March 8, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
II 
I 
the other) trying to whisk away the tormenting flies. 
The arrival of the river transport Bint-el- Allah, squat, 
low in the water, flat-bottomed, blunt-bowed, broad in 
the beam, with her grotesquely long funnel, and her big 
stern wheel, is the signal for increased activity on the 
bimd, a dust-raising bustle, a seemingly indescribable 
chaos of hurrying men and animals. But the confusion 
is more apparent than real. It is the embarkation of 
the last echelon required to complete the force which 
is striving to effect the rehef of starving Kut. 
In the Garden of Eden 
The military landing officers know their work. Their 
experience has been gained hastily in this improvised 
dock-yard ; but experience in the garden of Eden is 
(as Adam learnt) gained in the sweat of the face. It cannot 
be easily forgotten or ignored. And some of the men 
responsible for landing and for loading these hastily 
gathered units, were themselves with Townshend on that 
achievement of giants, the retreat from Ctesiphon to 
Kut, and they know (as few others can know) that the 
toils of the day in Basra are as nothing compared to the 
sufferings of the sick and famished legion in Kut. ■ They 
realize the need for speed— the highest possible speed 
and efliciency in spite of sun, thirst, dust, and above all, 
of the currents and vagaries of a mighty river in flood. 
Once the gangs and working parties of men, and the 
relays of animals are organised, the business in hand is 
not too compHcated. It is not difficult to allot places 
for men and stores, and officers. On a seven days' 
journey up the Tigris, there is little to choose between 
the confined space allowed to each man or ofticer, either 
on the deck of the boat, or on the top of a pile of stores 
on one of the barges. You are in any case, at this time 
of the year, bound to be much too cold by night and 
much too hot by day. On a second barge, the only 
thing to be considered, is to squeeze each riiule or horse 
intoUie smallest possible space. Head to head they are tied 
to a rope running from stem to stern ; and those which show 
•any sign of objecting to these conditions, or of trying to 
cheat their neighbours of a little room, soon find themselves 
securely heel-rooped to stanchions on the gunwale of the 
barge. Ihe pack-saddles are piled high in the bows. 
The native drivers are packed like sardines in the stern : 
doubtless it is their fate ; they squat there resignedly 
enough, and soon the smell of their cooking is" borne 
upwards to meet, as it has done day after day since the 
beginning of things, the rapidly descending, evanescent 
twilight of the East. 
The weary Tommies stretch themselves out (those 
who have room to do so), exhausted, caked with mingled 
dust and sweat, far too tired and worn out (save for one 
or two supermen among them), to sit up and wrestle 
with the eternal bully beef or the impregnable biscuit. 
Suddenly those who are dropping off to sleep, not 
caring when the boat is going or whither it is carrying 
them, are rudely awakened by a heavy shower of boiling 
water from the siren which is beginning a querulous, 
convulsive hooting. The Bint-el-Allah drifts slowly 
away from the bund and works herself into position to 
receive the two barges, which are finally made fast to 
port and starboard of her. Shouts of " Good Luck ! " 
from the few British on shore ; a yell from one of the men 
on board to an Arab woman on the bank to the effect 
that he will " send 'er a pictm-e postcard when he gets 
there," and the huge stern wheel begins to thresh cum- 
brously against the heavy stream. Not one of the 
animals in all probabiUty will ever see Basra again. The 
tired and suffering eyes of sick and wounded men will 
look longingly for the first glimpses of its palm trees 
and mud houses, when the time comes for the hospital 
boats to float down with the current, carrjdng their 
cargo of pain. 
The river boat churns and throbs perseveringly up the 
river for some miles. The Shatt-el-Arab, " the river 
of the Arabs," the offspring of the united Tigris and 
Euphrates, flows in this part of Lower Mesopotamia 
in a powerful, steady stream, so strong that it reduces the 
progress of the up-stream boat to a matter of a very few 
knots per hour ; but at the same time free from, the mill- 
race currents, the nanrow bends, and the tortuous shifting 
channels of its parent rivers in their upper reaches. 
