ing out a hospital to these parts. About midday we weighed anchor
on the new ship, and crept up the channel over the bar. There were no
gas buoys to mark its course, and Fao, which lies near the mouth of the
river, had no lighthouse, so night traffic was presumably impossible.

The sudden sight of the belts of palm trees, the occasional square mud
dwellings, and the steamy, hot-house look of the banks came as a
surprise. Those of us who had been to the Dardanelles had half expected
that this end of Turkey would be much like the other--broken country
and sandy scrub, with hills. But here is only a broad swift river, a
strip of vivid green verdure, and beyond the immense plain stretching to
the horizon. In the stream was a small tug bearing the letters A.P.O.C.
At Abadan we saw the big circular tanks of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company
where the oil from Ahwaz, which travels through miles of piping, is
refined. Above Abadan, which is just a cluster of circular tanks,
slender chimneys and square houses on the arid plain, with a mass of
barges lining the numerous wharfs, we passed Mohammerah. On the opposite
bank--the west bank is called the right bank--you can see the Turkish
trenches where they opposed our first advance among the palms at the
battle of Sahil on November 16th, 1914, with a force of five thousand
men and twelve guns. The ground is intersected with narrow creeks cut
for irrigation purposes; and the trenches form little crescent-shaped
depressions almost hidden by the reeds and grasses. From the ship it
looks a lush green country here, for there are rice fields dotted about
and the river broadens out and surrounds an emerald island. Our 4,000
ton vessel swept up-stream at a speed of ten knots, with a great wash
spreading behind her, and her funnels towering high above the palms. Our
destination was reached at six in the evening, about sixty miles from
the mouth of the river, and the whole way up the scene had been
practically unvarying--river and plain, and countless palms. We had
passed the vessels sunk by the Turks to bar the progress of the original
expedition. Masts and a funnel are visible, standing clear of the main
channel.

Basra was like coming on a bit of the London Thames from a distance.
Lines of big ships appeared suddenly, round a bend of the river,
anchored in mid-stream. There were hospital ships, cargo vessels,
transports, war-ships, monitors, tugs, river boats, oil-driven
lighters--the ones we