350 TKAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPOET. 



waters over countless shifting sand-banks if you 

 have never entered the city by any of its numerous 

 gates if, in fact, for non cuivis liomini contingit adire 

 Corinthum, you have never seen Baghdad except in 

 your childhood, peopled with genii and barbers, 

 caliphs and calenders, I beg you will bear with me 

 while I give you, in as few words as possible, the 

 very roughest sketch of the appearance of the town 

 and of our manner of life there, as we remember it 

 during one sunny month of May. For the prettiest 

 first glimpse of Baghdad that you can get, is when 

 you enter the town from the south by the river. 

 The Tigris, doubling and turning like a hunted hare, 

 takes you for the last few miles through a country 

 perfectly flat and level But, flat and level as the 

 country is, the eye cannot wander far over it. As 

 you approach Baghdad, dense orange groves, long dark 

 sweeping lines of pomegranate and date trees, shut in 

 the view. The whole country seems a rich cultivated 

 garden. You cannot look over it and come to any 

 other conclusion. Cultivated it is, and fertile beyond 

 all telling, but what you see is merely a fringe of 

 verdure to vast tracts of desert sterile wastes. Look- 

 ing over this garden, you may observe at work, wells, 

 in number more than you can easily count wells 

 whose construction is identical with the early stories 

 of the Bible. Your boat passes in mid-stream little 

 islands covered in such a way that you can make out 

 nothing but a tall tangled mass of reeds and grass. 



