We visited the jail, too, and saw a number of Hamávand and Arab prisoners, brethren of the ruffians through whom we had ran the gantlet scathless, all heavily laden with chains—veritable chains, weighing sixty or seventy pounds, coiled round their loins and limbs. The light of Western improvement had not yet shed its rays on this department; and we found the criminal savage, uncared for and filthy, crowded together in an open yard, weighed down by the load of their chains, and guarded by military sentries posted on the overlooking walls.
We left Baghdad, its delightful Residency and agreeable associations, on the 16th July, and steamed away at daylight down the river Tigris on board the Dujla. As the city disappeared behind us, with all I had seen fresh on my mind, I thought, “Surely ‘the sick man of Europe’ is convalescent; his neighbour, ‘the sick man of Asia,’ may ere long need the physician’s aid.”
At breakfast-time we passed the ruins of Ctesiphon; and at nightfall anchored mid-stream, owing to the shallowness of the river. At daylight we were away again down-stream, but two hours later stuck on a sandbank. Got off at noon, to stick again a little lower down; and so on till nightfall, making very little progress. Heat intolerable, thermometer declines to come down below 110° Fah. upstairs or downstairs. Next day as bad as the day before. Sandbanks and heat equally obstructive and troublesome. At midday passed a town called Kút—the monotony of the journey relieved by Arab camps on either bank, and floating pelicans on the stream. Went ahead all night, and in the morning passed Azia, and during the day several other stations with Turkish garrisons, also Ezra’s tomb, surmounted by a conspicuous blue-tiled dome.
River banks very low, and land beyond marshy and apparently below water-level, but covered with Arab camps, and vast herds of kine and buffaloes. Naked Arabs, boys and girls, disport on the shore, and plunge into the river to our amusement. Melon-rinds thrown from the boat create frantic efforts for possession. Their mothers on the shore instantly slip out of their long loose shifts, and in puris naturalibus rush into the contest, to land some hundred yards below their clothing, with or without a prize.
Lower down the river, date-trees line the shores in never-ending succession, and seem to grow out of the water. At nightfall arrived at Márjil, and warped alongside a wharf built up of date-logs. Took in cargo all day, and in the evening steamed down to Basrah, and cast anchor near the mail-steamer Euphrates. Here we transhipped to the mail-steamer, and proceeding down the Persian Gulf, in due course arrived at Bombay. The heat in the Gulf! its bare recollection is enough to provoke a moisture of the skin. Happily I need not dwell on its memory. It is beyond the limits of my journey from the Indus to the Tigris.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Their drainage to the westward and southward flows to the Tigris and the Shat-ul-Arab, or river of the Arabs, formed by the junction of the two rivers of Mesopotamia.
[2] Riddle. What is the cause of delay in our joining you in Sistan?
Reply. There is a Rúdbár in the way.
[3] We were here joined by an escort of fourteen horsemen, eighty footmen, and ten artillerymen with one gun; and were roused at daylight by a fearful bray from the trumpets of the last arm of the service, which, by the way, was the only one dignified with uniform. They are to escort us across the Turkman-infested country lying between this and Shahrúd. We set out at 4.30 A.M., in rather loose order, the artillerymen with their gun, preceded by a detachment of horse, leading the way.