Nevertheless, complete darkness comes so rapidly and 
so soon that even the Arab pilot finds navigation during 
the night an impossibiUty, and the Bint-el-Allah is there- 
fore moored securely beneath the giant palm-trees 
\\'luch hedge in either bank. Sentries are posted on the 
outside barge and on shore among the palms. For the 
Arabs of town and village alike are possessed of a spirit 
of what may best be described as" malicious neutrahty." 
They loved not in his day the Turkish pasha ; but they 
do not welcome in any spirit of faithful, openhearted 
loyalty, the Enghsh who have come to dehver theni from 
his yoke. The lean brown villagers are all smiles as 
they troop down in the daytime to sell eggs and cliitpkens 
to the passing boat. But at night they arc apt to fire 
upon it, shooting mischievously and at a venture ; or 
to swim noiselessly up and come aboard, knives between 
their teeth, robbery (if necessary, with murder), in their 
hearts. And who, though, knowing these things and 
guarding against them shall utterly execrate the Arab ? 
After all, he is the son of Ishmael, and centuries of 
Ottoman rule have not predisposed him to any over- 
restraining respect for order, law or life, 
Cold Dawn 
It is approaching dawn on the fourth day. The weary 
sentry yawns — his face drawn and grey in the pallid 
half-Ught. He shivers. It is very cold ; the first break 
of dawn is chill and bitter : he is soaked through and 
through ; a night of thunder and torrential icy rain 
succeeded to the sultry heat of yesterday. His 
comrades lie all around him, sleeping on their soaked 
blankets, in their drenched clothes. He wonders why 
this has been called " the hottest spot on earth," not 
realising that if he lives he will know, to his sorrow, 
nights that are hotter than the day; He reflects gloomily 
that the firewood piled in the bows will probably be too 
damp to provide him with hot tea. But then, what is the 
good of worrying or thinking about that ? What, in 
fact, is the good of thinking at all ? He won't be relieved 
till six o'clock, and it is not yet five. So he resigns him- 
self to watching apathetically for another hour the 
featureless landscape of the opposite bank, and the 
brown water swirling past just below him. 
On the land, he sees nothing but a narrow strip of 
pasture ; ground fertilised as far as the river water has 
managed to percolate through and no farther. Beyond 
it, he knows, were the light not so dim, he would see 
nothing but bare sandy earth and stones, and the eternal 
camel-scrub. And beyond that, more sandy earth, and 
more camel-scrub, and so on for hundreds of miles, with 
a monotony the thought of which appals the mind. 
And a man looking at the river would naturally say : 
" This river starts hundreds of miles away up there, 
beyond Kut, Ctesiphon and Bagdad. All the way it 
flows through just such country as this ; and it goes on 
past me for three hundred miles to the sea." To the 
ordinary human being, with the human being's finite 
longings and despairs, such immensity of distance is 
horrible rather than grand — for England is six thousand 
miles away. 
With the approach of sunrise, the colours of the dawn 
change from silver to gold, and from gold to faded rose. 
Away round the bend ofHhe river can now be seen the 
mud-tower of a fortified village, fit symbol of the per- 
pel/ual internecine strife which is the heritage of Ishmael ; 
beyond it, the great white sail of a mahala (one of those 
Norse-like merchantmen of the Mahomedan world) 
bearing swiftly down the stream. 
On the steamboat and the barge, the whinnying, 
braj^ng, and stamping of hungry animals ; the hoot of 
the siren, as the Arab pilot steers for mid-stream. In the 
stern of one barge the shivering native drivers squatting 
enveloped in blankets, with scarce anything showing 
save hands and eyes, busy themselves with the pre- 
paration of that staple article of Indian diet, the pancake- 
like chapatti. Elsewhere, a general awakening — some 
cursing, others inordinately cheerful ; but all welcoming 
the early rays of the sun, yet all knowing full well that 
a few hours later they will be longing fervently for shade. 
" For thei'e is no remembrance of former things ; 
neither shall there be any remembrance of things that 
are to come with those that shall come aftcr=" 
