the completion of our escort, which is increased by two horsemen in addition to those who joined us at Shahrabad. On their arrival, our party was formed up into a close column, as the first sixteen miles of the road were considered dangerous. We came successively on three or four deep dry canals, and near each we were halted a few minutes whilst the horsemen went ahead to see there was no ambush.

A little after midnight we came to the Sarae Beni Sád. Here we found a party of twenty Hamávand horsemen, with some Turkish officials, going to Baghdad to answer for the misconduct of their tribe on the Casri Shirin frontier. Our escort with their prisoner joined them, and we proceeded with only two horsemen as escort and guides.

We passed several long strings of camels going on towards Bácúba, and three or four small parties of travellers. It was too dark to distinguish who they were, but the familiar sounds of Pushto so unexpectedly falling on my ears, roused me from the heaviness of an overcoming sleep, and I started into wakefulness just in time to satisfy myself that a party of Afghans of the Peshawar valley were passing us.

Later on, the day dawned, and the country gradually unfolded itself to our view. A vast plain, bare and uninhabited, spread before us, and a long green line of date-groves bounded the monotonous prospect ahead. The fatigues of our long march now overburdened me with its accumulated load. Minutes seemed hours, and the last bit of our road seemed to grow longer the more we advanced upon it, and I thought we should never get over this ever-increasing plain.

At length the mud walls of Baghdad, its domes and its towers, came into view, and our flagging energies revived at the prospect of rest. The gilded dome and minars of the mosque of Kázamín overtopping an emerald bank of date-groves away to the right, had not for us the attraction that a couple of horsemen clad in white approaching from the city claimed. They were officials attached to the British Residency here, and came to announce that the Resident and a party of gentlemen had come out to meet us. Our fatigue vanished, and we pushed on with enlivened spirits to meet a hearty welcome from the Resident, Colonel C. Herbert, and the Residency Surgeon, Dr Colville, and the other gentlemen who were with them. It was the most agreeable incident of the whole march, and fittingly came in at its close.

We stayed six days at Baghdad, enjoying the kindest hospitality at the Residency. Its memory comes back with feelings of gratitude as the pleasantest interval in the whole of my long journey. We visited the “city of the Khalifs,” its bazárs and its public buildings, and in the salutations and friendly looks of Jew and Turk, Arab and Armenian, had ample evidence of the popularity of at least the British Resident. We witnessed a review of the Turkish troops—splendid men, admirably equipped and armed with the Snider pattern-breech-loader. Through the polite consideration of His Excellency Muhammad Kaúf Pasha, the governor of the province, we were enabled to visit the Admiralty workshops, the Ordnance stores, barracks, hospitals, and other military establishments. The discipline, organisation, and thorough order pervading all departments took me completely by surprise; and but for the red cap everywhere, I might have thought myself in Europe inspecting the barracks of a French or German garrison town.

The barracks, a handsome pile fronting the river, had been built on the European model by a Belgian architect. The hospital, a commodious double-storied building on the opposite shore, was furnished with all the modern appliances of the Western institutions, under the supervision of French and Italian doctors. The messing and dieting of the men in barracks and in hospital were assimilated to the European system, and attracted my special attention, as so much simpler than, and superior to, the complex and inefficient arrangements that, subservient to the caste prejudices of the natives, are in vogue amongst the troops of our Indian army.

In the Ordnance department we were shown their breech-loading cannon and the arms of the cavalry—the Spencer rifle—and a six-shooting revolver on a new American principle, all turned out of the Government manufactory at Constantinople. We visited the School of Industry, in which nearly three hundred homeless boys are fed and clothed and sheltered by the profits on their own industry. And certainly the specimens of their handiwork shown to us spoke well as to their proficiency in the arts of weaving, printing, and carving. Some of the cabinetwork was of really superior finish, and the shoes made by them were not to be distinguished from those made in European shops.