Diarbekr at first sight strikes the stranger as a remarkably clean, bright, busy city, with streets unusually broad for the East, enormous bazaars, not roofed as in other Oriental cities, but merely rows of windowless shops lining the ways. Two main thoroughfares intersect the town at right angles, with gates at each end, and the whole is surrounded by the huge wall of basalt built in its present form by Justinian. The population seems for the most part Kurd, wild men of great stature, from the north and east, with high felt hats, like those of the ancient Persians of the Sasanian sculptures, their zouave jackets of sheepskin with the hair outside, the scarlet shoes forming parts of a distinctive costume. The fierce look that a Kurd invariably acquires, the thin bony face, the long stride, mark the hillman, who walks in these peaceable, if noisy, streets with a hand on his rifle and dagger.

We put up in a two-storeyed caravanserai, near the north gate, a place clean and roomy, boasting the luxury of glass to its windows, one or two of which contained a chair and table. These were not for Kurdish Hajis, however, and I humbly took my upper room, thankful that I had a window whence I could survey the lordly effendi as he crossed the yard to his “European” room. Upon the board floor (another luxury this, in a country whose floors are of mud) I spread my rag of carpet and threw my bedding, and, following the coachman, retired to a coffee-house outside for a cup of tea, and the ordeal of questions that pour upon the stranger.

The coffee-house was a big barn-like place, black with the smoke of innumerable water-pipes, and furnished with broad benches, just too high to sit on and let one’s feet touch the ground. They are, of course, made to be squatted upon. The place was very full, and we had to squeeze in on one already occupied; and I found myself next a holy man, a yellow individual in the long cloak denoting a priest, and the green turban that is the sign of a Sayyid, or descendant of the Prophet. This sanctity of course called for greetings from us, the plebeians, the insignificant, and with humility we tendered our “Salamun ’alaikum,” receiving the “’Alaikum as salam” in sonorous tones before we sat down.

The first questions came quickly enough.

“Whence do you come? whither going? what nationality? why travelling?” which were answered by the responses I had resolved to adhere to.

“From Aleppo to Persian Kurdistan, a Shiah Musulman travelling back to my country.”

This I said in Kurdish, for the man was ignorant of Turkish, which became less known as we went farther east.

Himself he was an Arab, a native of Mosul. In the lands of Islam, where knowledge and religion are inseparable, it is the divinity student that becomes the doctor, the lawyer, the judge. This priest was by profession a petty lawyer, and gained a kind of livelihood by settling disputes. To this he added the profession of healer of scorpion bites, which he remedied by applying to the wound the oil extracted from the black scorpion. Conversing pleasantly of this science, he produced a cigarette box and played with the lid as one who waits to finish speaking before taking a smoke. He ceased his dissertation upon scorpions, and nonchalantly opened his box, to display two large scorpions writhing within and scraping their horny legs and claws against its tin sides. He lifted one out, disregarding its furious blows upon his fingers, let the reptile crawl up his arm, picked it off, replaced it in the box, smiled at me a toothless and sinister smile, slipped off his seat and left the café.

My coachman had watched the performance. He knew the man well, he said; he had practised his trades in Diarbekr for years, always a buyer of good black scorpions at fourpence each, and a seller of the oil at a mejidie for ten drops. His remarkable performance with the live scorpions was possible owing to his practice, when catching scorpions, of nipping off the sting of the tail with a pair of scissors.

There was a fresh briskness, a hearty feeling in the air of Diarbekr, that took the fancy. The new springtime exactly achieved that mean of temperature wherein man feels at his best in the Mesopotamian plains, that scorch the life out, and make the strongest languid during the long summer.

The place was crowded and busy; the Kurds, released from their snow-bound mountains, were coming in to buy summer clothing; the Armenians, who are the craftsmen of Diarbekr, were enjoying a period of immunity from the terror in which they often exist.

The broad street of the town, that lets in the breeze and the sun, gave it a cheerfulness in that season that many another town, whose winter mud is just beginning to congeal in dark alleys, lacks.

I took the earliest opportunity to get outside the north gate, which was but a few yards from the caravanserai door, to inspect the curious stones that are embedded in the walls, stones bearing images of birds and beasts, relics of a wall that perhaps encircled the city during pre-Christian times. Yet with all the evidence of importance, with its old church towers turned to minarets, where the bells that called to the worship of the Trinity are replaced by the call of them that cry to the Indivisible Unity, where Roman ruled later than in any other city of the East, and where the Christian was predominant till Islam, borne upon the shoulders of Arabs from the south, drove him out and subdued him: with all this, Diarbekr has figured less in the ancient annals than many a village and mound that to-day passes unnoticed.

