We also passed where the Garden of Eden was said to have been. As a matter of fact, the whole of this country, like the plains of India, is delta formation. The two rivers must have been higher up and consequently Eden also. The latter fact rather knocks out the little remaining romance about the place. Sir William Wilcocks puts the site at Hit, above Baghdad, and says that even going no further back than the tertiary epoch would place the delta there. We reached Amara on the fourth day. It is a village of some considerable size pleasantly lining both banks of a beautiful straight reach in the Tigris. In the broad, clear water one sees reflected the languid droop of the eternal date palm, the great triangular sails of the _mahela_, the regular contour of the Bridge of Boats. It is not unpicturesque. Here, some months ago, a delightful _coup_ was effected by the commander of H.M.S. _Shaitan_ and about a dozen men. These were the first in the pursuit from Kurna, and the others not having arrived, determined on a bold policy, as at any moment the Arabs might have joined forces with the Turk and rendered the taking of Kurna quite difficult. These few men went ashore and, entering the barracks containing some several hundreds of men, demanded their surrender and the immediate handing over of the town. The prestige of the British Navy or the eloquent silence of the gunboat's guns did the rest. And so by this remarkable bluff Amara fell without bloodshed, and was held although reinforcements did not arrive until the next day. Above Amara the country is still perfectly flat, but appears less marshy in winter than lower down. Here a thicker ground scrub teems with black partridge and quail, some of which we shot from the boat. A sub. in the Hussars, named Pope, brought off a wonderful revolver shot into a jackal's ribs from the boat: we practised revolver shooting hard. Arabs clustered in tiny tribes every few miles along the river. The men, some of whom are quite naked, I thought remarkable for great size of limb and muscular development. They would sometimes accompany the boat for miles, doing their weird undulating dance, hopping round first on one foot and then on the other. They welcome us when we win and torture and loot our wounded when they get a chance. Here and there Jewish women and old men ladle water by a swinging scoop into a drain for their irrigation. The dress and general customs continually recall one's school days' pictures of Biblical times. Two or three days later we got to Kut-el-Amara (pronounce Kut like foot), passing the battlefield of Essin _en route_. It was at Essin where Townshend, by leaving his tents on one bank of the river and crossing in the night, deceived the Turk into fancied security, and the next day flung him neck and crop out of a position of great strength.