Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 March 1917 — UP the Ancient Tigris [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

UP the Ancient Tigris

Transportation for the Tigris corps was arranged and we were told to embark on a paddle steamer. We were advised to draw rations, as we would have to feed ourselves during the trip, writes a correspondent ofthe Chicago Daily News in descrlbing a trfp up the ancient Tigris river with the British forces. The captain of our steamer was a Persian. He was mentioned in dispatches for gallant conduct preceding the investiture of Kut. His ship was the last to escape before the Turks surrounded General Townshend. Because of many years’ experience in navigating the Tigris between Basra and Bagdad, he IS one of the most valued captains on the river. He navigates his ship from a bridge incased with steel armor which is bullet-spattered in several places. In the old days sandbags were piled four deep along the rails of the ships to protect crafts against Arab snipers. It has been some months since there w’as serious sniptUg along the river. The Arabs found that it paid better to sell eggs and fresh chickens. Six officers and myself shared the forward bridge deek. The after deck was packed with stores, mails and

white troops returning from hospitals to their units at the front. The bags of rice and flour comprising the cargoes of the barges fastened on either side of our steamer formed couches for several hundred native troops. We spread our camp beds, camp tables and collapsible chairs', hung porous water jugs on the ship’s rail, so that the hot wind would cool the water in the jug by evaporating the moisture which seeped through, and settled down for. our term of agony. l Sleeping Amid Money Chests. The senior combatant officer-passen-ger is always, chosen as officer commanding troops. The “O. C.” in our case was a major who had been in America. When I first saw him he was swearing roundly at a native ser"geantandTsix men wBoTBaiT Just deposited at his feet something like $50,000 in Indian money and informed him that he, as “O. was responsible for its safe arrival at Amara. He counted the boxes, examined the seals and signed I a receipt for the treasure. We moved the of money between our beds so that they formed a table for meals and a dressing stand i for shaving in the morning. He then ; ordered all the Indians of fighting strength to> fall in on the after deck and “told, off” men for the guards. The first reaches of the Tigris were beautiful. The river was broad and swent along in zracefulcnrves. Its. banks were deeply lined with luxuriant date ’ palms, each with a necklace of glistening, golden fruit. But barren wastes lie 300 yards behind them. ,i Tigris sunsets are wonderful. Old -T i’

1 campaigners say that they are second 1 only to those of Egypt. An admirer I of a Tigris landscape and sunset would * think of spice winds and balmy » breezes. The native Arab says, “God made hell and found it was not bad enough, so he made Mesopotamia —and added flies.” By 10 a. m. we cordially hated the Tigris and its palm-treed bank. A blistering hot wind blew out of the north. If one touched bare metal —the skin of one’s fingers stayed on the metal. I had a dozen candles. When I looked for them at night I found only twelve limp strings—every particle of tallow had melted and dribbled away. Arabs Fish on Banks. The Arabs who live along the Tigris in summer are called “fish eaters.” They migrate to the hills in winter to escape the floods, but- return to their bits of river lands in the spring. We saw scores of families standing waistdeep in the river * hauling out bony, wiggly fish as fast as they could bait their hooks with bits of dough. The children seem to live in a perpetual state of bathing. They have a strong aversion to clothes of any description and are less dirty than their parents because they have not lived as long. It is now date-picking time, and those

natives who are not fishing may be found at the top of date trees suspended by rope slings similar to those used by coconut pickers. Late in the afternoon we passed the new mouth of the Euphrates. A few years ago this river got tired of its mouth at Kurna and cut a new one a few miles north of Basra. It is said that in a few years the mouth at Kurna will become hardly more than a cabal. The Euphrates water is a sulphuric white, while the Tigris water is now comparatively clear.. For miles after joining the Waters of the two rivers. keep to their own sides of the Stream. Each officer’s servant prepared his master’s dinner toward dark. Our dessert, established by rigid medical regulation, was ten grainsofqutnlne—ten grains every night means 300 grains every month.

BARTERING WITH THE ARABS

CETTING TRESH FISH