316' Journal of a Steam Trip to the north of Baghdad. [April, 



At 9-55 a. m. April 6th, left Samarrah, and had hardly proceeded an 

 hour before we grounded on a shingle flat. From Samarrah to this 

 place, we had been struggling hard against the violence of the stream 

 and had nearly surmounted a fall of water over a shoal spot when the 

 engines losing their power, the vessel's keel touched the ground and in 

 an instant she was thrown on the bank, with her port broadside expos- 

 compelled to encamp for the performance of the inviolable rites of the " funus publicum" 

 over the corpse of the departed Julian. This may reasonably, I think, be inferred ; for 

 auy delay, otherwise than on an occasion like the present, would not have been resorted 

 to in the distressed position the army then occupied, and moreover, at such times, we are 

 informed a total cessation from business was enjoined (called Justitium) which was usu- 

 ally ordained by public appointment. The soldiers were then freed from their military 

 duties even, (Taciturn. 1. 16—82 ; L. W. IX. 1) and in this case no doubt enjoyed a 

 repose they had long been strangers to. 



It maybe said that the act .of embalming- the body on the night of his death implied 

 its removal into the Roman territories ; but it can hardly be supposed that such an idea 

 was ever contemplated by a famished army surrounded and harassed by barbarians at 

 every mile, and amid such distress as Gibbon states, shortened the moments of grief and 

 deliberation, even did the fierce heats permit such a proceeding. 



The circ uinstantial detail however, of the funeral obsequies of Julian, which took place 

 afterwards at Tarsus, as related by Gibbon, if literally true will, I confess, invalidate all 

 that I have advanced, for he distinctly states in Vol. III. p. 236, that the corpse of Julian 

 was transported from Nisibis to Tarsus in a slow march of fifteen days ; but again in the 

 next page, in speaking of the sophist of Antioch, he esteems his general zeal for the cold 

 and neglected " ashes" of his friend, this in some measure leading us to conclude that the 

 body was previously burnt. Whether this was the case or whether the heart alone suf- 

 ficed for Jovian to bestow the last honours to the manes of the deceased sovereign, will 

 for ever perhaps, be attended with some doubt ; but we cannot at the same time, reconcile 

 Gibbon's description of the great distress of the army, their famished and wearied condi- 

 tion, the factions existing amongst them, the anxiety of each individual to secure his pre- 

 sent safety at the passage of the Tigris (where the loss of the army is stated as equalling 

 the carnage of a day of battle), the subsequent sufferings both from hunger and thirst on 

 their dreary march through the wilderness of Mesopotamia, when the beasts of burthen 

 were slaughtered and devoured and the arms and baggage of the soldiery strewed the 

 desert for want of strength to carry them, with the statement that his corpse reached the 

 frontier town of Nisibis ; indeed, the slow march of fifteen days which were occupied in 

 transporting the remains of Julian from Nisibis to Tarsus will not, I think, coincide with 

 the geographical distance between the two places of 409 Roman, 366 English, or nearly 

 25 miles daily march, and that too, through the hilly country situated at the foot of the 

 Taurus. 



These discrepancies certainly afford grounds for suspecting the general consistency of 

 the historian, even did not the stern fact, which I have previously advanced of the almost 

 impossible transaction of carrying the corpse for such a distance over the densely heated 

 and sultry plains of Mesopotamia, negative such a procedure. 



