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Updated: April 30, 2025
The Turks lost Fao, the fort that commanded the entrance to the Shatt-el-Arab, within a few days of the opening of hostilities. They had imagined it such a formidable obstacle to our approach that they were thrown suddenly on their beam ends when we took it. Consequently they could not keep us out of Abadan, but fell back on Beit Naama vainly attempting to block the river by sinking ships.
The captain and inhabitants of the island came off to us daily with fresh provisions, which saved our sea-stores while we lay here. I also bought twenty-one beeves, 200 salted drom-fish of large size, and 150 bushels of cassado meal, called by the Portuguese farina de fao. This is about as fine as our oatmeal, and from it a very hearty food is prepared with little trouble.
Why, the Government lines are so frequently out of order just now, that their daily condition is reported on as if they were noble invalids. Cable communication perfect to Fao; Turkish line is interrupted beyond Semawali; Persian line interrupted beyond Shiraz. And it is constantly like that the telegraphic disease, though intermittent, is chronic.
Lower down the valley, appeared a broad flat, called Jubla, a halting-place one stage below the village of Kambachen, on the road to Lelyp on the Tambur: it must be a remarkable geological as well as natural feature, fao it appeared to jut abruptly and quite horizontally from the black cliffs of the valley.
"Get thee away with thy lover and the girl Selema. Felipa, the head chief of Fao, hath been told of thy beauty, and hath sent word here that the man Manaia must be killed to-night, and thou and Selema be sent to him. This is wrong for even a chief to do, and we of this place would aid thee to escape."
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.
They had told us to go round to the north end of the island, where there was a chief named Loli, who would protect us and give us a home. But again evil fortune befell us, for the chief of Fao, hearing of our escape, sent a messenger overland to Loli, claiming us as mea tafea i moana gifts sent to him by the sea and asking him to hold us for him.
We feel that it is a matter of the first importance that those countries should remain under our protection, and that the Turks should not build forts at Fao and otherwise interfere with our trade in the Karoun, and that no other power should have a foothold thereon.
This was, to rig a platform in a giant fao tree that stood in the middle of the island, about three miles down the coast, and fix it up with food and things, for Old Dibs to camp in. The idea was to hide him till dark in the attic of my house, and then to put him up the tree for as long as the ship stayed by us.
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