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It took hours to catch all the riderless horses after the navy had started for their gentle exercise, but we got heaps of fun out of it and it was very good to see somebody from the outside world. The other time was when we had a concert in Moses' Grove and a regimental band came from El Shatt to entertain us.
The second great blow to the system followed the Mongol conquest, when the Nahrwân Canal, to the east of the Tigris, had its head swept away by flood and the area it had irrigated became desert. Then, in about the fifteenth century, the Tigris returned to its old course; the Shatt el-Hai shrank, and much of the Great Swamp dried up into the desert it is to-day.
Almost with impunity the Turks came over and bombed the camps in the area; the one at El Shatt always received particular attention, possibly on account of its proximity to Suez, more probably because it was the largest and most strongly-fortified camp in the vicinity.
The Tharthâr depression, besides disposing of the Tigris flood- water, would thus probably feed the Euphrates; and a second barrage on the Tigris, to be built at Kût, would supply water to the Shatt el-Hai. It was then that Sir William Willcocks designed the new Hindîyah Barrage, which was completed in 1913.
Its site has been identified with the mounds of Fâra, in the neighbourhood of the Shatt el-Kâr, the former bed of the Euphrates; and the excavations that were conducted there in 1902 have been most productive of remains dating from the prehistoric period of Sumerian culture.
A reservoir has also been built, and caravans of asses bring water in skins from the Shatt el-Hai to keep it filled with a constant supply of water, while the excellent relations which Capt. Cros has established with the Karagul Arabs, who occupy Telloh and its neighbourhood, have proved to be the best kind of protection for the mission engaged in scientific work upon the site.
Busra, our destination, lies about sixty miles from the mouth of the Shatt el Arab, which is the name given to the combined Tigris and Euphrates after their junction at Kurna, another fifty or sixty miles above. At the entrance to the river lies a sand-bar, effectively blocking access to boats of as great draft as the Saxon.
When he has climbed its summit he enjoys an uninterrupted view over desert and swamp. The cause of Nippur's present desolation is to be traced to the change in the bed of the Euphrates, which now lies far to the west. But in antiquity the stream flowed through the centre of the city, along the dry bed of the Shatt en-Nîl, which divides the mounds into an eastern and a western group.
The site of the latter city, as has already been said, is marked by the mounds of Telloh on the east bank of the Shatt el-Hai, the natural stream joining the Tigris and Euphrates, which has been improved and canalized by the dwellers in Southern Babylonia from the earliest period.
The new director of the French mission in Chaldæa arrived at Telloh in January, 1903, and one of his first acts was to shift the site of the mission's settlement from the bank of the Shatt el-Hai, where it had always been established in the time of M. de Sarzec, to the mounds where the actual digging took place.
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