Amongst the letters awaiting our arrival at Bagdad, we had found an invitation from Lord and Lady Lytton to spend the summer, or part of it, with them at Simla. It seemed that this would be an opportunity, which might never again occur, of going on to India by land, a plan which might be made to include a visit to the Bactiari mountains, where our acquaintance of the pilgrimage, Ali Koli Khan, had his home. Ali had often talked to us of his father, and of a wonderful stud of thoroughbred Arabians possessed by his family, and the prospect of seeing these, and a tribe reputed to be the most powerful in Persia, was an attraction that could not be denied. He had indeed proposed to travel there with us, and introduce us himself to his people, and if circumstances had been propitious, no doubt we might have accomplished this part of our journey comfortably enough. Unfortunately, when we took leave of the Haj at Meshhed Ali, our friend was not there for us to concert arrangements with him, nor even to wish him good-bye. He had been lost in the sandstorm, already mentioned as having occurred on the last day but one of the pilgrimage; and though before going on to Kerbela we had received news of his safety, we had no opportunity of meeting him. The consequence was that he neither came with us, nor gave us so much as a letter to his father; and in the end we started alone, a mistake we had ample reason to repent. The plan of travelling from Bagdad to India by land appeared to me of doubtful wisdom under the circumstances; but Wilfrid’s thirst for exploration was not yet slaked. He argued that spring was just beginning, and a spring journey through Persia must of necessity be the most delightful thing in the world, and that we could at any moment get down to some port of the Persian Gulf, if the weather became too hot for us. Our means of transport were ready. We should find some difficulty in disposing of our camels at Bagdad, and had better make use of them; and though we were now without servants, servants might easily be found. Thus, in an evil day, and without due consideration of the difficulties and dangers which were before us, we determined to go on. A final circumstance decided the matter beyond recall. Captain Cameron, the African traveller, arrived at Bagdad, with the object of surveying a line for an Indo-Mediterranean railway from Tripoli to Bushire, and thence to the Indus, having already made the first stages of his survey; and Wilfrid now proposed to assist him in the more serious part of his undertaking. It was agreed between them that they should take different lines from Bagdad, and meet again either at Bushire or Bender Abbas, thus comparing notes as to the most practicable railway line from the Tigris to the Persian Gulf. Captain Cameron was to follow the left bank of the river as far as Amara, and then to strike across the marshy plains to Ahwas and Bender Dilam, while we should keep further east, skirting the Hamrin and Bactiari hills. So presented, the project sounded useful, if not agreeable, and acquired a definite object, which, if it ran us into unnecessary dangers, served also to carry us through them afterwards. The expedition was accordingly a settled thing.
Our preparations were made, unfortunately, with as little reflection as the decision. On arriving at Bagdad, we had, as has been mentioned, said goodbye to Mohammed and the camel-men, and had, moreover, allowed Hanna and Ibrahim, who were homesick, or tired of travelling, to depart. The difficulty now was how to replace them. It is always a dangerous experiment to begin a serious journey with untried followers, and it was our first misfortune that we were obliged to do this. Colonel Nixon, as he had done last year, kindly lent us a cavass; but, alas! Ali, the intelligent fat man who had been of such assistance to us in our Mesopotamian tour, was not fit to leave Bagdad. He was lying ill of a fever, and could not be disturbed. The cavass given us was consequently a stranger, and might be good or bad, useful or useless, for anything we knew. It was necessary, too, that somebody should know Persian, and we engaged a Persian cook, Ramazan by name, highly recommended, but equally untried. A young Bagdadi next volunteered as groom, and, lastly, the Sheykh of the Agheyls, an old friend, sent two of his men as camel-drivers.
None, however, of these attendants, the two last excepted, had seen each other before, nor knew anything of our way of travelling or our way of life. We did not even start together, as it would have been wise to do. The country round Bagdad is bare of pasture for many miles, and we thought to better matters for our camels by sending them on some marches down the river, intending to join them later with our baggage by boat, a most unfortunate arrangement, for the men being stupid timorous fellows, seem, when left to themselves, to have lost their heads, and instead of obeying their orders, which were to travel slowly, pasturing the animals as they went, drove them without halting to the village we had named as a meeting-place, and kept them there, half-starved in dirty stables, till we came, a piece of negligence which cost us dear. When we joined them, one, the black delúl was already missing, dead they informed us; and a second, Shayl, a camel which, when we left Damascus, had been a model of strength and good looks, was so reduced as to be unfit for further travelling, while the remaining six were but a shadow of their former selves. Only Hatheran, the giant leader, who had saved our fortunes in the Nefûd, was still fit for a full load; and to him once more we had mainly to trust during all that was to come.
It is difficult for those who have never owned camels to imagine how much attached one becomes to these animals on a long journey, and what a variety of character they possess. Each one of ours had its name, which it knew well, and its special quality of courage, or caution, or docility. Wilfrid’s white delúl, “Helweh” (sweetmeat), was gentle and obedient; the Meccan, “Hamra,” thoughtless and vain; “Ghazal,” affectionate, but rude and inclined to buck (poor thing, she was far from bucking now); “Hatheran,” especially, was a camel of character. He was evidently proud of his strength and his superior understanding, and possessed a singular independence of opinion which compelled respect. It was his pride to march ahead of the rest, who accepted him as guide, and followed his lead on all doubtful occasions. He cared little for the beaten track, choosing his ground as seemed best to him and always for good reasons. He was never impatient or put out, and in difficulties never lost his head. He could carry twice the load of the others, and could walk faster, and go longer without water. At the same time, he considered himself entitled to extra rations when we made up the evening meal, and would leave us no peace till he was satisfied. I mention these things now, for feeding and driving and tending these camels was to be our chief occupation during the rest of our journey, and on them depended the safety of our march, and, in great measure, of our lives. I say it with no little vanity, that, starting under the unfavourable circumstances we did, we nevertheless marched our camels without accident five hundred miles over mountain and plain, through swamps and streams never before traversed by camels, and across nine large rivers, one of them bigger than the Rhine; and that we brought them in to their journey’s end fat and well. I must not, however, forestall matters.
