366 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



qualities of the horses that we were to be provided 

 with, and his vowing by all that he held sacred that 

 we had only to sit on their backs and ride them at 

 a hand-gallop from one Serai to the other, we in our 

 own minds were nearly certain that horses hired as 

 these were would be but sorry brutes to look at ; so 

 not wishing to make ourselves needlessly uncomfort- 

 able by ordering them out to be looked at, we told 

 the owner to take them some six miles down the 

 river. By this arrangement, when we should arrive 

 in the afternoon by water at the spot agreed upon, 

 we should find him and the animals awaiting us on 

 the bank, and we should ourselves be some six miles 

 on our road to Babylon. 



Early in the afternoon we threw our saddles into 

 what looked like a large black shield floating on the 

 water of the river. We ourselves stepped in over 

 the side after our saddles, and in another minute, 

 smiling triumphantly at greeting friends on the 

 bank, we were shooting down the Tigris, midstream. 

 A muscular Baghdadee, reaching over the edge of 

 the shield, worked a paddle and kept us from 

 spinning round in the boiling eddies of the current. 

 This black shield we were in, that glided so merrily 

 over the seething, turbid waters of the river, was a 

 "ghoofa." Its willow twigs, now precious to us as 

 the breath in our bodies, bent under feet, as the 

 wicker sides of a basket would have done. A thick 

 coating of bitumen made the willow twigs water- 



