24 PASCOE: GEOLOGICAL NOTES ON MESOPOTAMIA. 



and sulphur already mentioned. The Qishlah area, therefore, is also 

 promising. The prospects of the hills beyond, right into the Jabal 

 Yawan, depend on the result of experiment at Qishlah. As a preli- 

 minary measure I would strongly recommend test wells in the two 

 areas, Qaiyarah and Qishlah. With regard .to the former, the 

 present wells are too far down the pitch to give maximum yields. 

 The best location for the first well here should be on the highest 

 point of a long E. — W., flat-topped, table-like hill capped by lime- 

 stone 1-| mile due west of the incomplete German well with the derrick 

 over it. This hill lies east and a little south of a prominent conical 

 hill (height 882 feet) whose apex consists of the same limestone. 

 The location should be towards the eastern end of the table-like hill, 

 just west of the cairn which marks its highest point. The Qishlah 

 well should be N. or N.N.E. of Qishlah Fort on the crest of the anticline, 

 or 100 yards or so N.N.E. of it. There will in all probability 

 be a less productive if not barren tract between the Qishlah and 

 the Qaiyarah areas and nearer the former than the latter. There is 

 an Arab rumour that the Germans intended boring at Qishlah and 

 actually took machinery out there, but buried it on the Turkish 

 evacuation of Qaiyarah. If so, they must have sought better advice 

 than that which located their present wells. With regard to the 

 latter, the completion of the well they commenced would be a good 

 test of the extent of the oil " pools," and the well has good pros- 

 pects of obtaining a reasonably good yield. As stated in a former 

 report the oil will probably be found to occur in cellular limestone 

 similar to that which crops out at Fathah. 



Two tunnels in the gypseous marls and clays made by the Ger- 

 mans near the Oil Station, are thought to have been attempts to 

 mine for sulphur, but they seem to me just as likely to have been 

 experiments to obtain the true dip and nature of the local strata. 

 Sulphur is widely present but in too disseminated a form to be 

 worth working, though something might be made, in a small way, of 

 the sulphur that collects in the streams and pools already mentioned 

 and also of a copious spring which issues from a cave and flows 

 underground for a short distance beneath a " natural bridge " 

 of gypsum, about a mile N.N.AV. of the Oil Station. Sulphur in 

 some quantity is carried down by this water, derived from the hydro- 

 gen sulphide which is in solution therein. The supply could be 

 increased by burning a little of the extracted sulphur and passing 

 the gas produced into the water. The recovery o* sulphur here 



