Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3CHAPTER II BASRAH At Basrah the river is alive with craft of every description. Never was there so motley and heterogeneous a marine 1 Snow- white Hospital Ships alternate with black- hulled transports and cargo ships. Fussy steam tugs snort up and down, with lumbering barges in tow; stern-wheelers from the Hooghly; penny steamboats from the city of London; electric launches from the reaches of the Thames; paddle-boats from the Irrawaddy; vessels of strange aspect from the Nile, including her of ancient date who bore the gallant Gordon to Khartoum. Native craft of every description—the seagoing " dhow " with its graduated fraternity, the " mahelah," the " mashouf," the " ba- lum " (the gondola of Tigris waters), and finally the round saucer-like " gufa " which evokes memories of coracles on the Severn and the Dee. We thread our way through this fleet of incongruous elements, and take up our position alongside the jetty of No. 3 British General Hospital. On the jetty I am greeted by Major Moens and Captain Gordon Holmes, two of our stalwarts who have kept the Red Cross flag flying, and I learn from them that I am to be the guest of General Sir George MacMunn, the I.G.C., whose habitat is the German Consulate, a roomy-gloomy ramshackle house as hideous as only a Hunnish house can be. During the whole of my stay in Basrah I have the good fortune to be the guest of the I.G.C., at whose hands I am the constant recipient of kindness without measure, and whose sympathy with our Red Cross work is made manifest in many a practical fashion. Major Stanley (my " stable companion ") enjoys hospitable entertainment in the house of General Brownlow, to whom we are always turning for help in Red Cross matters and to whom we never turn in vain. textit{Tuesday, February 6, at 7.30 a.m., I set out on horseback ... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.