All the nations that passed over the lands have fought for and owned it. Assyria knew it not by name, though if it existed then, it was an outpost of the empire. Armenians, Persians, Parthians, and Romans fought over it, but the chronicles tell us little. In Christian times the Persian leader Kawad (Sasanian) practically destroyed it; in A.D. 507 and in A.D. 1124 seven hundred persons of the Assassin or Ismailia sect were massacred. It fell into Turkish hands in A.D. 1056, when Tughril Bey of the early Seljuq dynasty captured it.

It was not on the main road from Syria to Babylon, nor Europe to Persia; the hosts of invaders and defeated passed too far to the south, and left Amid in her corner, where she trembled at the noise of the battle that sometimes ruined her. Tigran, one of the greater Parthic-Armenian kings, took the place when he subdued Gordyene, upon whose southern borders it still stands, and he built a capital a little north of it, ignoring its claims to importance.

The present city has, as already described, four gates in its massive walls, but the Turks have knocked out a wicket gate in the north wall, and called the Yengi Qapu, “The New Gate.” Also, a Turkish governor, offended at the sight of so substantial a monument of a race greater than his—and pagan—attempted to destroy the architecture neither he nor all his kind could ever emulate, and succeeded in defacing a portion of the north wall. Demolition of such a monument, however, proved too great a task for this mean vandal, and he desisted, and has gone his insignificant way. A few of the old churches still exist, which, in my character of Muhammadan, I was prevented from viewing.

The modern population, apart from the Kurds and Mosul Arabs, is composed of Christians, of whom there are more varieties than in other towns of Asiatic Turkey. The Armenians are in the majority, and form the whole of the large section engaged in the manufacture of copper vessels, for which Diarbekr is famous. There are Greeks, relics of the rule of Byzantium, divided into three or four sects, Syrians, or Christian Arabs as they prefer to call themselves, some belonging to the Syrian Church and others Catholics. There are Chaldeans, who glory in the assertion (never disproved) that they are lineal descendants of Nebuchadnezzar and the later Assyrians, speaking an ancient dialect which is nearer to the inscription-language than any other.

The Roman Catholics have been busy among all the sects, notably among Armenian and Chaldean here, and many of both own allegiance to the Pope. Every sect—and none can tell how many there are—is as certain of its own particular salvation as of the perdition of all the others, and a hatred reigns over this Christian “centre” among the various kinds of Christians that puts in the shade any length of the detestation for Islam.

It is unfortunate that the Asiatic Christian is, as a rule, a very undesirable creature, more bigoted than the most fanatical Muhammadan, of a craft and infidelity seldom witnessed in other lands, and of an attitude towards his co-religionists of different tenets that can be only described as traitorous. It may be reckoned a heretical statement to put forward, but the dweller in the East is bound to confess that among the greater part of the peoples of Western Asia, Islam produces a better man than Christianity. The temperament of the middle Eastern Semitic is ultra-utilitarian. The ideals that Christianity puts before him have too slender a hold upon a nature that craves for the substance, and the latitude allowed in daily life by the Western faith accords ill with the temperament that seeks set rule and law, that may govern the manner of his rising and sitting, of his eating and sleeping, and by the observance of which he may accumulate the merit that may secure to him the acquisition of ideals almost mundane. The high soul and spirit required by Christianity is too far above these material minds, and the hazy and ill-understood ideal cannot hold their endeavours as do the needs of life and the almost unconquerable cupidity of the Semitic nature. So we see the spiritual and intangible, the higher head and sign of their religion lost sight of, in the struggles that rage about leadership of their minor saints, and points of doctrine and dogma that tear asunder the Christian community. Islam is material, her ideals are powerful and simple, there is through all that unification of leader and led that all can appreciate. One God, one Prophet, one Book, each in its own rational relation to the other, a simple doctrine, powerful in its direct appeal to the unity, a leader, a prophet who lays down with the despotism understood of the ancient Semitic spirit, law and letter for all things; that is a creed that the Arab mind sees as tangible, if such an expression be permissible; a law for all and a reward attainable by the observance of its well-defined canons, demanding not too much of the man in his daily life, yet holding him—as all who know the East must know—with a mysterious and invincible power that calls upon his life when it wills, and finds it ever ready for the sacrifice.

Persecution has doubtless made the Christian crafty and distrustful, and is often quoted as an excuse for the many undesirable qualities he possesses which the Musulman does not share. Alone among these Christian sects stand the Chaldeans of the north, whose pride of race and tongue has done something to keep them above the Armenians, Syrians, and Greeks they despise, and to preserve alive in their breasts the sentiment of the ruling race from whom they profess to spring, and which saves them from many a littleness which is an integral part of the nature of the other Christians.

