was nearly level with the barge. The only floater was that my new
bearer (who is, I fear, an idiot) succeeded in dropping my heavy kit
bag into the river, where it vanished like a stone. Fortunately that
kind of thing doesn't worry me much; but while I was looking for an
Arab diver to fish for it it suddenly re-appeared the other side of
the boat, and was retrieved.

These river boats are flat-bottomed and only draw six feet. They have
two decks and an awning, and there was just room for our 200 men to
lie about. Altogether there were on board--in the order of the amount
of room they took up--two brass hats, 220 men (four Hants drafts and
some odds and ends), a dozen officers, four horses and a dozen native
servants and a crew.

Altogether I had to leave four sick men at Basra, all due more or less
to that barge episode, and I have still two sickish on my hands, while
two have recovered.

There was a strong head-wind and current so we only made about four or
five knots an hour. The river is full of mud banks, and the channel
winds to and fro in an unexpected manner, so that one can only move by
daylight and then often only by constant sounding. Consequently,
starting at noon on Monday, it took us till 5 p.m. Wednesday to do the
130 miles. It is much less for a crow, but the river winds so, that
one can quite believe Herodotus's yarn of the place where you pass the
same village on three consecutive days. Up to Kurna, which we reached
at 7 a.m. Tuesday, the river is about 500 yards to 300 yards broad,
and the country mainly poor, bare, flat pasture; the date fringe
diminishing and in places altogether disappearing for miles together.
At the water's edge, as it recedes, patches of millet had been and