es, and returned shamefaced
and breathless to jump aboard the boat as we bumped against the bank on
rounding a curve.

One evening we halted where, not many months before, the last of the
battles of Sunnaiyat had been fought. There for months the British had
been held back, while their beleaguered comrades in Kut could hear the
roar of the artillery and hope against hope for the relief that never
reached them. It was one phase of the campaign that closely approximated
the gruelling trench warfare in France. The last unsuccessful attack was
launched a week before the capitulation of the garrison, and it was almost
a year later before the position was eventually taken. The front-line
trenches were but a short distance apart, and each side had developed a
strong and elaborate system of defense. One flank was protected by an
impassable marsh and the other by the river. When we passed, the field
presented an unusually gruesome appearance even for a battle-field, for
the wandering desert Arabs had been at work, and they do not clean up as
thoroughly as the African hyena. A number had paid the penalty through
tampering with unexploded grenades and "dud" shells, and left their own
bones to be scattered around among the dead they had been looting. The
trenches were a veritable Golgotha with skulls everywhere and dismembered
legs still clad with puttees and boots.

At Kut we disembarked to do the remaining hundred miles to Baghdad by rail
instead of winding along for double the distance by river, with a good
chance of being hung up for hours, or even days, on some shifting
sand-bar. At first sight Kut is as unpromising a spot as can well be
imagined, with its scorching heat and its sand and the desolate
mud-houses, but in spite of appearances it is an important and thriving
little town, and daily becoming of more consequence.

The railroad runs across the desert, following approximately the old
caravan route to Baghdad. A little over half-way the line passes the
remaining arch of the great hall of Ctesiphon. This hall is one hundred
and forty-eight feet long by seventy-six broad. The arch stands
eighty-five feet high. Around it, beneath the mounds of desert sand, lies
all that remains of the ancient city. As a matter of fact the city is by
no means ancient as such things go in Mesopotamia, dating as it does from
the third century B.C., when it was founded by the successors of Alexander
the Great.

My first night in Baghdad I