The persecution of the Christians—of which Diarbekr has too often been the theatre—excites the sympathy of all nations, and rightly too; for whatever be their quibbles, they hold fast to Christianity through all the massacres and terror that Turkish vindictiveness has incited and paid for. I say paid for, because it is, among the underworld of western Kurdistan and northern Mesopotamia, a common subject of talk in the cafés how much the Sultan and the Government paid the ruffians of the towns to do their dirty work, and how much the Kurdish Aghas presented to the authorities to be allowed to finish unhindered the blood-feuds that existed between themselves and Armenians sheltering in Diarbekr and the towns of Armenia. A very reign of terror overshadows the apparently peaceful and prosperous town.

None ever know when the Turks will permit the looser part of the Musulman population to slaughter, or call down from the hills those terrible Kurds that hold Christian and Musulman alike in fear.

It is impossible not to notice here the universal law that forces the weak to imitate the appearance of the strong, as a protective measure. The Christians of Diarbekr and the outlying country have adopted the dress of the town Musulmans, the long tunic and the waistband, the felt cap surrounded by a blue handkerchief, to such effect that the stranger cannot distinguish one from the other at first, and only learns to pick out the slight difference in the arrangement of the head-handkerchief after some time.

So too at Mosul, where the Christians and Muhammadan Arab are not visibly different, except where the former has adopted a fez; and in southern and Persian Kurdistan, where Kurd and Chaldean dress precisely alike, and where the Chaldean speaks perfect Kurdish, and, happy to relate, is usually on excellent terms with his ferocious neighbours, who have none of the detestation for them that they have for the treacherous Armenians.

From Diarbekr I purposed to travel as far as Mosul down the Tigris on a kalak, or raft of skins and poles. The few Europeans who have adopted this pleasant method of travelling, usually hired half the raft, erected a booth or tent and carried a cook and servants, travelling tranquilly, with no more to do than admire the scenery and take snapshot photographs. In my assumed character I could not go in for this style of luxury, and had to look out for a passage by a kalak carrying cargo, upon the top of which I might be allowed to sit, for a consideration.

However, I was to have a tent after all, and it came about thus:—

I was eating my frugal lunch of dry bread and lettuces one day in the caravanserai, when an aged man in the long garments and felt waistcoat of a southern Kurd came up to my room, and entering with a salutation, sat down, and accepted my invitation to share the meal. He introduced himself as Haji Vali, a native of Erbil, on the western marches of Kurdistan, a Baba Kurd, returning from his seventeenth journey to Mecca. He, like me, sought a passage to Mosul, and came with the news that a kalak was ready; and, moreover, possessed a shelter of sticks and calico which had been made for an effendi now unable to travel, and which could be bought for a mejidie or so. The old man knew a little Persian, and spoke, besides his native Kurdish in which we conversed, Turkish and Arabic. The assurance with which he had joined me at my meal, and the certainty he seemed to feel that I should become a partner with him in our passage to Mosul, I found a feature of all his doings.

He had an abrupt, dictatorial manner, which he tempered with bluff heartiness, and, used to the respect which his seventeen journeys to Mecca had earned for him, was not accustomed to receiving a refusal to any of his propositions. So when he proposed to me—whom he called Musa—addressing me as “his beloved son,” that we should share all expenses, I agreed. No sooner was this settled than he departed, to return later with his goods and chattels, some being saddle-bags, and little sacks of charcoal, a tin samovar, and a packet of letters and papers which he entrusted to me, as being more secure in the pocket of my overcoat; for in the fashion of the long tunic of the East he possessed no pockets, but two wallets hanging at his sides, and must needs thrust any valuables in his breast. The kalak owner now appeared with the Armenian doorkeeper as witness and intermediary in the negotiations. This kalak owner was a gaunt Kurd, pretty well seven feet tall, a cadaverous-looking giant who, squatting on the ground, seemed an ordinary man’s height. An impediment in his speech and a single fierce-looking eye make him a fearsome-looking fellow. He was very easy to haggle with, though, and started by demanding six mejidies for transporting us to Mosul, we to be allowed to use the tent, which should become his property at the journey’s end. We held out for five mejidies, and half the proceeds of the sale of the tent at Mosul. Eventually, after the consumption of many cigarettes, and after he had three several times risen and got half-way down the stairs in apparent indignation at our inflexibility, with the Armenian as disinterested go-between, we arranged on the price of two mejidies each, the tent being the Kurd’s property. The kalak was to start next morning, and we must transport ourselves and our belongings outside the town to a spot where a stone bridge crosses the river some mile below Diarbekr.

In the meantime we must purchase food for some days; the journey, if we received no checks, would occupy five days, but if high winds arose or much rain fell we must be resigned to twelve days or even longer. So we visited the bazaar. First to a baker’s, where we ordered a sack full of thick flaps of bread, that he would cook by noon, and half toast besides, making them as it is called, “firni,” which prevents the bread going mouldy. Then to buy sugar, at which operation my knowledge of “European”—as Haji Vali called an ability to read Latin characters—was needed, for the Armenian shopkeeper tried to pass off upon us as “English sugar” some inferior produce of Austria, and his surprise and Haji Vali’s delight were about equal when I exposed the fraud by reading the label.

