ECTURE. TIGRIS 88

BAGHDAD 90

"PUFFING BILLY" IN BAGHDAD 91

A BIT OF OLD BAGHDAD 93

"BLOSSOMS AND FRUIT AT ONCE OF GOLDEN HUE APPEARED, WITH GAY
ENAMELLED COLOURS MIXED." 98

"HIGH, EMINENT, BLOOMING AMBROSIAL FRUIT OF VEGETABLE GOLD." 105

THE WALLS OF HIT 110

HIT 120

SAMARA 121

I

THE FIERY FURNACE

[Illustration: Abadan.]

[Illustration]

THE FIERY FURNACE

There is an unenviable competition between places situated in the region
of Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf as to which can be the hottest.
Abadan, the ever-growing oil port, which is in Persia and on the
starboard hand as you go up the Shatt-el-Arab, if not actually the
winner according to statistics, comes out top in popular estimation. Its
proximity to the scorching desert, its choking dustiness and its
depressing isolation, are characteristics which it shares with countless
other places among these mud plains. But it can outdo them all with its
bleached and slime-stained ground in which nothing can grow, its
roaring furnaces and its all-pervading smell of hot oil.

Across the broad waters of the Shatt-el-Arab there stretches a lonely
strip of country bounded by a wall of palm-tops. Like all the land here
it is cultivated as long as it borders the river and thickly planted
with date groves. Then lies a nondescript belt that just divides the
desert from the sown, and then, a mile or so inland, scorched and
unprofitable wilderness.

Into this monotonous spiked sky-line the sun was wont to cut his fiery
way without much variety of effect every evening, and night rushed down,
bringing respite from this heat; for it is happily one of the
compensations of life in these parts that the nights are cool, however
hot the day.

About 150 miles from this busy spot lie the oilfields of the
Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Two adventurous iron pipes start courageously
with crude oil and conduct it by or through or over every obstacle from
these wells to Abadan. In the early days of the war great and successful
effort