cu. XXIII.] Palm Villages of the Eitpln-atcs. 



villages * maintaining a sort of deatli in life, and it 

 is only witliin the last few years that a little culti- 

 vation has been once more attempted under Turkish 

 protection, Deyr, the only remaining village at the 

 ■date of the Turkish occupation in 1862, owed its 

 -existence to the position of its cornfields on an island 

 protected by the river. Of Bussra and the riverine 

 villages below Bagdad I will say nothing, as I have 

 not visited them. They are besides well known. 

 The holy cities of Kerbela and Meshid Ali are fairly 

 flourishing places, and the right bank of tlie Sliatt 

 el Arab, occupied by the Montefik tribe has been 

 described to me as the best cultivated region of the 

 whole valley. There are also a few small oases west 

 of the Euphrates, the chief of which, Kubeza and 

 Shedadi, are markets much frequented by the 

 Bedouins. 



As regards our own travels, I fear we have been 

 able to add little to the general stock of knowledge 

 on geographical matters. The ancient Greek city 

 of El Haddr, although little known to Europeans, 

 has already been described by ]Mr. Ainsworth who 

 .saw it about 1840, and it has since been visited more 

 than once by j\Ir. Layard, and by at least one other 

 English traveller. Our route across Mesopotamia I 

 believe to be a new one, and the Sneyzele and Om- 

 inuthsiabeh lakes will now be marked for the first 

 time on any map. We have ascertained too that 



* I do not of course mean here to include in the term " Upper 

 Euphrates" any part of the river beyond the limits of the desert. 