To buy anything was a great nuisance. When I was alone I never had the patience to beat the seller down to the last farthing, and would pay an eighth of a penny more for an article than its proper price; but old Haji Vali would have none of this. He knew the price of everything in every city from Medina to Bagdad, and woe betide the Christian who swore to a false price. At last, however, we actually did finish our purchases, which, if I remember, were as follows: a sack each of charcoal and bread, ten pounds of rice, one pound of tea, three sugar loaves, six pewter teaspoons, seven pounds of clarified butter, odd quantities of lentils and pease, three long strings of dried “lady’s fingers,” a little vegetable; pepper and rock salt; some dried fruits. These we carried to the caravanserai, bent double under the sacks and bags we shouldered. The purchase of these things took us from nine in the morning till nearly sunset, and involved as much talking and argument as a session of parliament.

Having locked up our purchases and tied up our goods, ready to be taken away next morning, we went out for a last look at Diarbekr; but the old man, sick of bazaars, surprised me by a request, unlike what one would expect from one of a people that usually expresses so little regard for the aspect of things natural, and the beauties of the world we live in.

Taking my arm, he said:

“Musa, my son, after the day’s toil, let us go outside the gate to a quiet spot among the trees upon the cliff, where we can sit and look upon the view.”

So, very gratefully, I consented, and we took our way by the gate, turned to the right, and passing the hideous military school, came to the cliff that overhangs the Tigris. We descended a little by a footpath, and found a clump of trees on a narrow ledge, whence, sheltered from the view of passers above, we could look out northwards, across the plain, and to the ever dark hills of Kurdistan. The old man sat silent for a long time, but at last expressed his sentiments in one long “Allahu akbar!” (“God is great”).

And then he pointed out to me the beauties of the great rushing stream, the vivid colouring of its yellow banks, and the light green of the groves of trees that sprang with a new year’s life far below us.

Again he sat silent, and gazed with narrowed eyes at the far mountains, and when he spoke again, it was the soul of the Kurd and of the mountaineer that threw the harsh words of his dialect from his tongue:

“God! and God! and God! He, the Indivisible, His glories are manifest to our eyes, and His mercies to our hearts and minds. Yet my son, think not that these mountains—upon which the body roams, while the soul, soaring above, meets the Unknown in a medium pure7 as the snow-field that stretches above—are His masterpiece. For verily, as these mighty hills are the greatest of His works here, yet they are but as the pebble upon their flanks compared to His works in Heaven.

“See this work, how it exists. Who are we to boast of the power He gave us, Who takes it away after our four days of transition? See these city walls, the great among us made them, and they shall fall in a space of time incalculably small in His sight, yet the stones of them are His handiwork, and long enduring, have endured, even as those hills. And when the walls shall sink, one, building the sign of his ambition with the ruin of another’s, shall use these same stones, remembering the former builder of walls.

“Ah! that he forget not the Maker of the stones that last, and the hills that endure.”

The old man spoke quietly, yet as he spoke, the blue eyes dimmed and the voice shook—indeed there are anomalies in this world, dual personalities, among the sons of the East that one never suspects.

This old man, who had spent his life in an occupation we should deride as hypocritical—for he was a guide to Mecca, and while overcharging the uninitiated, achieved spurious merit—had yet in his old heart a spot where the poetry that lives in the Aryan breast yet lurked, and emanated, ascribing everything to that fearful Omnipotence that the Muhammadan worships.

In the Persian I have often met this dual personality—the hard, cautious man, who descends to any trickery and deception, even crime, for the meanest ends, and in a revulsion of feeling reviles himself, sees himself as others see him, in the purest poetry of language and thought expresses the most beautiful sentiment, and falls to earth again.

The mountains, always the mountains, held the old man’s gaze. There is a fascination about them that it is not necessary to be a Kurd or a Persian to be able to acquire. The impassive monuments of old-time glacier and volcanic upheaval, relics of convulsions that rent continents, that rise straight up from the flat, broad plains, may well seize upon all that is impressionable in anyone, and inspire the dullest with that craving to penetrate the mysteries of their deep valleys, and view the world from their blanched heads.

Truly, Diarbekr, that looks out from its fine bluff upon the lands of four old empires—Assyria to the south, Armenia to the north, Media to the east, and Rome to the west, might have much to meditate upon, were it allowed time for meditation between the continual rebellion and persecution that tear it.

Sunset, that meant gates closed, forced us to return, and once within the gates, Haji forgot his mood, and recommenced his talk of the journey, of the prices of our various purchases, of the unscrupulousness of Armenians, and the exaction of the Turks, who sent up the price of everything.

