By the time Newman returned to his party Mr. Cronin was lying on the
ground, and his mother declared that her son was dying. He had been set
upon by men who had come to attack them, and beaten with fists, clubs, and
stones. They tried their best to kill him. However, to Newman's intense
surprise he was not hurt inwardly, only weak from exhaustion and pain.
This was an almost unhoped-for comfort, and it was even found that he
could continue his journey before evening. By this time the crowd had
entirely dispersed, for an official had been sent by the Governor, and
eventually he was able to quiet the people and send them off. Many of the
travellers' possessions were lost, many stolen, but, at any rate, though
discomforts and dangers undreamt of had been theirs, at least they were
none of them seriously hurt; and that in itself was a thing for which they
felt infinitely thankful. At last the Euphrates was reached.

"We saw it first in splendid contrast to a chalk desert, the most odious
place through which I have travelled. We had soft chalk crumbling under
foot, into which the beasts sank over their fetlocks or deeper.... When we
surmounted the last chalk hills the green valley of the Euphrates burst
upon us.

"It runs in a lowland excavation, bounded by opposite lines of high
hills.... This valley was rich in the extreme, with trees scattered in it
like England; but the sides of the hills were well wooded.... The river is
very turbid, as if with white clay; it is unnaturally sweet, does not
taste gritty, and is painfully cold. We presume this is from the melting
of snow water.... The river is deep, rapid, smooth, and (I judge) as broad
as the Thames at Blackfriars...."

He thus describes the raft they were having made to take them down the
river to Bagdad:--"Rough branches of trees of most irregular shape and