direction of the desert; they are arrested at the foot of these hills,
and are diverted on to the low-lying ground, where they lose themselves
in the morasses, or hollow out a series of lakes along its borders,
the largest of which, Bahr-î-Nedjîf, is shut in on three sides by steep
cliffs, and rises or falls periodically with the floods. A broad canal,
which takes its origin in the direction of Hit at the beginning of the
alluvial plain, bears with it the overflow, and, skirting the lowest
terraces of the Arabian chain, runs almost parallel to the Euphrates. In
proportion as the canal proceeds southward the ground sinks still lower,
and becomes saturated with the overflowing waters, until, the banks
gradually disappearing, the whole neighbourhood is converted into a
morass. The Euphrates and its branches do not at all times succeed in
reaching the sea: they are lost for the most part in vast lagoons to
which the tide comes up, and in its ebb bears their waters away with
it. Reeds grow there luxuriantly in enormous beds, and reach sometimes
a height of from thirteen to sixteen feet; banks of black and putrid mud
emerge amidst the green growth, and give off deadly emanations. Winter
is scarcely felt here: snow is unknown, hoar-frost is rarely seen,
but sometimes in the morning a thin film of ice covers the marshes, to
disappear under the first rays of the sun.*

* Loftus attributes the lowering of the temperature during
the winter to the wind blowing over a soil impregnated with
saltpetre. "We were," he says, "in a kind of immense
freezing chamber."

[Illustration: 027.jpg THE MARSHES ABOUT THE CONFLUENCE OF THE KERKHA
AND TIGRIS.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by J. Dieulafoy.