Next morning early we roused up, and while I went out into the streets to find a porter, Haji busied himself arranging the goods for carrying. A sturdy Kurd, whom I found in a mosque yard, arranged to carry our things for five piastres (10d.), and we loaded him up with a box and the saddle-bags, upon which we cast our bedding. The rest we must carry ourselves, for Haji, who would spend as little as possible himself, would not allow me to waste a coin where it could be saved.

It took us a little while to convince the Armenian keeper that a couple of shillings was enough for five days’ occupation of his room; but this once done, he helped to load us up, and at length we departed. Haji’s load was the sack of charcoal, and a bag containing the rice and some sundries, while I shouldered the bread and suspended from myself bags containing tea and sugar loaves, odds and ends of all descriptions, and a charcoal brazier that picked pieces out of me wherever it struck its many sharp corners. The whole length of Diarbekr we struggled, for the south gate was our first objective, and not till then did I realise the size of the place. The straight street ran on as it seemed to infinity, but the gate (so like the gate from Winchelsea to the Romney marshes) did appear at last, and by some extraordinary providence the police did not worry. The sun was getting up at the pace he always does in the East, which I am sure is greater than anywhere else, and we sweated and panted as we waddled along, bent double under our loads. The porter, with the strength of his kind, outdistanced us, and with his steady march was soon lost among the trees that border the winding road. Haji’s breath gave out here, and we had to rest, but at last we did get to the bank of the river, and threw our loads down upon some bags of apricots that were to go to Mosul.

And now, since we are arrived at the kalak, a description of the ingenious craft is necessary. Briefly, two hundred inflated goatskins arranged in the form ten by twenty, are bound to a few thin transverse poplar trunks above them. Over these again seven or eight more tree-trunks not more than 7 inches thick, are placed crosswise, and upon these, to form a deck, is placed a layer of bales. Between two pairs of these bales a basket-work affair is fixed, which, with a stake, forms a rough thole-pin. A pair of enormous sweeps swings on these, and the oarsmen, standing upon one bale, build a bridge of twigs across to the next row, and wield the sweeps standing. Under the sweeps an empty space is always left across the raft, where the skins are visible between the rafters.

The raft, from its shape and construction, cannot be propelled, and the raison d’être of the oars is for turning, by which the kalak is directed into the right currents, and to pull the craft out of the danger that rocks standing in the stream often threaten. In the upper river, between Diarbekr and Mosul, particularly during the springtime, progress at night is impossible, for the side-currents which sweep round the rocky banks at the velocity of a galloping horse would hopelessly smash the raft. Wind, too, naturally exerts a great driving force upon a craft that draws but three inches of water, and its strength, too much for oars to fight against, often compels a halt.

When we arrived, Kurdish porters were loading up the last of the cargo, dried apricots and rice mostly, from round about Urfa. The crew were busy blowing up partially deflated skins with a tube which they inserted into a protruding leg of the skin. Our tent, or “tenta” as the Arabs called it, was wedged between two walls of bales, and entering, we found it had a plank floor laid over the tree-trunks forming the raft.

We had two fellow-passengers—one an Arab merchant of Mosul, a man of tremendous piety, who spent his whole time smoking cigarettes and calling on the Lord. The other was as diametrically opposite to him in character as possible: a time-expired soldier, a youth of twenty-three, who was returning from the Hejaz Railway, where he had formed part of the military police guard, to Kirkuk, his native town. Foul-mouthed, blasphemous, a thief, possessing no money and expecting us to keep him, he was a type of what the Turk becomes when the army has moulded him to its standard of ruffianism.

The crew of the raft was composed of two Kurds, little men of the Zaza, a tribe that lives in the high mountains round the upper Tigris valley and headwaters. These people are different in appearance and manners from nearly all other Kurds. They are short men, of a shy, quick temperament, very sharp, and excellent workers, speaking a dialect which, while Kurdish, denotes by its form a very high antiquity. It is possible that these are lineal descendants of the hill-tribes that the Assyrians had so much trouble in controlling, and whom the Parthians and Romans of a later age never subdued. In the high, pointed felt cap and long-toed shoes they still preserve part of a dress familiar from the sculptures of the southern Armenian mountains.

The skipper of our craft was known as one of the most skilful of all the river men, and in the dreadful weather that followed he showed by his ability his claim to that reputation.

We cast off from the bank at ten o’clock this sunny morning, a light breeze from the north both assisting our progress and keeping the temperature at a degree of perfect comfort. Under such conditions, fine weather and a broad river that runs at a steady pace without too many shallows and rapids, there is probably no more pleasant method of travelling than by kalak. As it proceeds, the raft turns round and round slowly, giving a view of every side.

