376 TKAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



which Cortes and his Spaniards must have felt ; only 

 they, from the tops of tall trees, looked over a cheer- 

 less interminable waste of primeval forest. We were 

 looking over the most ancient of this earth's king- 

 doms. But the destroying hand of time, the awful 

 wear and tear of more than fifty centuries, had laid 

 the land of Shinar, the land of the mighty hunter, 

 of the idolatrous king, waste and desolate. Some of 

 the weary hours we beguiled in converse with our 

 lieutenant of dragoons. Any question as to the 

 interior economy of his regiment puzzled him sadly. 

 The Turkish troops quartered at Baghdad are fre- 

 quently employed against the marauding Arab and 

 Kurdish tribes in the vicinity. When we were on 

 this subject, he gave us his ideas as to the proper 

 means to be employed for utterly destroying off the 

 face of the earth all the Arabs of the desert ; but the 

 views of the young "plunger," when treating of 

 military matters, were of an amusing, vague char- 

 acter, much as those of a French writer of a romance 

 of the present century when on the subject of re- 

 ligion. The heat of the day we passed in the large 

 Serai of Iskandria. At five in the afternoon we took 

 to the saddle again, and a ride of some four hours, 

 through a country similar to that we had traversed 

 in the morning, brought us to the Serai of Mohawull. 

 Here the Serai bore so little tempting an appearance 

 that we lit our fire away out in the plain. When 

 our dinner was finished, or rather our " tea," for tea 



