Other _kelegs_ appear as we descend. Even in the present thinly populated state of the country, they are fairly numerous, and must have been far more so when the "Ten Thousand" marched up the eastern bank of this river. Indeed, they must have been so familiar, that it is a matter for surprise that the Greeks feared to make use of them, when it was a question of how to cross the Tigris with their baggage; particularly as they had at least one man in the army who was bred to their use. Still, they shrank from the unfamiliar, and preferred to abandon all their plunder and take to the hazardous passage of the mountains. Tekrit, another city of vast antiquity, was reached and passed. This was a place of some importance in the ecclesiastical history of the land, as having been a stronghold of the Jacobites against the dominant Nestorian Church. It also marks a change in the geography, indicated by a change of _kelegji_. By law of that ancient brotherhood, the river falls into three stretches, and each man must stick to his own portion--Diarbekr to Mosul, Mosul to Tekrit, or Tekrit to Baghdad. This custom does somehow correspond to some subtle alteration in conditions, though we cannot trace how or why. But the fact remains that below that point the cattle develop humps, which they do not affect elsewhere; and that the traffic on the river is conducted not only in _kelegs_, but also in _ghufas_, which are not to be seen higher up. A _ghufa_ is, if anything, more ancient than a _keleg_, for its type dates back to the flood, if not to the times before it; and the Babylonian "deluge tablets" seem to picture Shamashnapastim (the equivalent of Noah), as navigating a gigantic _ghufa_ of 140 cubits diameter. The craft is nothing but a wicker-work coracle of palm basket-work, circular in shape, but "pitched within and without with pitch" instead of being provided with a hide covering. In size it may be anything from the dimensions of a clothes' basket up to twenty or twenty-five feet in diameter, according to the size of the palm-spathes that form its ribs. It can hardly be capsized, and can carry enormous weights; but it is difficult to steer without practice, a novice tending to go round and round in a circle of small diameter.[152] _Ghufas_ are hardly seen above Samarra, which is some fourteen hours below Tekrit, for the source of the bitumen with which they are pitched is near to the lower city. Samarra is itself historic enough, though it only appears in Western history as the scene of the action in which Julian fell. As a shrine and _ziaret_ of the _Shiah_ Mussulmans, however, it is second in sanctity only to Kerbela itself; for it is the burial-place, not indeed of the two grandsons of the Prophet, but of many of their comrades who fell beside them on the day of the "battle of the ditch"; and a magnificent mosque covers their bones.