tending the first uncouth monsters of engineering--the antediluvians of
machinery. These serried ranks of tall iron funnels, these rude furnaces
fed by crawling snakes of piping, these roaring domes of fire might be
crude steam engines evolved by Titans when the world was young.

[Illustration]




II

THE VENICE OF THE EAST.

[Illustration: In Ashar creek.]

[Illustration]




THE VENICE OF THE EAST


Before the war, when Mesopotamia was a more distant land than it is
to-day, Basra was often referred to as the Venice of the East. Few
travellers were in a position to test the accuracy of the comparison,
and so it aroused little comment. No Venetians had returned from Basra
burning with indignation and filled with a desire to get even with the
writer who first thought of the parallel, probably because no Venetian