ea is like a small range of hills, down the slopes of which are steep
descents to clefts sometimes filled with reeds and rushes and stagnant
pools of water. The site of the world-renowned hanging gardens is now
marked by a series of nondescript lumps. The great temple of Marduk is a
dusty heap of brick rubbish, and the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar appears as
a mean slag heap looking down upon a land desolate and empty.

This is Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees.

"It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from
generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there;
neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.

"But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall
be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there and satyrs
shall dance there.

"And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses,
and dragons in their pleasant palaces."

[Illustration]

VI

ARABIAN NIGHTS IN 1919

[Illustration: GOUFAS ON THE TIGRIS]

[Illustration]

ARABIAN NIGHTS IN 1919

Somewhere in Mesopotamia, in the desert country that lies between the
Euphrates at Felujeh and the Tigris, and in the neighbourhood of a
walled-in group of buildings known as Khan Nuqtah, in the month of
February of this year, and on a singularly miserable and rainy
afternoon, there might have been seen a dark object moving very slowly
across the uninteresting field of vision. At a distance it would not
have been very easy to make out the nature of the thing, and a newcomer
to the scene, with no local knowledge of circumstantial evidence to
guide him, would have hesitated between a buffalo or a hippopotamus and
finally given a vote in favour of it being some slime-crawling saurian
that we come across in pictures of antediluvian natural history.

A closer view, however, would have made clear to him that it was no
animal, but some species of tank, coated and covered with mud,
accompanied by three similarly encased attendants, probably human
beings, staggering and skidding about in its immediate vicinity. From
time to time, one of these three would mount on the head or fore-part of
this object, with the effect of causing it to slide and plunge forward
for a few yards to stick again and again, snorting and panting and
unable apparently to make any further progress.

A detective, equipped with a certain amount of motor knowledge, might
have been ab