The mosque of the picture, however, is not that of the tombs, but the _tekke_, or hermitage where dwelt the most famous character of modern Kirkuk. This was a Kurdish Sheikh of such surpassing sanctity and zeal for Islam, that Abdul Hamid used to correspond with him in a private cipher; and was accustomed to ask by telegraph for his prayers, whenever he was meditating anything exceptionally black. Normally, the banks of the river are high, or at least appear so in autumn. No doubt the river is often bank full in springtime when the snows are melting, and its pace is then materially faster. Generally the only feature on the shores are the primitive irrigating machines, the "_sakkiyehs_," a type that cannot have altered very much since the days of Abraham. They consist of nothing but pits sunk in the high bank down to water-level, and communicating with the stream, so that there is always water in them. A skin bucket is lowered into the pit and dragged up again by a cord passing over a pulley; and an ox walking to and fro on an inclined plane supplies the motive power. Two or three days below Mosul the river passes by one point of great interest; the mounds of Kala Shargat, once Assur, the sacred city of Assyria. These are now being excavated and examined thoroughly by German savants of the Deutsche Orientalische Gesellschaft. As seen from a little distance, the place has no very exciting appearance. It rather resembles a group of exaggerated sandhills, rising at one point into a blunt pyramid, the "_Ziggurat_." In spring the plain is covered with flowers, but all these have vanished long before autumn, and the colour of the whole is that of pale brown paper; the only scrap of green being the rather discouraged-looking garden at the side of the house occupied by the excavating staff. Here hospitable and kindly gentlemen receive the traveller most warmly, and we have the opportunity of seeing German perseverance at work on a most congenial task. Their method is undeniably thorough, and suggests unlimited resources. You have a set of mounds before you, covering perhaps twenty acres or more, and rising to a height of about eighty feet. A light railway is laid down, running well out into the desert; and the whole of those mounds, or something like it, goes through a fine sieve, and is carried off into the wilderness and dumped. When a pavement is reached in this process, that level is cleared absolutely, and everything worth preserving is preserved, with careful plans showing the position in which it was found. Then that pavement is broken up, and progress made to the next level; and so the work is continued till virgin soil is reached.