Along the shores of the rivers of Mesopotamia and in the innumerable lagoons and backwaters that abound can be found large areas of tall reeds, ranging from quite slight rushes to canes twenty feet high.  It is with such material the Marsh Arab builds.  The long rods he bends into arches like croquet hoops.  On this skeleton, not unlike the ribs of a boat turned upside down, he stretches large mats woven out of rushes.  At the ends he builds up a straight wall of reed straw bound up in flat sheaves.  An opening is left for an entrance, a mat, sometimes of coloured material, doing duty for a door.

So much for the principal and removable part of the village.  However, the town planner will add to this by improvising mud enclosures for animals, and an occasional wall and “tower.”  The mud is mixed with cut grass and reeds, quickly drying into a hard substance, and sufficiently permanent for anything that such a temporary village requires.

In the bright sunlight of the Mesopotamian plains, and probably also on account of their prominence at a distance over the flat land, some of these mud buildings look quite imposing.  I remember once approaching a city with ramparts, towers, and formidable walls which, on close inspection, turned out to be a small mud enclosure of the most decrepit kind.

Great changes have been made in the rule of the waterways of Mesopotamia.  Sinbad the Sailor has given place to Sinbad the Soldier, the Inland Water Transport.

We have learnt, as we were advised to do in regard to the things of Mesopotamia, to think amphibiously.

[Illustration:  Noah’s Ark, 1919.]

IV

THE WISE MEN FROM THE WEST

[Illustration:  Upward bound on the Tigris.]

[Illustration]

THE WISE MEN FROM THE WEST

The story of Mesopotamia is a story of irrigation.  “It is not improbable,” writes Sir William Willcocks, the great irrigationist, “that the wisdom of ancient Chaldea had its foundations in the necessity of a deep mastery of hydraulics and meteorology, to enable the ancient settlers to turn what was partially a desert and partially a swamp into fields of world-famed fertility.”  The civilizations of Babylon and Assyria owed their very life to the science of watering the land, and even in the later times of Haroun Alraschid their great systems had been well maintained.  It is said of Maimun, the son and successor of this monarch, that he exclaimed, as he saw Egypt spread out before him, “Cursed be Pharaoh who said in his pride, ’Am I not Pharaoh, King of Egypt?’ If he had seen Chaldea he would have said it with humility.”