We dropped anchor a little below the town, near Korah creek. It was Sunday and at that time it was still the custom of the inhabitants of Basra to collect on the banks of the creek and hold a kind of social parade from which the suggestion of a slave market was not entirely absent. There was a continual procession of boats and painted _belums_, the native gondola, long and narrow, with curved ends, and either rowed or poled by two _belumchis_. In them were fair-skinned, unveiled women with many bangles on their arms, wearing robes of dark brilliant hues. On the shore, under the palms, wandered a crowd of white-robed Arabs, with red or blue turbans. Occasionally one saw a khaki uniform. It was intensely hot and damp. A haze lay over the further reaches of the river, and the sky had a brassy look unlike the intense turquoise clarity of the Egyptian sky. The palm fronds seemed metallic. As far as the eye could see along the right bank lay a confused mass of low white buildings, tents, huts of yellow matting and piles of stores. Gangs of Arabs and Indian coolies were at work at the low wooden landing stage, and over the scene towered the gaunt masts of the wireless station. The left bank was chiefly palm grove, save for a gap where stood a big building taken over by our flying men. [Illustration: TOWING ON THE TIGRIS.] A military authority came on board, wondering whether we were a cargo of wood or mules. A hospital had not been expected, and we passed the next day in idleness. On the third day our four hundred tons of stuff were swung off into _mahallas_, the native barges, which are wide craft decorated with carving and paint, both stem and stern pointed and high out of the water, and amidships close down to the water-line. The Arabs squatting on the painted poops of these ships seemed sullen. They looked as cut-throat a lot as you could desire. When the boats were loaded up they drifted off, and by means of a tattered bit of sacking for a sail, and a long pole, managed to reach their destination somehow. It was curious to see these primitive craft filled with the black cases of the precious X-ray plant. The creeks round Ashar branch off at right angles to the Shatt-el-Arab at intervals of a few hundred yards, and extend for two or three miles inland. They are broad and richly bordered with palms and pomegranate. In places a network of vines festoons the trunks. A yellow tinge in the heart of the palms showed the coming crop of dates. Seen in a picture these creeks are idyllic, winding broad, calm and peaceful through the groves. Slim boats glide up and down them, nut-brown children splash in them, and women, veiled in black, come from the little villages to draw water in brass vessels at their margins with graceful movements.