When the Turks had fled from Kurna and we were chasing them up the river with an amazing medley of craft, like a nightmare of Henley regatta suddenly mobilized, the Shushan was in the forefront of the battle.  Led by the sloops Espiegle, Clio, and Odin, the Stunt Armada came to Ezra’s Tomb at twilight.  The river was high and the land in between the great bends was a maze of rushes and lagoons.  Hospital hulks like Noah’s arks, little steamers, and loaded mahailas jostled each other in their endeavours to get up against the strong stream.  The hulks and the barges were dropped at the bend shown in the sketch, facing page 46, and the Odin anchored.  We had captured already some Turkish barges, and prisoners had to be collected.

The rest pushed on.  Across the bend, some two or three miles away, the Turkish gunboat Marmaris was putting on every ounce of fuel she had, and a mass of mahailas and tugs were doing their best to escape the Nemesis that awaited them.  Then the sloops opened fire, and a desultory cannonade was kept up as it grew darker and darker.  At last it was too dark to get any sort of aim, and firing ceased.  The Marmaris had been set alight by her crew, but we captured the whole of the enemy’s flotilla.

[Illustration:  EZRA’S TOMB]

Ezra’s Tomb is a splendid spot to look at.  Mosquitoes at times makes it far from pleasant to live in.  The blue-tiled dome surrounded by palms, one of which is bending down in a manner strange to such a straight-growing tree, is an oasis in a vast wilderness of nothing in particular.

The Euphrates from a scenic point of view might be described as more wooded than the Tigris.  There are some delightful glimpses of waterside verdure and rush-covered shores.  To the archaeologist and the historian Mugheir is intensely interesting, for the great mound discloses the site of the ancient Ur—­Ur of the Chaldees—­from which Abraham set out towards Canaan.

Up till now, upon a map of the world in Abraham’s time, the good little Shushan would still be at sea.  She would be approaching the coast at the mouth of the river Euphrates, the Tigris flowing-out some fifty miles further east.  Dockyards and busy workshops would proclaim the vicinity of this capital, the greatest of all the cities of Chaldea.

Since these prosperous days the sea has receded about 150 miles, and left Ur a nondescript heap to be disputed over by professors.

At length, when we had said good-bye to the Shushan and taken to a motor-boat, we arrived at Hillah, bent on finding the house of the irrigation officer.  We landed on the wrong side of the river and rashly let the boat go back.  Brown maintains now that this was my idea, but as a matter of fact it was one of his attempts at a picturesque approach—­for my benefit.  Brown has a vivid imagination, and sees so clearly in his mind how a place ought to be that he really believes it is so.  In this case he pictured us approaching Hillah and looking down upon miles and miles of fruitful gardens intersected with little waterways—­a sort of landscape-garden Venice.  This view could only be obtained from a high cliff, and as there was no cliff in lower Mesopotamia, except in Brown’s imagination, it was natural that he would be disappointed.