There is an ease and comfort about it all that only the traveller fresh from the road can appreciate. The abundance of cool, clean water is the chief delight of the journey, contrasting with the ever-present trouble of the road, with its water often enough scarce, and always obtained only at the expense of considerable manual labour. The dust and filth, the long, wearying stages, the trouble of loading and unloading and of seeking food in obscure bazaars when one is dead tired, the awakening from a sleep all too short in the dark before dawn, all these are past, and all there is to do is to lie at full length upon the bales and give oneself up to the luxury of pure laziness and enjoyment of the view.

For two days we floated down between flat banks, passing a few villages, all Kurdish. At night we tied up, gathered some sticks, made a fire, and cooked rice. Haji and myself were regarded as the first-class passengers, possessing, as we did, a tent, and living upon cooked food. The others had but dry bread and cheese, of which they had brought a sufficient supply to last. As the custom of Islam generally, and of the Kurd particularly, demands a fraternal fellowship among all travellers, we entertained the passengers and crew at our evening meal every night. The class distinction that asserts itself in every land on earth, whether it be the difference made by breeding, position, or hard cash, became apparent on the first evening. I had cleaned and washed the rice, boiled it, and produced a pilau, turning it out into our one dish, which was but a big copper saucepan-lid. We invited the company to partake, refusing to eat under any other conditions. The crew, however, were too shy, and asserting their own unworthiness, said they would eat afterwards. The Arab merchant, too, hung off with polite phrases, but was eventually forced to join. The soldier needed no encouragement, and would have sat down and begun without waiting for us to put out our hands to the dish, a terrible gaucherie; but for some reason both Arab and Kurd, who had conceived a strong dislike to him, fairly beat him off, saying that he was not of our class and rank, and might wait and eat afterwards. So, with very bad grace, he retired to sulkiness and cigarettes. A hearty appetite, helped by the pity-to-waste-it kind of sentiment, assures the total disappearance of a cooked meal among all the people of road and river in the East, so there were never any leavings, and the washing up of the one dish was always undertaken by the crew. Morning and afternoon, we made tea upon the raft, precedence in the dispensing of it being strictly observed. First myself, for all had given me the title of effendi, on the strength of a fez and overcoat, and regarded me as the aristocrat of the party, then Haji Vali my partner, then the Arab, and after we had each partaken of the regulation three glasses, the crew received their two, the soldier getting his share last of all.

The third day, great mountains began to rise high before us, stretching away across the course of the river, far to the east and west. The second night we tied up at a Kurdish village just before reaching some high cliffs that were the sentinels of the terrific gorges we were to pass later, and here our luck turned. First we learned that a section of the Kurdish tribe in the hills we could see ahead had rebelled, a quite usual occurrence, and to show their defiance of authority, were shooting at passers-by on the river. This was certainly disquieting, but a prospective danger is sometimes dwarfed by present discomfort. In the pouring rain that set in at sunset, we forgot all about robbers and rebels. A strong gale arose, with torrential rain, which wet our tent through, threatening to tear it away altogether. The Kurdish crew, who feared to leave their craft to the mercy of a wind and ever-strengthening current, that might carry it away and shatter it against rocks, were bound to sleep aboard, and in a piercing cold they lay sodden, rivulets running from their thin garments, and tried to sleep. We in the tent were not much better off. All our bedding got soaked, thick cotton quilts which take hours to dry; our rice and charcoal became pulp and mud respectively. Streams falling from pools in the calico roof spouted upon us, now on our faces, now in the nape of our necks. Pools formed upon our coverings, and soaked through. Our clothing could absorb no more, nor our bedding, and at last we, like the unfortunates outside, resigned ourselves to becoming shivering bodies wrapped in spongy swathings, our only advantage over them being a little shelter from the stinging wind. In the black darkness we had to crawl out over bales of apricots, slippery with the juice and wet that oozed from them, to secure our flimsy house: every few moments a new place had to be found for such valuables as matches, whose ever-changing refuge was invaded by the rain with a malignant persistency as regularly as we devised it.

Morning brought us no relief, and indeed made our case worse, for had we stayed at the village we could have taken shelter in its houses. By an irony of the elements, the wind held off at sunrise, and despite the rain we cast off. An hour downstream, where it narrowed among the hills and ever-rising cliffs, the wind swept down again, and we tied up by a strip of beach under a precipice, and so cut ourselves off from any chance of shelter. For three days and nights it rained and blew. Even our bread, the only thing we had to eat, became sodden. Haji developed rheumatism, and a temper so irritable that I migrated to the bales outside, and slept two nights upon the apricots, covered by soaked and clammy things that, while they kept the wind off, were so chill as to make their advantage problematical.

