I suppose there is no city to be found anywhere in the world that would quite reach the standard of dazzling splendour of the Baghdad that we conjure up in our imagination when we think of the City of the Arabian Nights in the romantic days, so dear to our childhood, of Haroun-al-Raschid.  We expect so much when we come to the real Baghdad, and we find so little—­so little, that is, of the glamour of the East.  Few “costly doors flung open wide,” but a great deal of dirt.  Few dark eyes of ravishingly beautiful women peering coyly through lattice windows, but a great deal of sordid squalor.  Few marvellous entertainments where we can behold the wonderful witchery of Persian dancing girls, but a theatre, the principal house of amusement in Baghdad—­and lo, a man selling onions to the habitues of the stalls!

Of all the deadly dull shows I have ever seen I think the one I saw at Baghdad furnished about the dullest.  There were two principal dancing girls—­stars of the theatrical world of Mesopotamia—­and a few others forming a kind of chorus.  The orchestra, on the stage, consisted of a guitar, a sort of dulcimer, and a drum.  The musicians made a most appalling noise and rocked to and fro, as if in the greatest enjoyment of the thrilling harmonies they were creating.  The stars came on one at a time, the odd one out meanwhile augmenting the chorus, and sang a few verses of a song to a tune that can only be described as a Gregorian chant with squiggly bits thrown in.  Of course I was unable to understand the words, but can bear witness to the fact that the tune did not vary the whole evening, and every gesture and attitude of the singer was exactly the same again and again as she went through the performance, and the dance which concluded each six or eight verses was also exactly the same every time.  After this had been going on for about an hour the other girl came to the footlights.  It was natural to expect a change; but no, she went through it all as if she had most carefully understudied the part.  Neither of these girls was pretty or in the least attractive to look at.  All I could assume, as the audience seemed quite satisfied, was that the words must have been extraordinarily brilliant or that the Baghdad public was very easily entertained.

[Illustration:  A bit of Old Baghdad.]

The journey from Basra to Baghdad takes nearly a week in a “fast” steamer.  It can be done, however, express, by taking the train from Basra to Amara, leaving Basra about five in the evening and arriving at Amara in the morning.  Then the journey is continued by boat to Kut, and thence from Kut in the evening by train, arriving in Baghdad in the early morning—­the whole distance within two days.  The railway does not run the whole way.  The journey from Amara to Kut sounds a mere link across the river, as the full name of Kut is Kut-el-Amara, and most people naturally suppose Amara is part of Kut.  This is another Amara, however.  The Amara from