A RIDE TO BABYLON. 353 



small, but in shape something between a pyramid and 

 a spire. It is too far to make anything of it, and as 

 you are giving it up in despair, you are told it is the 

 tomb of Zobeide, the wife of the great Caliph Haroon 

 al Eashid. Whilst your mind is still glowing with 

 the recollections of the various adventures of the fair 

 lady of the diamond, boldly described big as an 

 ostrich egg, which she found in the desolate city of 

 her two naughty sisters of her wonderful escape 

 from their treachery of her daily beatings of them, 

 when transformed into black dogs and of her final 

 happy union with the Commander of the Faithful, 

 you are off the steps of the British Eesidency. The 

 house, built on the left bank of the stream, looks 

 wonderfully substantial and solid, contrasting with 

 the fragile-looking buildings and crumbling walls in 

 the neighbourhood. 



Life at Baghdad during the summer months, if you 

 are not living under canvas in some shady pleasant 

 garden of the suburbs, leaves its impression on the 

 mind as a game of hide-and-seek with the sun kept 

 up the livelong day, and in which you find you have 

 considerably the worst of it. In the morning, if you 

 go for a ride, and leave the town by one of the eastern 

 gates, you see before you a desert reaching away to a 

 distant horizon line, like a watery waste, from the 

 very spot whereon you are standing immediately 

 beneath the city walls. Your good horse breathes 

 gladly at the fresh free air of the desert, and at that 



