The central cella is still used for Christian worship, and[{61}] has probably been so used continuously ever since the church was built. The northern cella, however, is not at present used. The Christians who live at Nisibin are Jacobites, and their Qasha inhabits a sort of little prophet’s chamber built up against the northern wall of the church.
A change had to be made in our personnel for the ensuing section of the journey. The zaptiehs who had accompanied us from Mardin had reached the end of their beat, and we had to apply for a fresh escort to carry us on to Mosul. One of our two new protectors had travelled with “Rabbi Mr. Wigram” before and “knew him to be virtuous and generous,” so relations promised to be harmonious. They were instructed to call for us at the khan at daybreak, “as soon as there was light enough to distinguish between a black thread and a white.” They turned up fairly punctually; but it then transpired that two of our horses needed shoeing, and that the drivers (of course) had not considered it necessary to attend to the matter until it was time to start. Thus the day was quite two hours old when we forded the Jag-jag river, and bumped off along the causeway which leads from the end of the bridge.
Eastward from Nisibin to Mosul—a distance of 120 miles as the crow flies—lies a stretch of unmitigated desert which is known by the expressive name of the Chôl. For a journey of four or five days (according to the conditions of travelling) you pass no permanent human habitation, and the same monotonous level lies before you at every stage. You must carry your own provisions with you, your own shelter for your nightly bivouacs, and (if you are prudent) your own furnace for boiling the water. Even that water itself is only found at rare intervals in stagnant muddy puddles or intermittent and starveling streams.
The Chôl is no sandy desert like the Obi or the Sahara. It is rather what the Spaniards would call a dehesa or despoblada—a waste which might be made fertile by the expenditure of a little pains. It is covered with sparse grass and stunted shrubs, and thistles which are by no means stunted; and a little desultory cultivation which is carried on along the outskirts proves that, with the[{62}] re-establishment of irrigation, it might again be converted into one of the granaries of the world. Once it supported an immense population, for it was the home of the ancient Assyrians; and though the nucleus of that nation was concentrated at Nineveh and the adjacent townships, yet there must have been thousands of surrounding villages to supply food for the crowded cities and recruits for the mighty armies which dominated the whole Eastern world.
They have left some trace of their handiwork, for the whole extent of the desert is studded with gigantic tels spaced six or seven miles apart—huge mounds of earth as big as Silbury Hill. What purpose these can have originally served is a matter of much conjecture. Possibly they were sepulchral tumuli, possibly the mounts of village castles, possibly high places for the performance of sacrificial rites; but in any case it is evident that they cannot have been erected without a vast amount of human labour, and that the whole of the present population would not suffice to raise one. Now they serve chiefly as landmarks by which the faintly marked road can steer its course towards the horizon; and in several instances they still form burial places, possibly from some vague feeling that they must have been sacred long ago.
The more direct southerly road from the Euphrates ferry to Mosul traverses this desolate region for a journey of fully ten days; but the three or four days extra entailed by the divergence through Diarbekr bring with them their own compensation in the shape of greater interest on the way. Moreover the Chôl has its dangers. In summer it is a veritable furnace, and tall awe-inspiring dust devils stalk about it like wandering Jann. But the chief terror of travellers is the “Poison Wind” or Sâm, a faint invisible eddy of scorching air, which will pick out a single man or beast from the midst of a caravan and strike him down instantly senseless, sometimes even killing him on the spot.
At the other end of the scale the district is not exempt from blizzards. In the extraordinarily severe winter of 1910-1911 the northern part of the Chôl was visited by a prodigious snowstorm—a most unusual phenomenon—and[{63}] many parties of Arabs were positively snowed under in their encampments and perished of cold and hunger before they were able to extricate themselves.[36] A wandering Kurd related to us how he had stumbled on such a camp after the visitation was over. His suspicion that something was amiss was first aroused by the fact that he encountered no challenge either from man or dog. When he came to the tents he found them full of dead bodies. The only living creatures among them were one old woman and a mare. Feeling sure that the old woman must die in any case he only brought the mare away with him; “but she died too,” he said plaintively, “before I could get her to my camp.”
More than one carriage load of travellers perished on the road in that catastrophe; but our only discomfort on this occasion was a steady downpour of rain. We were told that we ought to feel grateful for it—that at least it would ensure us against any shortage of water. But no one can be expected to feel very grateful for five successive rainy bivouacs: and even our zaptiehs grumbled a little—three wet days they were prepared for, but no one ever expected to get more! Our horses were the principal sufferers, for the wheels bit deep into the sodden ground and picked up huge dollops of loam which festooned themselves around the felloes. We walked many miles to relieve them; but it was like walking over wet plough-land in England, and we were obliged to pause every few paces in order to disburden ourselves of the lumps which had balled on our feet. Stiff European boots are not nearly so good for such work as the flexible brogues of the natives; and the spongy pads of the camels are apparently the best things of all.
Some of the wild life of the desert showed itself in a herd of gazelle, which cantered across our pathway a mile or so ahead. We roused, too, a flock of herons, several sheldrake,[{64}] a wild goose or two, and an occasional covey of larks. After dark we became aware of the jackals, which began whining dolefully around us; and on one occasion at nightfall, loping along the skyline just over our bivouac, we espied a solitary wolf. Human beings were a very great rarity, despite the fact that we were following a recognized highway, and for two consecutive days the only sign of their neighbourhood was a solitary black Arab tent which we spied some four miles to the right. Twice, however, we encountered a caravan of camels—about seventy strong in one instance, and about thirty in the other. Camels are preferred to mules on the plains as they carry much heavier burdens. Moreover one man (with a donkey) can look after seven or eight camels, whereas a caravan of mules requires about a man apiece.
Our choice of camping-grounds was dictated each night by the presence of water; for despite the steady downpour very little remained upon the surface, and the rain apparently soaks through immediately into the underlying strata, as on the Causses of Auvergne. The water was always muddy and sometimes bitter; but as we invariably boiled it, and kept the beasts away from it till we had filled our kettles, we believe that we swallowed nothing worse than sterilized mud. We used to spread our beds on the lee edge of our waterproof ground sheets, and draw the outer edge over us as an additional protection. But the rain sometimes penetrated everything, and in the morning we would find great pockets of water between the double thicknesses of the waterproof sheets. Decidedly camping-out is an amusement to be practised in the summer when the nights are short, for nights in the open are very tedious. You turn in about seven-thirty, and awake (thinking it nearly dawn) to find that it is eleven. You wake again about two; and then at gradually diminishing intervals, till at last you are rejoiced to find it five-thirty—breakfast time. Once in the middle of the night we were disturbed by one of the horses breaking picket; and the owner arose and gave chase, with frequent ejaculations of Mashallah! (Praise God!)—hardly the sort of comment that one would expect from a British dragoon![{65}]