The sudden sight of the belts of palm trees, the occasional square mud dwellings, and the steamy, hot-house look of the banks came as a surprise. Those of us who had been to the Dardanelles had half expected that this end of Turkey would be much like the other--broken country and sandy scrub, with hills. But here is only a broad swift river, a strip of vivid green verdure, and beyond the immense plain stretching to the horizon. In the stream was a small tug bearing the letters A.P.O.C. At Abadan we saw the big circular tanks of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company where the oil from Ahwaz, which travels through miles of piping, is refined. Above Abadan, which is just a cluster of circular tanks, slender chimneys and square houses on the arid plain, with a mass of barges lining the numerous wharfs, we passed Mohammerah. On the opposite bank--the west bank is called the right bank--you can see the Turkish trenches where they opposed our first advance among the palms at the battle of Sahil on November 16th, 1914, with a force of five thousand men and twelve guns. The ground is intersected with narrow creeks cut for irrigation purposes; and the trenches form little crescent-shaped depressions almost hidden by the reeds and grasses. From the ship it looks a lush green country here, for there are rice fields dotted about and the river broadens out and surrounds an emerald island. Our 4,000 ton vessel swept up-stream at a speed of ten knots, with a great wash spreading behind her, and her funnels towering high above the palms. Our destination was reached at six in the evening, about sixty miles from the mouth of the river, and the whole way up the scene had been practically unvarying--river and plain, and countless palms. We had passed the vessels sunk by the Turks to bar the progress of the original expedition. Masts and a funnel are visible, standing clear of the main channel. Basra was like coming on a bit of the London Thames from a distance. Lines of big ships appeared suddenly, round a bend of the river, anchored in mid-stream. There were hospital ships, cargo vessels, transports, war-ships, monitors, tugs, river boats, oil-driven lighters--the ones we made the landing from at Suvla, with a coat of new paint and the letters ML instead of K--barges, launches, native dhows--which travel to Mombasa and Bombay--and innumerable lesser craft. Basra itself lies up a creek, and is invisible from the river. What you see on the shore is properly called Ashar, but the two places merge into one another. Owing to the absolute flatness of the country, a sense of smallness is produced everywhere. There is no background to give perspective, and the great breadth of the sable river dwarfs the shore.