'The Expedition for the survey of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, carried on by order of the British government, in the years 1835, 1836, and 1837; preceded by geographical and historical notices of the regions situated between the rivers Nile and Indus. In four volumes. With fourteen maps and charts, and embellished with ninety-seven plates, besides numerous wood-cuts. Volume the first.' [‎59] (106/905)

CHAP. III.] AL KHUDHR TO SHEi'KH EL SHUYUKH.
59
been by different channels conveyed from it to the villages Reunion of
and rice-grounds. Being thus reunited to its former waters, benches,
and at the same time free from those marshes in which it
had been supposed to be lost, 1 the Euphrates suddenly re
appears on its former large scale, inclosed between high
banks covered with jungle. Soon after this change, when
passing the western side of the mat village of A1 Khudhr,
which is 49^ miles by water, and 36^ miles, S. 43° E., direct
from Lamlum, it averages 200 yards in breadth, and contains
nine small islands. The greater branch had, in the marshes,
and during the season of floods, a bare average breadth of
about 60 yards, with an ordinary depth of eight feet: a
portion of the right bank is, however, still visible, and is used
by trackers. Like the country inwards on each side of the
river, the left bank is covered with a shallow inundation. The country
amidst which numerous villages, consisting of houses formed inuridated -
of reeds, covered with mats of the same material, appear here
and there on the more elevated spots of ground, which are
all but hidden by the water.
Below A1 Khudhr the course of the river is tolerably
straight, and it flows through a fertile country, abounding
with villages, either of mats or tents, surrounded by rich
date-groves. The largest of the former class is A1 Kut,
the residence of the Sheikh of Montefik, which is situated on
the left bank, eight miles above Sheikh el Shuyukh. This
last is a considerable place on the right bank; it contains sheikh el
i i t r i. Shuyukh.
about 1500 clay-built houses, and nearly as many ot mats,
and is situated at the distance of 64^ miles by water, or 50
miles, S. 67° E., in a direct line from A1 Khudhr.
From this place to Sheikh el Shuyukh the average width
of the river is about 250 yards, and its ordinary depth is
20 feet, with a current of two miles and a half per hour in
the season of floods. There is but one island in this part of
its course.
1 Some, like Polybius, General History, book IX., chap, ix., believed that
the river exhausts itself in different channels before it reaches the sea; and the
transport of armies in those parts is extremely tedious.—Hampton's translation,
London, 1809, Vol. III., p. 107.
i 2