Travels in Arabia and Along Persian Gulf 147 



with their gilded or tiled domes, and 

 its bazaars, with their mixture of silks, 

 weapons, and embroideries ; its thou- 

 sands of dogs, which, like those of Con- 

 stantinople, are a feature of the place, 

 and, above all, the gay costumes of the 

 Christian women, make a stay in Bagdad 

 extremely interesting. 



There is a small colony of Europeans 

 in the place, which is composed of vari- 

 ous nationalities, and life is made bear- 



Many questions were under discussion 

 by the European population of Bagdad 

 during my short stay there, but natur- 

 ally that relating to the new railway, 

 which has been projected from Aleppo 

 to Bagdad and as far as the Gulf, was 

 one of the most important. The view 

 most prevalent — at least the view pre- 

 sented to me — was a pessimistic one. 

 The people acquainted with the sparsely 

 inhabited region through which the rail- 



Photo bv Fairchild 



Women Filling Their Water Jugs in the Tigris — Bagdad. 



able by a club, tennis court, and golf 

 links. The latter are possibly the most 

 unique links in the world, being upon 

 the buried mounds of former villages. 

 Under the mounds over which the golfers 

 play lie buried, near the surface even, 

 the skeletons and funereal jars of former 

 generations, and it is not an uncommon 

 thing for the golf player to strike with 

 his golf club the shin-bone or vertebra 

 of some half -decayed skeleton. 



way must necessarily run for hundreds 

 of miles, predicted that it would be im- 

 possible for such a railway to pay, and 

 it was repeatedly pointed out that this 

 great region would require for its de- 

 velopment not only the building of 

 canals, but the importation of large 

 numbers of settlers, either from India 

 or from other portions of Arabia, and 

 their colonization along the line of the 

 railway. What such a railway could 



