On 13th November, soon after daybreak, two Anglo-Indian brigades, including the 1st Oxford Light Infantry and the 2nd Norfolks, arrived, under the command of Sir Arthur Barrett, off the bar of the Shat-el-Arab, and by the 15th were ready to disembark at Sanijeh. It was no easy task to get men, guns, and stores ashore on the slippery mud banks of a broad tidal river, but the work was accomplished before sunset. Meanwhile General Delamain attacked the village of Sahain, four miles to the north. A short, sharp action took place; but the 2,000 Turks who were posted in a date grove were not entirely cleared out of it. On the 16th the newly-arrived forces rested, and received the news that the Turkish garrison of Basra was advancing to give battle. There were Europeans in Basra, and General Barrett was eager to capture the place speedily, lest evil should befall the foreign residents. [Footnote 170: See Vol. I., p. 148.] [Footnote 171: A name given to all those usages which civilized states have agreed to observe in their dealings with each other. It is not real law because there is no superior power to enforce it.] [Footnote 172: Arabs who wander with their flocks and herds from place to place. They are found in the Syrian and Egyptian deserts, in Mesopotamia, and especially in Arabia where they form one-seventh of the population.] [Footnote 173: The southern half of the triangular and hilly tract of country between the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Akabah, northern arms of the Red Sea.] [Footnote 174: Osman I., founder of the Ottoman Empire, born 1258, died 1326. Every new Sultan is invested with the sword of Osman, which is preserved in a mosque at Constantinople.] [Footnote 175: For some account of the Bagdad railway (shown in the inset map), see Vol. I, p. 148.] [Footnote 176: See map on p. 277.] CHAPTER XXXI. FIGHTING IN CHALDEA. On the morning of the 17th the British advanced to the village of Sahain,[177] only to discover that the Turks had abandoned it. Nine miles farther up the river, at a place called Sahil, the enemy lay in force ready to attack. An officer with the expedition thus describes the Turkish position:-- "Imagine a billiard table, only, of course, thousands of times bigger, and instead of being green cloth it is sandy desert. Imagine that one end of the table is high ground held by the Turks with guns in position, and the infantry entrenched, and then imagine us attacking them from the other end. Not a scrap of cover of any kind; absolutely flat and unbroken; no cover for the guns or infantry advancing, no cover for the hospital or wounded as we advanced--nothing; simply a wide, flat, sandy plain!" To make matters worse, recent rains had made the plain a slough, so that the cavalry and guns could scarcely proceed at more than a walking pace.