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Updated: April 30, 2025
Owing, however, to the imperfect character of the means of transportation in ancient and, for that matter, in modern times, the voyage up the stream was impracticable. The rafts, resting on inflated bags of goat or sheep skin, can make no headway against the rapid stream, and so, upon reaching Baghdad or Basra, they are broken up, and the bags sent back by the shore route to the north.
Other souls, like myself, less simple and sufficiently salted to know that these Turnerian dreams are generally the magical accidents of changing light and seldom the result of any intrinsic interest in the places themselves even they had a grievance when they saw the real Basra. Was this the Venice of the East, this squalid place beside soup-coloured waters?
As a matter of fact the Persian Gulf and the oil fields were safe so long as the English held Kurna and Basra, and the Arabs were of no special consequence. The real reason for the expedition was probably that about this time matters were moving badly for the Allies. Serbia was in trouble in the Balkans, Gallipoli was a failure, something it seemed ought to be done to restore the British prestige.
He was a wireless man, and being so, had found something in the desert that puzzled the science of his mind. He explained the matter. Out there it is a white, undulating expanse, burning hot, but with more air than in Basra. There are extraordinary effects of perspective. A man standing a short way off may assume gigantic proportions, or look like a dwarf.
Before the war, when Mesopotamia was a more distant land than it is to-day, Basra was often referred to as the Venice of the East. Few travellers were in a position to test the accuracy of the comparison, and so it aroused little comment.
During this time considerable activity prevailed throughout the Basra region. Near by, on Makina Plain, a vast flat expanse of bare earth beyond the shadow of the palm plantations, a perpetual dust arose. Transport columns, guns and troops were always on the move, and the camps grew in size until the whole place was dotted with white canvas and yellow matting huts.
There were hospital ships, cargo vessels, transports, war-ships, monitors, tugs, river boats, oil-driven lighters the ones we made the landing from at Suvla, with a coat of new paint and the letters ML instead of K barges, launches, native dhows which travel to Mombasa and Bombay and innumerable lesser craft. Basra itself lies up a creek, and is invisible from the river.
The centres of Arabian rationalism were, as we know, the cities of Bagdad and Basra, nearer to Babylon and Mesopotamia than to Egypt or Kairuan. The first quotation in Judah ben Barzilai has reference to science and philosophy, their definition and classification. Science is the knowledge of the reality of existing things. It is divided into two parts, theoretical and practical.
Was this the city that reveals the past splendours of Haroun Alraschid as Venice reveals the golden age of Titian and the Doges? The first general impression of Basra is that of an unending series of quays along a river not unlike the Thames at Tilbury.
In spite, however, of these drawbacks and disappointments, to those who would find Venetian character by the waters of Mesopotamia, there are two features in Basra that do undoubtedly bring Venice to mind the boats and the canals.
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