ter on, as well as
sand-fly fever. Besides these there was a skin disease which we called
Basra sore--a very indolent ulcer which is not painful, but tends to
spread over the legs and arms, leaving a flexible, bluish scar when it
eventually heals. There was also an ill-defined syndrome, termed
variously Mesopotamitis or acute debility, or the Fear of God.
Officially one described it as the effects of heat. But of all these the
most pitiful was heat-stroke.

IV

HEAT-STROKE

I do not know of any other malady so dramatic, or so painful to witness,
as heat-stroke, with the exception, perhaps, of acute cholera. It is
something that belongs to Mesopotamia in a peculiar sense, in that it
seems to express in visible and concentrated form the silent hostility
of the country which was noticed by the ancients. For Mesopotamia
welcomes no man. It is a profound enigma. What do those two gigantic
rivers mean that rush through those vast stretches of barren land? For
what ultimate destiny were they designed? It is like looking on two
enormous electric cables, carrying a current of incalculable amperage,
lying beside a vast but motionless machinery, because no contact has
been made. Whatever the answer may be it has been long in coming.
Dwelling beside them, one cannot help speculating, for there is a kind
of fatality that concerns the disposition of matter in Nature. Oil
fields and rubber trees existed, one might say, as enigmas, until the
internal combustion engine and motor cars dawned on the world and
explained their riddle. This was their fate. And of Mesopotamia, who
shall say that it may not be concerned with a yet unborn attitude in us
Europeans when we will turn wholly to the produce of the earth?

To gain some idea of heat-stroke it is necessary to grasp the conditions
that produce it. A typical hot day begins with a dawn that comes as a
sudden hot yellow behind the motionless palms. A glittering host of
dragon-flies rises up from the swamps, wheeling and darting after the
mosquitoes. In the growing light mysterious shapes slink past. They are
the camp dogs returning from their sing-song, which has kept you awake
half the night. Inside the mosquito net you see various gorged little
insects struggling to get out of the meshing through which they passed
so easily when they were slim and hungry. The hot beam of the sun picks
out your tent, and the mercury goes up steadily. At five you are bathed
in perspiration as