There was soon a small crowd around, and ignoring my need of dates, the heartier ones took me off to a café, and I was kept there for an hour or two answering questions about Persia, and learning a little about Jazira, the chief feature of which was, according to them, the bridge of boats which crosses the river during the summer only, and a hill upon which the Ark is said to have grounded on its way north to Ararat.10 I at last escaped, and having purchased dates and rope, was returning to the kalak, when I met our late skipper, who sought me, to say good-bye, as he was returning on foot to Diarbekr.

I was proposing to give him a penknife I possessed, but he saw he had nothing of equal value, and would only accept a handful of dried dates, in exchange for which he gave a cake of sweet bread. He had just received his pay for five days’ hard work, which required skill, experience, and probity, the sum of two shillings. No wonder people employ Kurds in preference to lazy and incompetent Arabs and Turks.

The third day an extra row of skins with three more rafters was added to our raft, and half an hour before we were supposed to start, eight soldiers of a Turkish regiment from Kharput calmly walked on board, knocking the captain overboard, for he would have protested. These creatures, by their behaviour and subsequent cowardice and brutality, disgusted us to such an extent that had we foreseen the annoyance their folly and bestiality would cause, I think we should have all got out and walked from Jezira to Mosul.

However, we were trying to coax them to sit in such positions as would not endanger the raft’s equilibrium, when upon the ruined wall above two uniformed persons appeared, and a third, who came aboard with a confidential serious air, told us the police required us. Haji, the Arab merchant, the soldier, and myself, climbed the wall and were ordered in a surly manner to produce passports. The others had not theirs with them, but mine was ready, and I produced it, hoping that affairs would pass off as easily as at Diarbekr.

Not so, the policeman read the whole thing, then turned sharply upon me, and informed me that I had stolen an English tourist’s passport, that I was obviously an Oriental, or why this method of travelling, this dress, this acquaintance with Kurdish. In vain I protested, and he asked me my name. With horror I heard the voice of Haji, just arrived, answer:

“This is Musa Effendi, a Persian gentleman, for whom I vouch; my very good friend and comrade, a good companion, and a devout Muslim.”

The policeman folded up the passport with a triumphant air, and directed his two men to take me to the police office. A sudden thought helped the situation. “I am a British subject,” I exclaimed; “touch me at your peril; thank God we have a consul in Mosul who awaits me. If I do not arrive, there will be the devil to pay.”

And heartily glad I was that the passport supported the statement of British subjectivity.

“Then how comes it,” said the policeman, who never doubted that I was a Muslim, “that you do not bear a Muhammadan name? and are described as Protestant? which all know is a kind of Christian?”

The feeblest bluff saved me; perhaps they distrusted the truth of the details written there.

“As to the name,” I said, “the English law recognises only surnames; if you are a native of Mosul, are you not called a Mosulli wherever you go? are you not known among strangers as ‘the Mosulli’? so I am described as of ‘Elisun,’ which is my native place. As to Haji’s assertion that I am Persian, why, that is right enough, are there not thousands of Persians born British subjects? and God knows why the Kafir, the heathen Armenian clerk of the passport department in Constantinople, called me Protestant, except that seeing I was an English subject, imagined that, as the English nation is Protestant, I must be also of that schism.”

The chief policeman thought it all strange, but I received unexpected assistance from his lieutenant, who had apparently been to Constantinople, and, to air the fact, asserted that he knew well the English habits and laws, and that what I said was quite possible. My now almost silenced assailants had yet one more kick left, and it was obviously quite his trump card.

“Then if you are English by subjectivity,” he regularly shouted, “produce your English passport.”

I did so, amid the silence that such a curious and formidable-looking document produced, and it saved me. Without a word the Turkish “tezkere” was handed back to me, and feeling now doubly triumphant, for I had proved the disguise of language, manners I had adopted, almost too perfect, and had, at the same time, demonstrated to a crowd of unattached roughs and Turks, that bullying could not extort from me the money which was the sole object of the policeman.

Half an hour later, Haji and the Arab merchant came back, cursing the Turks. The old man had a passport which had been handed him when he left the army thirty-five years before, in the days of Sultan Abdul Aziz, and had been forced to pay a mejidie because it was so old. The Arab had a similar document, and paid a similar sum.

With a feeling of great relief, that even the presence of our eight soldiers could hardly quell, we cast off and commenced our journey to Mosul.

