One's first feelings are of wonder and bewilderment that the entire population has not long ago been wiped out by disease. Going up and down stream at low tide I have seen Arab women rinsing the salad for the family meal side by side with others dealing with the family washing. Then the bellem boy, thirsty, would lean over the side of the craft, scoop up a handful or two of the water, and drink it. As successors to the dirty and lazy Turk the British in occupation of Basra have set themselves to remedy this state of affairs, but it is uphill work. Manners and customs of centuries are not easily laid aside, and your Asiatic sniffs suspiciously at anything labelled Sanitary Reform, while the very mention of the word Hygiene sounds to him like blasphemy against the abominations with which he loves to surround himself. The Turk never bothered his head whether the inhabitants lived in unhealthy conditions. When an epidemic broke out and carried off a certain proportion of the population, the Turkish Governor would bow his head in meek resignation before the inscrutable will of Allah. The architecture of Basra is of a distinctly primitive type. The houses are built chiefly of sun-dried bricks, and the roofs are flat, covered with mud laid {22} over rafters of date-wood and surrounded by a low parapet. Basra had been used as the British base for the advance against the Turks on the Tigris. From here had been rationed the army and the guns that reconquered Kut and opened the difficult road to Bagdad. The magician's wand of the British soldier-wallah wrought wonders in the place. Malarial swamps were filled in, and hospitals and administrative buildings erected. Wharves equipped with giant cranes sprang into being on the quayside, and, as we were landed, the busy river scene, with fussy tugs towing huge laden barges, and the quayside packed with transports, irresistibly recalled some populous port in the Antipodes or Britain itself, rather than the seaside capital of a vilayet in Asiatic Turkey.