Correspondence. 



293 



you will, nothing but a painful, chilling feeling of solitude runs through 

 the shuddering breast. The weather here (Bagdad) is bitter cold, 

 (28th January) ; a sharp frost for several days having prevailed, which 

 is an extraordinary change from the heat of summer. Here, however, 

 a real winter is seen. Trees and shrubs all bare, the ground covered 

 with frost, and one day we had snow. We had ice lying in our court- 

 yard for two days ; the sun did not melt it. 



" I will now give you an account of our trip to Anna. We reached 

 the banks of that noble river, the Euphrates, at Felugia, from thence we 

 went to Hit, celebrated for its bitumen springs, of which there are seven, 

 but two only are made use of, the bitumen from the rest streaming 

 down the sides of the hills, where it congeals. This is the Hit of 

 Scripture, and was one of the Babylonian cities destroyed. From this 

 we reached Anna in three days, and returned by about morning, with 

 the current at about three miles an hour. Anna is a most delightful 

 place, the people are rosy-cheeked, active, and happy, compared with 

 other places. The females are fair and pretty, and the whole place 

 seemed cheerful. Fine gardens of the olive, apple, pear, and orange 

 mingled with the date occur on the river side, watered by picturesque old 

 ivy or moss-covered aqueducts, into which the water is raised about thirty 

 feet by huge rudely made wheels of thirty-five feet diameter, turned slow- 

 ly and groaningly by the force of the current into which the lower rim 

 dips. A number of little pots fixed round the rim of the wheel, fill as 

 they dip into the water, and are emptied into wooden troughs at the 

 top. These rude, but effective machines, are found in great number all 

 along the river to Hit, below which there being no stone or lime (to 

 build the aqueducts or dams), the water is drawn by cattle, the same as in 

 India. At Anna I visited a spot pointed out as where Imaum Alii, cou- 

 sin of Mahomed, stamped in anger, and indented the rock with his foot. 

 There is certainly a mark, but it required much imagination to sup- 

 pose it like a foot-print. (This must be something like the cavities 

 left in the granite rocks of South India by the decay of nests of embed- 

 ded hornblende, by which every desirable locality is provided with a 

 print of Ramaswamy's foot, or of the Bull Nundy's). At Anna also I 

 visited with much more interest, the graves of four of the unfortunate 

 crew of the Tigris, whose bodies were recovered and interred. Below 

 Anna, we visited all the ancient Mahomedan ruins on the banks ; now 

 with all their signs of grandeur forgotten and almost unknown. To 

 enumerate every one, would be useless. Between Anna and Hit, are 

 Tiblis, Hadaisa, Aboose, and Jubuh, which were flourishing Christian 

 Bishopricks in the time of the Armenian church, now all in ruins and 



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