At nightfall we reached our last camping-ground, overlooking the river Tigris; and here we underwent our last drenching—the longest and heaviest of all. We lay dozing under our waterproofs listening to the patter of the raindrops, and fondly hoping that the dawn might bring us just five minutes respite to enable us to pack up and stow away in the dry. But at last we started up desperately—bundled our beds on to the carriages—and dashed away dripping and reckless without even waiting for food. We knew that just twelve miles ahead we should find real houses with roofs to them—that an hour would bring us to cultivated fields again, and two hours within sight of Mosul. We passed through the city gate with as much relief as the snail and the tortoise must have felt when they entered Noah’s Ark at the tail of the procession; and descended joyfully from that weary araba in which we had been cooped up like Bajazets for a journey of seventeen days.[{69}]
CHAPTER IV
THE BURDEN OF NEWER NINEVEH
(MOSUL)
THERE are more pleasant places in the world than the city of Mosul. Hot, white, and dusty, it lies on a rather “hummocky” site along the right (or western) bank of the Tigris, looking across to where the mounds of Nebi Yunus and Koyunjik mark the site of Nineveh.
It boasts a population of about eighty thousand souls, of whom perhaps a fourth are Christians, and five thousand Jews: and the whole is surrounded by a wall and moat which enclose rather more than a square mile of ground—an area about equal to the city of London.
The wall may follow old lines, but is itself no more than a century old. It is rapidly splitting to pieces owing to the poorness of its construction, a process much assisted both by private citizens and by the Government, both of whom wish to make use of its stones. Probably, the foundations are shaky, for the whole town suffers from that failing; and every minaret in the place has a conspicuous kink in it, except the principal one, which has two.
The town does not now fill up its walls, a large quarter at the northern end having been so devastated by plague about three hundred years ago that it was abandoned. This area now remains empty, and there is in consequence a certain amount of “overflow” beyond the walls at the southern end of the town, where stands the Government serai with the barracks of the troops in its neighbourhood.
Mosul is not a seaport, though the Government of his Britannic Majesty would seem to be invincibly ignorant [{70}]on this point. When the Consulate was re-established here a few years ago, the gentleman appointed asked for a grant for the furnishing of his reception-room, but was refused, on the ground that his only guests would be “a few old sea captains”; to this day his successors are required to make an annual return of the British shipping that has discharged cargo here, though nothing except a “keleg” (the local type of raft, of which we shall hear more) ever comes within three hundred miles of the place!
Mosul boasts one vice that is at least unusual in the land, for it is a smoky town. A pall hangs over much of the city, from the kilns where the local marble is burnt into lime. Nearly the whole city is built in what is known as jess construction. This is a primitive type of building, the walls of all houses being formed with rough blocks of stone, “balled” in lime cement, and so put together. The roof is domed in the same way, but to save material the spandrils are usually filled in with large earthenware pots, which may or may not stand the weight put upon them. As a style, it is deceptive, for it looks solid, enduring, and weather-proof, and yet is none of the three: a house built in it seldom stands for eighty years, the thrust of the dome normally bringing the walls down by the end of that period.
The construction, which cracks freely, has a way of absorbing much of the rain that falls upon it, so that a house is seldom really dry in winter; and the cement has a delightful trick (which is appreciated during a Mosul summer) of storing up heat during the day and gradually releasing it during the night.
The town is composed, like most Oriental cities, of a maze of winding featureless lanes, all of the same white cement, and rarely of a width that forbids a cat to jump across from one roof to the opposite; they are innocent of lamps, or rather were so till the late Nazim Pasha (then Vali of Baghdad, and superintendent of this province also) visited the place; when paraffin lamps were put up in his honour, and now stand unlighted on their brackets. The pavement is of large cobble-stones, worn smooth by many generations of slippers and bare feet; and the whole town is, of course, innocent of drains. Hence, in the rainy season[{71}] it is well to put a portable bridge across the street if you propose to visit your neighbour, or to wear wooden pattens some six inches in height.