wicker boat in vogue two thousand six hundred years ago and still in use.  Talk about standardization:  here is a craft standardized before the days of Sennacherib!  Assyrian sculptures in the British Museum show this boat in use exactly as it is to-day, and although we have no records, it probably was in use for ages previously.  Noah, possibly, had one as dinghy to the Ark.  The goufa is made like a basket and then coated with bitumen.  This type of boat gives a touch of fantasy to the scenery of the Tigris and Euphrates, especially when filled with watermelons and paddled by a man whose appearance suggests Abraham attempting the role of Sinbad the Sailor for “the pictures.”

Of all the things I saw in my travels in Mesopotamia, I think a goufa was about the most satisfactory.  It is a delightful shape and a fascinating colour—­a sort of milky blue-grey—­somewhere between the colour of an elephant and an old lead vase.  It satisfies that craving for mystery which we are led to expect when we travel to the East.  When we first see a goufa we do not know quite what it is.  It may be something to do with magic.

Another curiosity of the Upper Tigris is the raft of light wood and air-inflated skins which comes down from the north to Samara and Baghdad.  On this section of the river there are many shallows, sometimes caused by traces of old rubble weirs.  Consequently any kind of craft which drew more than a few inches would be always in trouble.  These rafts, made of light saplings lashed together, are rendered buoyant by being packed underneath with goat-skins inflated with air.  Thus they require only a very slight depth of water to float them, and they are sufficiently tough to stand bumping and scraping over shoals and shallows.

The men who manoeuvre these strange craft have some sort of tent or shelter to protect them from the sun, and they row with huge paddles.  This rowing is sufficient to keep some sort of steering way on the raft, enough to enable it to get from one bank of the river to the other as it floats down.

Wood is scarce in the Baghdad region, and the material of these rafts is sold together with the cargo on its arrival at its destination.  The crew proceed back by road to Diarbekr or some up-river town to bring down another raft.

The glamour of the East is felt mostly in the West.  In an atmosphere of fog and wet streets, sun-baked plains with endless caravans and belts of date-palms by Tigris’ shore seem the most delightful of prospects.  Memory and imagination, those two artists of never-failing skill, leave out of the picture all dust and squalor—­and insects!  Yet to those who are sojourning by the Waters of Babylon or resting in sight of the golden towers of Khadamain romance and mystery would seem to dwell in a glimpse of Waterloo Bridge, with ghostly barges gliding silently by a thousand lamps, or in the grey cliffs of houses that make looming vistas down a London street.