The fourth morning, however, broke fine, and in half an hour the clouds had torn to rags, the wind had gone overhead, driving the rack at a tremendous pace; but below, the river ran blue between its yellow cliffs, now a good two hundred feet high, and we steamed in the welcome warmth; and now we saw how the three days’ torrent had altered the condition of affairs. Our mooring-stakes were a couple of feet under water, and the river, which from here runs in a gorge through the mountains—a gorge ever narrowing—was flying along at express speed. Our courageous skipper cast off, and we commenced to race along. The river pursues a remarkable course here. The reaches are straight and short, and owing to the similarity in colouring of the opposite banks it is impossible to see the turn—often less than a right angle—till right upon it. Huge hills rise up beyond their lower slopes covered with trees, and above all we could see snow-capped peaks. In these wild gorges, of a beauty of spring verdure, of a magnificence indescribable, we felt—as in all effect we were—but a chip swept along the great river. At every turn the current, setting towards the far bank, would sweep round, roaring against the vicious-looking rocks, and all hands were called to the oars to keep the raft from dashing upon them, and being torn to pieces. The river, narrowing between points sometimes, or running over submerged rocks at others, breaks up in high curling swell, and the current doubles its speed. Here we would experience the greatest excitement in guiding the raft to the exact centre of the converging ridges of waves and shooting through between them at a tremendous velocity, to rush upon the boiling commotion where they met. The raft would undulate, its non-rigid construction prevents its rocking, and waves would roll up, drenching us and our goods, and our half-dried garments, while the raft cracked ominously. At such points Haji and the Arab merchant, grasping the nearest firm object, would ejaculate fervently, “Ya Rebbi! Sahl! Ya Rebbi!” (“Oh God, help! Oh God!”), and passing the danger spot, utter equally fervent thanksgiving. As we proceeded, the hills and cliffs got higher and steeper, great mountain sides rose at a slope apparently impossible to climb, to dizzy heights. Here and there would occur a narrow point of land, around which the stream curved, and upon every such was a little Kurdish village, the house of the head-man, well built of stone, with a loop-holed tower standing up on slightly higher ground. Once or twice shots were fired, but our pace took us far beyond the reach of the sportsmen, almost before they could reload. Seeing these great hills, these constant precipices, it was easy enough to understand why the armies of the old Powers of Mesopotamia in their marches northward always took the westerly plain roads, and left these hills to the tribes that have inhabited them ever since Central Asia poured out its hordes of Aryans far back in the years before history, to people the Western world.

One afternoon, when we were favoured with good weather, we turned into a long reach, and had before us one of the most remarkable sights the Tigris has to offer. The right bank of the river rose in a vertical cliff to a great height, and was faced across the broad stream by fellow cliff not so high, but honeycombed with cave-dwellings. The right hand cliff (which was the result of a hill-side cut off by the river) was broken at one place and continued again, the ravine—but a few yards across—coming down to the water’s edge. Upon the summit of this continued portion we could see a considerable town, so high up that human figures looked minute. Behind all, rose precipitous hill-sides, between whose gorges and valleys could be seen yet wilder crags and peaks. In the village or town two or three towers, narrow and tall, of the dimensions of a factory chimney, rose, looking more slender and high from the eminence upon which they stood. But most remarkable of all were the great piers of a once colossal bridge, that, springing from a lower point of the cliff, or rather from a spot upon its slope down to the foreshore, spans the space to the opposite cliff, bridging the Tigris further south than any existing stone bridge. Here the stream is broad and deep, and the mighty piers that tower above and shadow the passer-by in his humble kalak, speak volumes for the perseverance and talent of people past and gone, and, by comparison, the qualities of the Ottomans. And on both sides, on the left or east bank, where the cliff growing ever lower still hedges the river, and on the west, where receding it leaves a fertile foreshore, the faces are pierced with cave-dwellings, rock forts that communicate with one another. Curious chambers, open at the river-side, mere eeries, looked down upon the stream, and it is only a near approach that reveals the mode of access, a passage diving into the rock. From the village above a staircase has been cut, zig-zagging down the cliff-face to where the river laps the solid rock wall.

This remarkable place, far off the track of any road, removed from even the feeble influence of the Turk by its surrounding mountains, is called Hasan Kaif. The name is modern, and tradition says that Hasan Kaif8 was a Kurdish brigand who established himself there and levied toll upon all river passers, fortifying himself in a place that hardly needs any artificial protection, so well has Nature fenced it about. The bridge is said by most people to be Roman, but later experts than those who started the theory—for want of a better—state that it is Venetian, a relic of the old road to the East. In fact, I believe traces of Venetians have been found also in the town, where there are ruins. It is probable that the Venetians knew the place by reputation and history before they ever established themselves there. The population has probably been always Kurd, the Armenians that existed there before the Armenian massacre having immigrated. Now the Kurds have the place to themselves once more, and under the superlatively corrupt and feeble government of to-day, its old reputation has returned. Here, too, are some Yezidi, those ingenuous souls that, instead of attempting to curry favour with the Almighty, regard the evil power as more potential in this life, and seek to appease Satan, which perhaps comes to the same thing in effect upon their daily lives. We did not stop here, but allowed ourselves to be swept past, down a wide reach where the hills opened out, and at nightfall tied up where the river grew tremendously broad and turned sharply to the right.9

