Travels in Arabia and Along Persian Gulf 151 



to leave the comfort of his laboratory 

 and make the necessary trip to Bagdad. 

 It is possible that since the writer's trip 

 to the region the question has been thor- 

 oughly investigated. 



It may be a disappointment to any one 

 who should chance to read this short 

 article, that little reference is made to the 

 buried cities of Babylon and Nineveh, 

 which are located in Mesopotamia, but 

 such a disappointment can not compare 

 with that of the traveler who was pre- 

 vented, by lack of time, from visiting 

 these historically interesting places. If 

 one is to judge, however, from the de- 

 scriptions which are given by the inhab- 

 itants of Bagdad, a trip to the ruins of 

 Babylon can not compare in interest 

 with the excursion to Sakkara or a visit 

 to any one of the important temples of 

 Egypt ; mounds of desert sand, in which 

 German assyriologists have made nu- 

 merous excavations, and the almost 

 characterless remains of the so-called 

 Tower of Babel, being practically all 

 that the drifting sands have left of that 

 once great metropolis. More interest- 

 ing, perhaps, would have been a visit to 

 Kerbela, the Mecca of the Shia Moham- 

 medans, which, although insignificant 

 in size as compared with the real Mecca, 

 must give one a clear idea of the nature 

 of these remarkable pilgrimages. 



While in Bagdad it was my good for- 

 tune tovisit one of the Christian churches 

 on a Sunday morning, and, although as 

 a traveler in the Orient I have seen 

 many gay pageants of Siam, Japan, and 

 India, no color scheme can compare 

 with a churchful of Bagdad women, clad 

 in their heavy silk izars. This tsar of 

 Bagdad differs from the garment gen- 

 really worn by Mohammedan women in 



being dyed with the most gorgeous but 

 delicate shades of pink, lavender, blue, 

 and mauve, and in having woven into 

 this delicately colored background, bold 

 patterns or bands of gold and silver 

 thread. The ample folds of this gar- 

 ment of thick, heavy silk, the broad 

 surfaces of color when seen in masses, 

 as I saw them from the choir loft of this 

 Bagdad church, resembled, as the sun- 

 light streamed in upon them through 

 the plain glass windows, the color effects 

 produced by a field of gigantic poppies. 

 To one whose eyes are used to the in- 

 finite details of Parisian costumes, it is 

 worth a trip to Bagdad to see such a 

 sight as a churchful of Bagdad women. 

 Through the hearty cooperation of 

 the American vice-consul in Bagdad, 

 Mr Rudolph Hurner, and the very kind 

 assistance of Mr H. P. Chalk, of Busra, 

 I was able to get from the various Arab 

 sheiks and date-planters a collection 

 of young suckers of the most deli- 

 cious date varieties of this great date- 

 growing region. These were brought 

 down the river, packed in Bombay, 

 shipped to New York, and are many of 

 them now growing in the cooperative 

 date garden of Arizona as the gift of 

 Mr Barbour Lathrop, of Chicago, to the 

 American inhabitants of the arid South- 

 west. That date cultivation in this 

 country is to be a success is indicated 

 by the history of the successful intro- 

 duction of many other foreign fruits 

 and vegetables, and it is hoped that, as 

 one of the results of this expedition, 

 American tables may some day be sup- 

 plied with those delicious varieties of 

 Persian dates which are too delicate to 

 bear the long shipment from the Tigris 

 Valley to this country. 



