'Turkish Arabia: Being an Account of an Official Tour in Babylonia, Assyria, and Mesopotamia, 1886-87' [‎28v] (56/72)

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an inconclusive test, sent two steamers {" Nitoeris" and " Nimrod"), commanded by
Captain Campbell of the Indian Navy, to attempt the ascent of the same river. In the
end both vessels reached Bilees, or Maskanah, about the same parallel as Aleppo. But
the difficulties they met with convinced Government that in its upper course numerous
obstacles render the Euphrates not less unsuitable for steam navigation than the hopeless
lagoons and shallows of its lower portion of, say, two hundred miles between Diw&niyah
and Gurna do. Not content to profit by the experiences of others, the enterprising Midhat
Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. , when Governor-General of the Baghdad Pashalik, took the Turkish Government
steamer Furdt up from Sakliwiyah, not far from Baghdad, to Maskanah, in May 1872.
With him went, as his guest, Captain Powell, of the late Indian Navy, then serving as
Commander of the Residency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, established in the provinces and regions considered part of, or under the influence of, British India. steamer Comet. A detailed account of their struggle up
the river, also an excellent map, were afterwards submitted to Government by Captain
Powell. At that season, the stream, only some 4 feet below its highest, was more
favourable to getting on than examining the several obstructions in the river-bed. Never
theless, the log is little better than a record of " aground," " waiting for Arab assistance
to pass the rapid ahead," " detained here till noon, repairing the port paddle-wheel which
had been much damaged yesterday," " landed to lighten the vessel, everything had to
be taken out before she would move," and so on, entries making one feel deeply thank
ful that a good horse, and not a steamer, was under him as he pursued the same route.
The Baghdad Government has long been doing its best, not indeed to open up the
Euphrates for continuous steam navigation, which would require a great deal of money,
but merely to enable a small steamer to ply occasionally in the high season (April to
July) between Hilla and Maskanah, less with a view to commerce than to impress the
riverain tribes. But for several years past even this has not been persevered with, and
apparently Osmanli enterprise in this direction is now satisfied with maintaining a flotilla
of small trading and passenger steamers on the Tigris between Baghdad and Bassorah.
Of the causes militating against the navigation of the Euphrates by steamers of even the
smallest useful size, one affects it over its whole course while two reside, the one in its
upper, or rather medial, and the other in its lower reaches. Instead of being everywhere
enriched, like the Tigris, by tributaries, after emerging from the Armenian mountain?
near Sams&t, the Bilikh and Khabur from the left, with two less considerable streams
from the right, are its only affluents during about eight hundred miles of its course.
Again, no sooner does it enter the alluvial deposit of Babylonia (Irak) than its low and
uncared for banks constantly incline it to leave its bed and flow off to the right, or west,
where large tracts are below its ordinary level. In the well-known "Chaldean marshes"
the " great river ^ thus at times wholly, or almost wholly, loses itself. Some three hundred
and fifty yards wide at Hit, it has contracted to about two hundred yards at Hillah, a
hundred and sixty-five miles lower down, on the site of ancient Babylon. Indeed,
although of the two branches formed by it after its great bifurcation near Musaiyib at the
head of modern Hindiyah canal, that flowing past Hillah is the one which the Baghdad
Government tries to keep navigable, its endeavours these last few years have been so
unsuccessful that occasionally the channel has run dry altogether, to the great distress of
the people of Hillah. Finally, in its medial portion, the navigation of the Euphrates meets
with an obstruction of rather a singular kind, depending on the method of irrigation in
vogue along its banks. This consists of running dams of solid masonry, sometimes from
both sides, right athwart its bed, so as to raise the level of the stream. With the water
power of several feet in height thus produced, a colossal wheel of primitive construction
is turned. On the outer edge of these wheels a hundred or hundred and fifty jars
are slung, and by this means a great body of water is decanted into the aqueducts
formed of a series of highly picturesque Gothic arches to which the wheels are attached.
From the creaking sound they make these machines have received the name of nd-Hr.
How well they answered is to be inferred from the fact that not so long ago three hun
dred of them have been counted in one hundred and thirty miles. When our steamers
first appeared on the Euphrates, not fifty years ago, about a third of the wheels were in
working order. But whether it be owing to Osmanli breaches in the outrunning dams
for the sake of lessening the current, equal to six or seven knots an hour, caused by
them, and so facilitating navigation, or to the decline of cultivation which has been
brought about during the same period by other causes in the Euphrates valley, at the
present time, like so many other things, both old and new, in Asiatic Turkey, they have
very generally fallen into ruin, the semi-peasant tribes who used to work them having
for the most part found other settlements in places not accessible to Government steamers.