s own water-butt. These water-butts are the
Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Persian Gulf, and they are always
big enough to hold all the water, however hard it may rain on the stony
roof which rises between Caucasia, Asia Minor, and Mesopotamia. The
gutters are, of course, the rivers, the greatest of which is the
Euphrates.

Now the road is very bad. There has been rain in the autumn; and now
that it is freezing, the mud, all cut up by deep wheel-ruts, is as hard
as stone. My vehicle shakes and jolts me hither and thither and up and
down, and when we arrive at the village where we are to pass the night,
I feel bruised all over. Shakir makes tea and boils eggs, and after
supper I roll myself in my cloak and go to sleep.

It is pitch-dark when I am called, and still dark when we make a start
by the light of lanterns. After a little a curious sound is heard across
the plain. The clang becomes louder, coming nearer to us, and tall, dark
ghosts pass by with silent steps. Only bells are heard. The ghosts are
camels coming from Persia with carpets, cotton, and fruit. There are
more than three hundred of them, and it is a long time before the road
is clear again. And all the time there is a ringing as from a chime of
bells.

For many thousands of years the same sound has been heard on the caravan
routes. It is the same with the roar of the waters of the Euphrates and
Tigris. Mighty powers have flourished and passed away on their banks,
whole peoples have died out, of Babylon and Nineveh only ruins are left;
but the waters of the rivers murmur just the same, and the caravan bells
ring now as in the days when Alexander led the Macedonian army over the
Euphrates and Tigris, when the Venetian merchant Marco Polo travelled
620 years ago between Tabriz and Trebizond by the road we are now
driving along, when Timur the Lame defeated the Turks and by this road
carried the Sultan Bayazid in an iron cage to exhibit him like a wild
beast in the towns of Asia.

A white morning cloud seems to be floating over the grey mountains to
the east, but when the sun rises it is seen to be a cone as regular as
the roof of an Armenian church. It is the snow-capped top of Mount
Ararat, where the ark landed when the great flood went down. The summit
is always covered with snow, for the mountain is a thousand feet higher
than Mont Blanc.

Now we are not far from the frontier, where Kurdish brigands render the
country unsafe, but once over the b