And how natural is it for us to appreciate the point of view of our calm-loving, rest-seeking boatmen! For hours at a time they sit at their posts without uttering a word and as immovable as statues. Whether they arrive at their destination in a week or a month is apparently immaterial to them. So long as they are allowed to enjoy their kaif they are supremely happy.

As we gaze on our men at their “dreamful ease,” I recall the verses of Tennyson’s “Song of the Lotos-Eaters”:

Noiselessly and, at times, almost imperceptibly, we glided down the majestic Tigris which through the broad desert waste floats

With ever renewed interest we gazed on the silent ruins whose history was ended before that of Ancient Rome began. The Forum, the Palatine, the Colosseum, the Mole of Hadrian belong in their splendor to an age when the more imposing ruins along the Tigris were hoary with the dust of centuries or long buried under the shifting sands of the desert.

But it is at the hour of sunset that one most completely falls under the spell of the Tigris and the historic land through which it flows. For the sunsets of the desert lands of the East exhibit a gorgeousness of color unknown in our land of fogs and mists. This is probably owing to the haze produced by impalpable dust in an exceptionally dry atmosphere. As the sun nears the horizon, the western sky glows with all the delicate hues of ruby and topaz, emerald and amethyst and, after it has set, the zodiacal light, rising from where the sun disappeared, ascends to the zenith with a display of all the delicate tints of rose and gold and lilac of the aurora borealis.

The glories of a sunset in Mesopotamia are indeed entrancing, but it is when night comes with her dewy freshness and

when the moon silvers the river’s wavelets and its ruin-crested banks, that one loves to linger in this land of a great historic past and contemplate at leisure

How we reveled in those glorious moonlit nights spent on our tranquilly floating kelek on the enchanting Tigris! “They say that Carl Niebuhr, the traveler, when old and blind, used to lie and dream over the old Eastern landscapes and night-skies in his darkened life,—a perpetual world of enchantment to console him.”[412] How could it have been otherwise? For how often since our return from the East where we, like Niebuhr, have spent some of the most delightful days of our life, have we not also found ourselves dreaming of the eventful days and the fascinating nights which it was our privilege to spend under the pale azure skies of the inspiring and enthralling home of our race?

But while, in silent rapture, we were thus enjoying the magnificent displays of the setting sun and were reveling in the beauties of the stars,—“the flowers of the sky,” “the poetry of heaven,” “the forget-me-nots of the angels,”—our crew was totally indifferent to all these sublime manifestations of nature and completely buried in their kaif. They were indeed living pictures of what Robert Louis Stevenson somewhere most aptly calls “the apotheosis of stupidity.” As we noted in their placid features their rapturous expression of contentment and happiness we realized as never before the full force of the poet’s words,

Never once, during our journey from Mosul to Tekrit were we ever out of sight of some place or monument of historic or legendary lore. But the number of these reminders of the hoary past rapidly increased in our sail between Tekrit and Bagdad. About five miles below Saladin’s birthplace we came to the little town of Iman Dura. According to tradition, it was here that King Nebuchadnezzar set up his colossal golden statue which the Hebrews, Sidrach, Misach, and Abednago, in defiance of the King’s orders, refused to adore.[413] It was near Dura that the Roman army under Jovian pitched their tents after the death of Julian the Apostate and it was here that the Roman Emperor was forced to conclude an ignominious peace—necessariam quidem sed ignobilem, writes Eutropius—with the Persian King, Sapor the Great. A short distance below Dura is a small stream which the natives say was a canal dug by King Solomon. Near it, on the left bank of the Tigris, begins the ruins of Eski Bagdad—Old Bagdad—“a mighty field of ruins,” writes Thielmann, “extending some twenty-five miles along the Tigris.”[414] Situated in this long field of ruins is the little town of Samara, as celebrated for its romantic history as for its remarkable monuments which, however, have only in the last decade or two received the attention on the part of scholars which they so richly deserve.