On the 20th of March, having thus sent on our camels with the Agheyls, we embarked on board an English river steamer, with our servants, our horses, our greyhounds, and Rasham, the falcon who had followed our march from Haïl, and were taken down about eighty miles to a point of the river below Kut, where several streams run into the Tigris from the east, thus giving the district the name of Wudian (streams).
It was a cheerless start, for all down the river we steamed through driving rain, till at last the steamer was brought to, amid the downpour, in front of a bare round bank, and we were invited to descend. There was nothing but mud and a few bushes to be seen for miles, and it seemed impossible we should step out of the luxury of a civilised English cabin into what seemed a mere slough, and that without means of transport further than the bank, for of camels and men there was nothing at all to be seen. But the die was cast; this was the place we had agreed on, and, without more ado, we landed, first our horses and then our baggage, and then ourselves. While this was in operation, some Arabs had appeared on the scene, and to one of them, an old man in a green turban, Captain Clements, before he said good-bye, confided us. Seyd Abbas, he told us, was an old acquaintance, and an honest man; and though the rest, it was easy to see, were of the lowest order of felláhin Arabs, we were fain to be content with this assurance and make what friends we could, at least with the old man. Sitting disconsolately on our camel bags in the rain, we then made our last farewell to all on board, and having watched the steamer till it steamed out of sight, set ourselves in earnest to the work that was before us. [119] I resume my journal:
“The tent was soon rigged up on a piece of sounder ground than the rest, and the horses fettered and turned out to graze. My new mare, Canora, so called after the Canora or Nebbuk tree which grows in the Residency yard, is certainly a great beauty, and attracts much, too much, attention, from the rather thievish-looking people of this place. Wilfrid has been to the encampment, which is about half a mile off, with Seyd Abbas, and has made friends with their chief people, but he has no agreeable impression of those he has seen. They appear to be, he says, a mixed collection of felláhin from all the Iraki tribes, and can lay no claim at all to good birth. Their Sheykh alone, for Seyd Abbas is not their Sheykh, claims gentility as coming from the Beni Laam, but we do not like his looks. The Beni Laam, Seyd Abbas tells us, are three days’ journey from here, and there is war going on amongst them just now, owing to a quarrel between their Sheykh, Mizban, and one of his brothers. He gives rather a terrible picture of them, and has been trying to dissuade us from going further; but we think that with the letters we have for Mizban, there can be no difficulty. The Beni Laam are, at any rate, a true Bedouin tribe, not felláhin, like the people here. Old Hajji Mohammed (the cavass) stayed with me while Wilfrid was away. He was once in the army, and insisted on standing sentry in the rain in spite of all I could do to make him sit down under the flap of the tent. He has evidently small confidence in the people here.
Some fowls have been brought from the camp, and there are sticks enough to make a fire. Now we shall see what our Persian cook can do. If the camels were here, our being detained would not so much matter. We heard of them at Kut as we passed by in the steamer, but that is twenty-five miles off; and with this rain it is impossible to say when they may arrive.
March 22.—The weather has cleared, and we can see the Hamrin hills to the east, not so very far off. The country is less hideous than it seemed yesterday in the rain. This place is a sort of peninsula or island, formed by two rivers, which come from the Hamrin hills and fall into the Tigris. These seemed to be joined higher up by a canal, so that the space inside is cut off from the desert. It is partly a swamp, partly a thicket of guttub bushes, with here and there patches of cultivation made by felláhin. These call themselves Saadeh, but Seyd Abbas says they come from all parts. He himself is brother to the Sheykh of Ali Ghurbi, a village on the other side of the Tigris. There are no villages at all on this side after Kut, and this island of Wudian is the only inhabited spot. The felláhin are very poor, and complain bitterly of the government, which ruins them. They are completely under the thumb of the Turks, now that the government has steamers on the river, and the tax-gatherers take (if we may believe them), about two-thirds of their crops. They have also to pay ten beshliks (francs) for each tent, half a beshlik for each sheep, two beshliks for each buffalo they keep, and a capitation tax of two and a half beshliks besides. Moreover, they are visited now and then by zaptiehs, who take their horses from them if they do not manage to hide them away, on the pretence that they cannot afford to keep them, while Mizban makes them pay tribute for protection too, or rather for the right of being left alone. The government does absolutely nothing in return for what it takes. They are indeed in a wretched plight, and one wonders why they take all this trouble of cultivation for so little, but perhaps it is a choice between that and starvation.
The great feature of Wudian is its wild-boars. These literally swarm in the fields, trotting about in open day-light, and doing exactly as they like. The people are afraid of them, and keep out of their way, and no wonder, for they are gigantic beasts. A man who was at our tents to-day, shewed us a terrible wound he had received from one which charged him quite without provocation. The people have only their short spears to protect themselves with. The beasts come almost inside the camp, and Wilfrid found one this afternoon fast asleep under a bush, within ten yards of the path which leads to the tents. The people passing along, went a long way round so as not to disturb it, for it lay quite exposed to view. Seyd Abbas begged him to destroy some of them, and Wilfrid has ridden out on Ariel, and taken the Winchester rifle to see what he can do. I have felt feverish, and have stayed at home drying the things which had got wet.