368 TKAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



to our astonishment, as the rudder to the boat. 

 These boats, a sort of " bagala," are simply a basket- 

 work of rushes and straw, covered thickly with bitu- 

 men, and from forty to fifty feet long, with good 

 beam, and drawing but little water. An Arab will 

 tell you that diligent workmen will finish a boat of 

 the kind in one day. They are laden, some of them 

 with grain, from Bussorah, the great corn-market, the 

 Odessa of these countries. Others are carrying 

 valuable merchandise, that has found its way up the 

 Persian Gulf from the markets of Bombay. If you 

 could manage to have a talk with that magnificent- 

 looking fellow, whom, were you to meet him in 

 Europe, you might take for a brigand straight from 

 the Abruzzi, but here in Asia you know him to be a 

 sort of Bashi-Bazook, half Kurd, half Chaldean, who 

 scowls down at you as he lies sprawling on his deck, 

 with weapons of all kinds within reach of his right 

 hand, and who then, as if you were quite unworthy 

 of any long scrutiny of his, looks afterwards about 

 and around him as if he were lord of the whole uni- 

 verse ; well, if you could manage to have a talk with 

 him, and he would condescend to answer you in 

 phrases of more length than merely cursing at you 

 as an infidel, he could probably tell you that he and 

 his companions have had more than one fight for dear 

 life on their way up the river, with plundering Arabs 

 from the Benilam and Montifica tribes, boat-loads of 

 whom had pushed off from the banks with a view to 