The complex of ruined mosques and palaces which here excites the admiration of the student dates from the time—A. D. 836 to 892—when Samara was the capital of the Abbassid Caliphate. Mutasim, a son of Harun-al-Rashid, was the first caliph who made his residence here. So numerous and magnificent were the edifices which he called into existence, as by an enchanter’s wand, that the glories of Samara soon rivaled those of Bagdad in the days of her greatest power and prosperity. The magnificence of the enlarged and embellished city was expressed in the official name which was then given it, for, in lieu of Samara, it was called Surra-man-raa—Who sees it, rejoices. Judging from the ground plan of the palaces of Samara as given by M. H. Violet, the distinguished French Academician who, during a visit to Samara, made a careful study of its imposing ruins, this group of buildings was not inferior to the royal edifices of Versailles.[416]

According to local tradition Samara, like Sestos and Abydos, had also its Hero and Leander. As they lived in palaces on opposite sides of the river, the Samara Leander could see his immorata, who was the daughter of a sultan, only by breasting the swift-flowing waters of the romantic Tigris. The lovers were, however, more fortunate than were their Greek prototypes, for their lives did not end in the tragedy which overtook the Romeo and Juliet of the Dardanelles but, so the story runs, terminated in a happy marriage like that of Feramoz and Lalla Rookh. And the memory of the devoted pair is still kept green by the names which the Arabs have given to the ruins of their former homes—El Aschik—the lover—and El Maschuka—the beloved.[417]

Below Samara the number of ruins and places of historic and legendary interest seemed to increase in proportion as we sailed southwards. Particularly interesting were the ruins of Opis which was once, next to Babylon, the most important city in Babylonia. It was to this point that were floated from the upper Tigris the boats that Sennacherib, seven centuries B. C., had constructed for use in his celebrated campaign against the Chaldeans and Elamites. From Opis the boats were transported by camels overland to the Euphrates, down which they sailed to the Persian Gulf. How forcibly this achievement of the great Assyrian monarch reminds one of a similar exploit nearly twenty-two centuries later, when Mohammed the Conqueror had a part of his fleet conveyed over the elevated section of land between the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn preparatory to his capture of Constantinople, May 29, 1453!

Opis is also celebrated as having been visited by Alexander the Great in his memorable voyage up the Tigris from the Persian Gulf. “In his voyage up,” as Arrian informs us, “he destroyed the weirs which existed in the river and thus made the stream quite level.”[418] More than twenty-one centuries afterwards, in 1839, the English steamer “Euphrates”—the first steamer ever seen in this region—ascended the Tigris on its voyage of reconnaissance when it went up the river to the tomb of Sultan Abdullah near the mouth of the Greater Zab.[419] But since that date the navigation of the Tigris—at least for commercial purposes—has terminated at Bagdad. If the country bordering the Tigris were under a stable and enterprising government, there is no reason why light-draught and light-tonnage boats should not ply regularly not only between Bagdad and Opis but between Bagdad and Mosul as well. High explosives properly applied under the direction of competent engineers, and possibly a dam or two with suitable locks would solve the problem and would contribute immensely towards restoring to its former flourishing condition a country which, as we have seen, is now little more than a desert overspread with ruins “where kings have paced” and where

When the Tigris shall have been cleared for steam navigation from Bagdad to Mosul and the Bagdad Railway shall be completed and in successful operation through its entire length, we may hope to see the fertile lands, through which the famous river flows once more the home of teeming millions as they were when they constituted the richest and the most flourishing region of Western Asia.

Below Opis we noted a marked change in the aspect of the country. We were now passing through a rich alluvial plain where not a pebble was to be seen. There were on both sides of the river broad, verdant fields enameled with wild flowers and carefully irrigated by the primitive shadoofs and norias which are still in use here as they are along the Nile and in all parts of the Levant. Much of this land is under cultivation or utilized for grazing, as is evinced by the flocks and herds with which the country is everywhere dotted. As we slowly glided down the river we observed an ever-increasing number of villages surrounded by gardens and fruit trees and clumps of date palms. All these grateful changes in the landscape, especially the beautiful palm groves which hourly became more numerous and more attractive, and the little fleets of guffahs filled with commodities and passengers, told us that we were near our destination. These indications did not mislead; for a few hours later the domes and minarets of Bagdad hove in sight and our week’s happy floating on a kelek was at an end. We were at last within the gates of the world-renowned metropolis of the Abbasside Caliphs.