There is also a strong colony of Jews in the city, still living in their ancient quarter; where they have lived, they say (with every appearance of truth), since Sargon of Assyria brought their ancestors from captured Samaria in the eighth century B.C. Like all of their kind they are traders, for the place is a centre of local trade. Still, most of the wares in the market, other than raw material like wool and oak-galls, come originally from Manchester or Reading; and one doubts if it would still be possible to find in Mosul any of that fine "muslin" which has carried the name of the city over all the world. One branch of the local export trade to which we may refer is that in liquorice, a plant that grows wild freely on the plain. The fact that European merchants were anxious to buy it caused much wonderment; but presently the real explanation got known and was accepted by everybody. "King George of England likes nothing so much as sucking liquorice; and he has sent twenty-five millions of English sovereigns to secure a supply that shall last him all his life." On the left bank of the Tigris, opposite to Mosul, lies Nineveh, and the one place is approached from the other by a bridge that is thoroughly characteristic of Turkey; it goes, that is to say, some two-thirds of the way over the river, crossing just that part of the bed which is dry for most of the year. As the real channel is approached, the bridge stops abruptly, and a series of pontoon-like barges takes the place of it. This bridge of boats is itself removed in flood-time, and the traveller may then, given good luck, get over in the course of an hour, with the help of a very clumsy ferry-boat. Bridges, it may be said, are regarded in Turkey rather as natural impediments to travel than as assistants to it; and the fact that "there are bridges on that road" is always made an excuse for asking twice the usual fare for a carriage. The bridge of boats at Mosul is civic property; and is hired out annually to anyone who will farm it, for a very substantial sum. The lessee is expected to keep the whole bridge in order, and charges a toll on every man or animal that crosses the bridge. Nominally the rent of the bridge is spent, of course, upon the needs of the city, and is handed over to the administrative council for that end. Still, when a city has no pavements or lamps or drainage, or any of the numerous unnecessary things that the West indulges in because it has more money than it knows what to do with, after all it has no needs.