mile wide there, but the place is absolutely featureless. In fact all
the way up it is the same. The surrounding country is as flush with
the river as if it had been planed down to it. On either side runs a
belt of date palms about half a mile wide, but these are seldom worth
looking at, being mostly low and shrubby, like an overgrown market
garden.

Beyond that was howling desert, not even picturesquely sandy, but a
dried up marsh overblown with dust, like the foreshore of a third-rate
port. The only relief to the landscape was when we passed tributaries
and creeks, each palm-fringed like the river. Otherwise the only
notable sights were the Anglo Persian Oil Works, which cover over a
hundred acres and raised an interesting question of comparative
ugliness with man and nature in competition, and a large steamer sunk
by the Turks to block the channel and, needless to add, not blocking
it.

There was a stiff, warm wind off the desert, hazing the air with dust
and my cabin temperature was 100°. Altogether it was rather a
depressing entrée, since amply atoned for so far as Nature is
concerned.

We reached Basra about 2 p.m. and anchored in midstream, the river
being eight hundred yards or so wide here. The city of Basra is about
three miles away, up a creek, but on the river there is a port and
native town called Ashar.

The scene on the river is most attractive, especially at sunrise and
sunset. The banks rise about ten feet from the water: the date palms
are large and columnar; and since there is a whole series of creeks,