THE FIERY FURNACE

[Illustration: Abadan.]

[Illustration]




THE FIERY FURNACE


There is an unenviable competition between places situated in the region
of Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf as to which can be the hottest.
Abadan, the ever-growing oil port, which is in Persia and on the
starboard hand as you go up the Shatt-el-Arab, if not actually the
winner according to statistics, comes out top in popular estimation. Its
proximity to the scorching desert, its choking dustiness and its
depressing isolation, are characteristics which it shares with countless
other places among these mud plains. But it can outdo them all with its
bleached and slime-stained ground in which nothing can grow, its
roaring furnaces and its all-pervading smell of hot oil.

Across the broad waters of the Shatt-el-Arab there stretches a lonely
strip of country bounded by a wall of palm-tops. Like all the land here
it is cultivated as long as it borders the river and thickly planted
with date groves. Then lies a nondescript belt that just divides the
desert from the sown, and then, a mile or so inland, scorched and
unprofitable wilderness.