k us in his car to various points along the river and
explained the means employed in irrigation. On the Euphrates there are
two methods used for local irrigation apart from the system of canals
flowing from the river. One is the water-wheel, a curious contrivance
built out on stone piers. It consists of a huge paddle-wheel with
buckets like those of a dredger, that fills a trough that runs down into
the fields.

The other is a water-raising device that is worked by bullocks. A large
leather skin is hauled up from the river by a rope over a wheel. This
rope is harnessed to a bullock which walks backwards and forwards
hauling up the water-skin and letting it down again. When the full skin
reaches the top it hits against a bar and pours itself out into a
trough. These two systems, as can be easily imagined, are good only for
the land in the immediate vicinity of the river bank, as the supply of
water is necessarily not large. Above Hit the frequency of the
water-wheels with their stone piers causes so much obstruction that
navigation for any large boats is impossible. In one place there are
seven wheels abreast.

At last we arrived at an old bridge crossing one of the ancient canals,
which branched off from the river in a westerly direction. I have
sketched it on page 57. It is extremely interesting as an
example of the resuscitation of the old waterways of Babylonia. The
banks of this channel here take almost a mountainous character for so
flat a country. This piling up of mounds has been caused by clearing
the silt from the entrance to the intake of the canal.

From the vantage point of this high ground we could see a goodly
prospect, and on the one side the river, here called the Hindeyeh canal,
with its green shore and on the other a belt of date palms and beyond
the illimitable desert. Some five or six miles away there appeared a
mound surmounted by a tower, a curious object alone in the great expanse
of flat land.

"What is that thing," I asked, "that looks like a ruined castle on the
Rhine?"

"The Tower of Babel," replied the major, "or rather that is its popular
name. It is Birs Nimrud on the map." Brown wanted to start straight away
and "discover" it, but we persuaded him to assent to lunch first. The
major was too busy for such an escapade, but he suggested lending us a
Ford car which would do anything with the desert and which we could not
break, so we returned to Hillah.

After lunch we set out on our