WITH THE SEPOY IN MESOPOTAMIA.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15561, 10 April 1916, Page 8

WITH THE SEPOY IN MESOPOTAMIA.

UP THE TIGRIS TO AMARA.

(By "Eye-Witness." in the "Pioneer

of India.") We have entered the oldest country in the world.

We arrived at Basra (G7 miles from tlie sea) on December 31st. and the same night" wc transhipped into two paddle steamers. The.-e vessels arctaking us "up .stream to Ali Gharbu

Qurnah, where we anchored in the morning, is the reputed site of the Garden of Eden ; for evidence v.e are shown the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Here tho old channel <jf the Euphrates joins the Tigris. The date groves which stretch some four miles up stream are tho last outpost of fertility. After this one enters a treeless waste of swamp and desert, but one is seldom out of sight of herds of donkeys and cattle and flocks of sheep. The dwellers in the reed and mud huts rim alongside the boat clamouring for "bakhshish" and scrambling for coppers thrown them by the troops.

Up-stream the Biblical tradition holds. The second night we moored by Ezra's tomb, a domed shrine silhouetted amongst tho palms in the clear starlight. One could not help moralising upon the new lao we were pursuing in the continuity of history, when one heard a lowlande;- of Perth point out the scribe's resting-place to his mate as "yon corner boos."

Navigation above Ezra's tomb until one reaches Amara, where the stream widens, becomes slow and difficult. One passes the narrows and the Devil's Elbow, and the river makes sudden twists and turns. The physical features of the country are familiar to our Indian troons. The villages resemble those of the Punjab on th e North-west Frontier. Qalat Snlih might be a quarter of Dera Ismail Khan, the same sloping mud walls enclosing tho havcli, or courtyard. with cowdung cakes of fuel plastered against them to dry in tho sun, and scooped wooden drain pipes projecting from the roof. A few of the houses aro of sun-dried Ibricfe, but there is an entire absence of ornamentation save in the two-storeyed balconied buildings of the merchants and officials on the river front where the woodwork is latticed and fretted. For vegetation tho date palm, with an occasional mulberry or willow fed by irrigation channels.

The Indian Sepov regards l>ouli the country and inhabitants with equal contempt. "It passeth mv understanding," an Afridi said, "whv the Sircar should desire this Satan-like land."

I agreed with him that, judged by merely physical considerations, the country was not worth the ammunition spent on it. though a wise Sircar might find the means of rendering it fertile. There were examples of worse soil in the Punjab that had been made not merely fruitful, but eonal to'the best. This he admitted. "The people are not cultivators," he explained, "they are merely merchants."

"Do you know anything of their language?" I asked. He "smiled. "I know enough to tell them. to fetoh water and to clear out," he said: "that is sufficient for such a people." And he laughed a laugh which implicitv embraced the Sahib's contempt with his own.

Aiuara. thirty-one miles up-stream from Qalat Salih, is tlio raost considerable town between Busra and Bagdad. It is now teeming with tribesmen ard all the flotsam and jetsam which, follows in the wake of war. The British Flag flies over the Turkish Barracks, and the v/omuled British Tommy seated on his bench in his blue hospital suit surveys the Tigris with the same complacency as he has watched the waters of the Nile, Seine, or Thames. The bazaar is spacious and stoneroofed. some 35 feet in height as in Bagdad, and the crafts are localised as in all the cities of the East. At every turn from the main thoroughfare the street names are inscribed in English beside the Arabic characters. There is an opportunity here for an imaginative touch, but one finds a nomenclature which is truly British. The "Sook al Gazareen" of the Arabs has become plain "Butchers' street"; the Sook al lvabazeen, "Bakers' street"; "Sapper street," "Pontoon street," "Soap street" proclaim the needs of the hour as if the scribe ojr Haroun al ltaschid had never existed. Every fifty yards or so there is an Arab cafe where the denizens of the bazaar, hooded in their kefieh, squat on high-backed wooden benches like 'pews i n a village church, pass round Ivaliun (Persian huqa) and exchange guttural comments on the business of the hour. Some play dominoes. Others sit and gaze into vacancy. These dark taverns arc as crowded as tea shops in Piccadilly after a matinee. But there is more diversity of type. For Amara is a thoroughfare. * It is here that the caravan route for Dizful in Persia meets tho Tigris, and the town is the headquarters of the Sabasans. If one were not in uniform, the cafe would be a good point of v.i.ntago from whdoh to watch the crowd outside. A group of Kurds passes in the streets in their high bulbous hats of rough felt, their smooth locks hanging free and clipped about their ears like Mahsuds or Powindahs of Afghanistan. Two of these rough mountaineers meet and embrace and salute each other with alternate kisses on each cheek. A Jew, his Turkish face bound round with .a kefieh, is proclaiming to an Arab policeman, now a servant of the British Raj, that he has been robbed of a piece of silver. He repeats his tale with solemn gestures which might be an accompaniment to a recital of the Book of Jeremiah. A pale, scholarlylooking Persian from Dizful is appraising a skein of wool at the opposite stall. A wild-eved Bakhtiari glances nervously in the cafe and hurries on. Thero passes the proud, upright, well-groomed figure of tho Indian Sepoy, the young British subaltern upon 'whom authority sits lightly, and whose competence to handle the tribes of the desert or the mountain is palpable at a glance, back view or front, down the whole length of the street. It is the Turks we are fighting, but it is a significant commont upon the length and strength of the British arm and the complexities of administration upon which we r enter with a licht heart that there is not a Turk visible anions those thousands of Arabs. All tliis motley of tribes and religions, with their conflicting interests. policies, and creeds, is incidental. Judging bv the past, everything will !>c straightened out all right. In the meantime Amara is a more ripple on the Mesopotamian backwater, and ahead of us, a hundred and fifty miles xiT) the river, is the Turk.