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