A few words are necessary here of Jazira. It was occupied for a long time by the Romans, who built the citadel, but before that its position at the entrance to the mountain system of Masius gave it importance as the outpost of the city of Nineveh, in Assyrian times, an importance it retained till quite recently, when Turkish influence has killed it. The ill-fated pretender Meherdates passed here in A.D. 49, on his way south, and the Emperor Trajan, a century later, made it a depôt for the wood he cut in the mountains, to build ships for the invasion of Babylonia, then in Parthian hands. We are told that it suffered much at the hands of wild Kurds, and later it has been the scene of many bloody battles. For many years it was owned and ruled by the Khans of the great Hakkiari tribe of Kurds, and was a Chaldean centre while they ruled there. In the world of Oriental literature it claims a position as the birthplace of Ibn ul Athir, a great Arabian historian, who was born there A.D. 1230. To-day the mixed population has a reputation for roguery, treachery, and lawlessness.

Here begins the great plain, which, occasionally broken by insignificant hills, at last, below the Sinjar range south of Mosul, drops to the dead level of the Mesopotamian plain, which, unrelieved by even a mound, stretches right away to the Persian Gulf.

The passage from Jazira is usually, in springtime, reckoned as two days, but we were not to be so fortunate. Our raft, very heavy to row, presented a large surface to the wind, and the day after leaving Jazira, a strong breeze drove us against the bank. We struck with a terrifying crack of tree-trunks, and some skins burst, no serious damage really occurring. It was sufficient, however, for the army. With one accord, crying out curses upon the river and the wind, they rushed to the edge of the raft nearest shore, and despite a 5-foot bank, past which we were skimming at a high speed (for we had not stuck), they leaped off, leaving coats, shoes, and food behind. Two or three had near escapes from drowning, and all got partially immersed in the icy water. Scrambling to the top, they attempted to pursue us, screaming to us to stop—in their folly imagining it possible—but the thorns and the pace at which we went, soon convinced them of the uselessness of haste, and they desisted and were left standing in the desert—and blaspheming.

We had not come off quite unscathed. A corner of the raft was badly broken, the loss of skins allowed a considerable portion to sink under water. Moreover, a thole-pin was wrenched out of place, making rowing very difficult. Worst of all, the current became very swift, and we could find no place with water sufficiently slack to allow mooring. Till sunset we had to go on, when a fortunate side-current—out of which we foolishly tried our best to row—took us round the corner to a quiet pool, and we tied up on the bank opposite to that of the soldiers’ desertion.

All night we spent repairing, taking shares in the labour of walking into the water and bringing ashore the heavy bags of apricots—spongy with water. At dawn, tired, but hopeful of a safe arrival at Mosul that afternoon, we set out, but a side-current of exceptional force and speed caught us, and cast us upon a rock, against which the stream fought and broke. We took it broadside on. The force overthrew our tent and the samovar of boiling water for tea. Teacups, saucers, and such small fry, leaped out into the stream, a bale rolled off, then a box—of mine—skins popped or floated away detached, rafters smashed, and we sailed away, carried along irresistibly, literally sinking. The crew and passengers were busy trying to save the cargo, that threatened to roll overboard. Rowing was impossible, for an oar was damaged, and we could only sit and wait for the next crash, which we were certain would come, and hope that it might be in shallow water.

We were saved this, for, drawing near the beach, the idea struck our captain to swim ashore with a rope, the distance being some fifty yards. One man’s strength, or two, was patently insufficient, so three of us, the crew and myself, stripped and fell overboard with the rope, notwithstanding the protest against my action from Haji, who thought it infra dig. for an effendi, and even wondered how a person of any comparative importance could be expected to help himself in an emergency. We succeeded in getting a foothold about ten yards from shore, and though dragged along, at last pulled the raft in and tied up.

The whole day we all worked, unloading the raft, repairing and reloading, hindered by the soldiers, who turned up, refused to help, and would have beaten the skipper had we not intervened.

Finally, after accusing us all of stealing a shoe that had fallen overboard, they came to blows among themselves, and, assured that we should be repairing for another three days, left for Mosul, cursing.

Next day we ourselves arrived, weary enough, our raft sinking, and an hour or two after sighting the first garden of Mosul, floated down past the sulphur spring and the old wall of the town to the lower landing-place above the composite stone and boat-bridge, and, calling porters, Haji and I installed ourselves in a caravanserai in the bazaar, having been twelve days en route from Diarbekr.