It was a brighter morning; and the _zaptiehs_ hazarded an opinion that "Allah would be merciful." Far to the north we could see once more the mountains of Kurdistan, with gleams of sun sparkling on their snow-fields; and nearer to us on the southward lay the long barren ridges of the Sinjar. But this promise of better things was of very short duration, and before mid-day the rain had recommenced.
At nightfall we reached our last camping-ground, overlooking the river Tigris; and here we underwent our last drenching--the longest and heaviest of all. We lay dozing under our waterproofs listening to the patter of the raindrops, and fondly hoping that the dawn might bring us just five minutes respite to enable us to pack up and stow away in the dry. But at last we started up desperately--bundled our beds on to the carriages--and dashed away dripping and reckless without even waiting for food. We knew that just twelve miles ahead we should find real houses with roofs to them--that an hour would bring us to cultivated fields again, and two hours within sight of Mosul. We passed through the city gate with as much relief as the snail and the tortoise must have felt when they entered Noah's Ark at the tail of the procession; and descended joyfully from that weary _araba_ in which we had been cooped up like Bajazets for a journey of seventeen days.
There are more pleasant places in the world than the city of Mosul. Hot, white, and dusty, it lies on a rather "hummocky" site along the right (or western) bank of the Tigris, looking across to where the mounds of Nebi Yunus and Koyunjik mark the site of Nineveh.
It boasts a population of about eighty thousand souls, of whom perhaps a fourth are Christians, and five thousand Jews: and the whole is surrounded by a wall and moat which enclose rather more than a square mile of ground--an area about equal to the city of London.
The wall may follow old lines, but is itself no more than a century old. It is rapidly splitting to pieces owing to the poorness of its construction, a process much assisted both by private citizens and by the Government, both of whom wish to make use of its stones. Probably, the foundations are shaky, for the whole town suffers from that failing; and every minaret in the place has a conspicuous kink in it, except the principal one, which has two.