With night rain came on again, once more drowning us in our garments and coverings. So much water had the cargo absorbed that the raft had apparently sunk. At the start the skins were half out of water and had to be constantly sprinkled with a spoon-like instrument of leather, to prevent drying and cracking, but the last two days they had been invisible, and now even the covering beams began to disappear. The apricots, soaked by the first rain, had swollen and grown pulpy, a day’s sun had partially dried the outsides of the sacks, and induced a most unpleasant effluvium. Now everything became full of water to its saturation point again, and on this occasion a freezing wind arose, the reason for which we perceived at daybreak, for the hills were covered with new snow.

We cast off at the second hour of daylight, and floated out into a lake of swift-rushing eddies, crashing commotions of meeting streams. Here the Buhtan Su—the largest of the streams that go to make up the full Tigris—enters at a broad place, a bay among some abruptly rising hills. For a mile or so the reach of the combined rivers sweeps along broad and deep, then is forced to take the only possible outlet through a narrow gorge, between where the speed is positively giddy. As we approached the turn, a number of Kurds appeared, running down a valley to the river, and as they neared opened fire upon us, hitting nothing but a bale or two; but their attention was diverted most opportunely by another party, which, appearing on high, commenced a lively fusillade directed at our assailants. Very unfortunately we were not in a position to stop and watch the developments, but as we were hustled round a bend we saw that a brisk fight was in progress. It interested me very much to note the behaviour of my fellow-travellers. The crew seemed to think the affair very ordinary, and never ceased rowing; in fact it would have been impossible to relinquish control of the raft in this corridor full of rocks. The Arab and Haji, too, while very careful to take shelter behind bales, knowing that we must soon be carried beyond reach of danger, were very little perturbed, only the Kurdish blood of the older man boiled to think that he had not a gun to respond. The Turkish soldier disappeared at the first shot, having wedged himself in among the apricot bags and the rafters, whence he at length emerged wet and muddy.

We were not to go far that day, for rain and storm came on again, and we had to tie up; but the morning came fine, and despite the precarious condition of the raft, which was now floating under water, we resolved to go on as far as Jazira, a small town at the foot of the mountains, and reached there completely water-logged, and sinking deeper every minute, a little after noon.

Here our crew were paid off and another couple taken over; the process of handing over being to count everything on board, passengers included, when the new man, entering into possession, looked around and was expected to carry out all necessary repairs, or rearrange cargo and passengers as suited. He wasted no time, and plunged into the chilly water, pulling out deflated skins, blowing up others, replacing faulty ones, and tidying up generally till sunset.

We were to have started next morning, but again the weather came on, and a worse downpour than ever drove all the loafers away and left us forlorn upon the beach, whence we retired to a hole in the ruined wall of the old citadel.

Jazira, or Jazira ibn Umar, once important, is now but a large and excessively filthy and ruinous village, peopled by Arabs, Kurds, Turks, and Christians of various kinds. Its importance is evidenced by the existence of some police, and we were soon made aware of their existence.

When we first arrived, as we were short of a few odds and ends, I went and explored the bazaar, which is good and well stocked, considering the size of the place. There is also a public bath, into which I put my nose and fled. The bazaar sells rope (for which the place is locally famous), dates, desiccated cheese, dried fruit and raisins, and the usual imported articles. I wanted dates, I remember, and had a curious time getting them, for the inhabitants, mostly Kurds, would not believe that I was anything but a Turk, fez and overcoat being inseparably connected with that race in the minds of a people who dress in pegtop trousers of native cloth, shirts of the same, and felt waistcoats.

I had acquired sufficient Turkish to speak by now, but Kurdish came more easily off my tongue, so at the first shop I reached, where I saw dates exposed for sale, I asked the price in Kurdish, and was answered in Turkish. Mentioning the price I professed to be ready to give, I received the assurance of its impossibility in Turkish, with an assertion, not made without pride, that the speaker knew that tongue.

“Very good,” said I; “but I don’t.”

“How? do you only know Arabic, then?”

“No, I don’t know Arabic; you must talk Kurdish.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Diarbekr and Aleppo and the cities of the West.”

“And don’t know Arabic?”

“No, nor would I speak it if I did, to a Kurd.”

“Then you must be a Kurd, but your language is not ours; where is your country?”

“My country is one you never saw—Persia.”

“Persia!” he exclaimed, and shouted to his neighbours, “Here is a Persian!”

Several collected about, anxious to see me, for it is a curious fact that anywhere along the Tigris above Bagdad no Persians exist, nor ever come, and are greater strangers in this out-of-the-way corner than a Greek.