In the afternoon we passed Ezra’s Tomb, which has a beautiful dome of blue tiles, which in India one would date Seventeenth Century.  Otherwise it looked rather “kachcha” and out of repair, but it makes an extremely picturesque group, having two clumps of palms on either side of an otherwise open stretch of river.

Soon afterwards we came to a large Bedouin Village, or rather camp, running up a little creek and covering quite fifteen acres.  They can’t have been there long, as the whole area was under water two months ago.  Their dwellings are made of reeds, a framework of stiff and pliant reeds and a covering of reed-matting; the whole being like the cover of a van stuck into the ground and one end closed; but smaller, about 5ft. x 4ft. x 7ft.  There were about 100 of these and I should put the population at 700.

A whole crowd of boys and some men came out and ran along with us, and dived in for anything we threw overboard.  They swam like ducks of course.  All the boys and most of the men were quite naked, which is a thing you never see in India.  Any boy over twelve there has a loin-cloth.  There seemed to be very few men about:  a lot of women came to the doors of their huts.  They made no attempt to veil their faces, which even the beggar women in Basra did.  Only one girl and one woman ran with the boat; the girl dived with the best; the woman was dressed and her function was to carry the spoils.  Incidentally our men discovered a better use for their ration biscuits than attempting to eat them.  They made excellent ducks and drakes on the water and the swimmers were quite keen on them.  I must say they tasted rather musty besides being very hard, but I think the men chiefly objected to a very small brown beetle which was abundant in them.

When the sun got low we tied up to the bank for twenty minutes and a good many of the men had a bathe; but owing to the current we had to make them keep within a yard or two of the bank.

Next morning, Wednesday, a half-gale was blowing against us and progress was slower than ever.  The river got wider again, nearly 200 yards in places, and the wind lashed it into waves.  It was a great bore, because you couldn’t put anything down for a second.  Also three days confined to a minute deck-space made me rather bilious.

In the afternoon the wind blew us ashore when we were in sight of Amara, and it took nearly half an hour to get us off again.  Finally, we arrived here about 5 p.m.

This is a town of about 10,000 inhabitants, on the left bank of the Tigris.  On the river front is a quay about a mile long, and an equally long row of continental-looking houses.  It almost reminds one of Dieppe at moments.  The river is about 150 yards wide, and on the other side there are hardly any houses, just a narrow fringe of dates and some fields.  All the inhabitants of the river-front have been turned out and it is occupied with offices, stores, hospitals and billets.  We occupy a block of four houses, which have a common courtyard behind them, a great cloistered yard, which makes an admirable billet for the men.