Just below the houses of ’Ânah on the Shâmîyeh bank there were mounds by the river from which, said my zaptieh, the people get antîcas after rain, and sometimes small gold ornaments are washed out of them. On the opposite bank I could see ruins for a distance of an hour’s ride from ’Ânah; they ended at a big mound called Tell Abu Thor, which appeared to be a natural outcrop of the rock, though there were many small, seemingly artificial, mounds about it.[68] An hour and a half from ’Ânah we passed another rocky hill, also called Tell Abu Thor, but I could see no traces of ruins round it. From the summit of the tell there was a fine view of the little fortified island of Tilbês, the island castle of Thilutha, whose inhabitants refused to surrender to Julian. I could see the bastions of masonry on the upper end of the island, together with the ruins of a castle on the Jezîreh bank, and if there had been any possibility of crossing the river I should have gone down to it; but there was no ferry nearer than ’Ânah. I did not follow the winding course of the Euphrates from ’Ânah to Hît. Many of the ruins marked in Chesney’s map deserve a careful survey, but my mind was now set upon another matter, and we rode on from stage to stage hoping each day that the next would provide us with a guide into the western desert. My zaptieh, Muḥammad, lent a sympathetic ear to the scheme which I developed to him as we rode. The arm of the law, weak enough on the Euphrates, does not reach into the wilderness, and his duties had taken him but a little way west of the road; the main difficulty to be encountered was the lack of water, a difficulty much enhanced by the drought. “God send us rain!” he sighed. “Effendim, at this time of the year I am used to stay my mare at such places as these” (he pointed to the hollows in the barren ground), “and while I smoke a cigarette she will have eaten her fill of grass. But this year there is no spring herbage, and in the season of the rains, forty days have passed without rain. All the waterpools in the Shâmîyeh are exhausted, and the Arabs are crossing to the Jezîreh lest they die, for their flocks can give no milk.” Presently we met a train of thirsty immigrants driving their goats to the Euphrates. Muḥammad called to them and asked if they would give us a cup of leben, sour milk. A half-starved girl shouted back in answer: “If we had leben we should not be crossing to the Jezîreh.” “God help you! ” cried Muḥammad. “Cross in the peace of God.” A little further we passed through a number of newly-made graves, scattered thickly on either side of the road. “They are graves of the Deleim,” said Muḥammad. “A year ago a bitter quarrel arose within the tribe, and here they fought together and seventy men were slain. They buried them where they fell, the one party on one side of the road, and the other on the other side.”