The first thing we did on arriving at Mosul--even before we visited any of the places of interest in the city--was to make arrangements for our transportation to Bagdad. Had it not been for the late World War, the Bagdad Railway would have been completed to the famed city of Harun-al-Rashid and we could then have made the journey from Mosul to Bagdad in a luxuriously upholstered car or in the latest type of _wagon-lit_ accompanied by a well-supplied and well-manned _wagon-restaurant_. In the absence of these we might, had we sought for one, have found an aviator who would have taken us to our destination in an aeroplane, for both aviators and aeroplanes were numerous in this vicinity during the war and there was reason to believe that there were still here both flying machines and pilots. But we were not looking either for luxury or rapidity of transportation. Even if they had been at our disposal we should not have availed ourselves of these twentieth-century comforts and time-saving devices by which our western world sets such store. We had no desire to fly at express-train speed through the historic valley of the Tigris even if we had had at our disposition all the luxuries and conveniences of a railway president’s private car. We wished to study the country and the people and we desired to do so at our leisure. The usual way to make the journey from Mosul to Bagdad is by land. Some make it on horseback, but the majority elect to perform it on the back of an Arabian or a Bactrian camel. A few, however, prefer to entrust themselves to the capricious waters of the tortuous Tigris. This route requires more time and offers, besides, a little spice of adventure. Both of these facts appealed to us and we decided--without hesitation--that our journey to the city of the _Thousand and One Nights_ should be by the longest and the slowest and, as we were assured, the most venturesome way. We chose also to go by the Tigris because I had always been specially fond of river travel. It has been my good fortune to navigate from source to mouth or from mouth to source many of the longest rivers of the world, and I was grateful for the opportunity to spend a week or more on one of the largest rivers of western Asia and one of the most famous in history. Another reason for choosing this route was the peculiar age-old craft that was to carry us to the famed capital of the Caliphs. It was not a boat nor anything that even remotely resembled one. It was a peculiar kind of a raft which has been in use on the Tigris since the time of the early Assyrian kings, and which, notwithstanding all our modern improvements, still holds its own here not only for conveying the traveler to his destination but also for carrying freight as well.