Wed. Ap. 1. [1 April 1914] Breakfasted with K. [Koldewey] One of the cats is called after me. Walked out onto the diggings where I found Wachsmuth who told me of his Braut and of how amazingly clever she is! He showed me the earth corners marking the edges of wall holes where from the bricks have been taken. All that they are digging are substructures. What look like chambers are the holes of the brick robbers. They left little walls between lest the earth should slide in on them. You know them from chambers by the fact that the walls are not of faced brick but of broken brick. So back and before 9 onto my launch. Steamed up to the Hindiyyeh [Shatt al Hindiyah] till 1.30. Heavenly, the land all green - mud built villages with heaps of brushwood round for coffee fires, palm surrounded. People and cattle ruminating on the bank. Corn fields in the ear. Some of the villages look as if they wd fall immediately, those built of burnt brick, big farms[?] I suppose. Pomegranates in flower. Children run along the bank to watch and ford side canals. Jirds under old mulberry trees. This ancient song of their river will soon cease; Lynch and Blockey Crea are selling them pumps as fast as they can. It has ceased on the Tigris. Jays flitting in the brushwood, swallows dipping their wings in Euphrates. I found Mr Warbrick and Mrs Whitley, Mlle Sevian and Mlle Mugelle daughter of the French govt engineer. Her mother is an Arab. We lunched and afterwards I walked for 2 hrs with Mr Warbrick. We looked at the old dam. It was never filled up in the centre and the stream hollowed the narrow channel till at last it was over 30 ft deep. The Hindiyyeh flood which turned the main river into this bed happened some 20 years ago. Since then the dam has been patched twice but they cd not fill up the centre. There is a fine brick pyramid recording its building - the inscrip. is in Turkish which no one can read, it tells of a monument which was never finished and is now almost swept away - this year's floods it is hoped will destroy the revetments of the banks. The new dam records itself. We had passed through the little Hilleh [Hillah, Al] regulator coming from Babylon. In the deep water under the barrage there is now a wonderful fishing ground, because the fish from the sea (and lakes?) cannot get up over the barrage. The lock is on the left bank. We crossed by the footbridge. The rail still lies over the main part; when it is taken away that will be the bridge. It will probably become the main road from Baghdad to Kufa [Kufah, Al] and Nejef [Najaf, An]. Sefinehs with lateen sails coming down the river. They are horribly daring, load the sefinehs to the gunwhales and then tie up the sail to light a cigarette when a puff of wind would sink the ship. We saw the old channel and I heard how it had been blocked with sausages of reeds - a native plan and they got the natives to do it. The sausage took 200 men to roll it. It was thrown in and swelled and floated; a little earth then laid on it, then another sausage and another till the first lay on the bottom - all with layers of earth. Afterwards the banks of the dam are packed with camel thorn, an excellent protection. Beyond the old channel they are digging out a channel to take possible flood water so as to relieve the pressure on the barrage. For when the river comes down - highest generally in the first week of May, the Hilleh regulator will probably be closed for a few days so that the heavy silt may not get in. No one knows about silt or how to regulate it or when it will go. This danger of flood will cease when the Habbaniyyeh [Habbaniyah] escape is made. The people in the Hindiyyeh will suffer this year for want of water. The lakes will not fill and the rice fields depending on the maximum water will not be sown. This too they hope will cease with the Habbaniyyeh for the water running out into the escape at Ramadi [Ramadi, Ar], into the Habaniyyeh lake [Habbaniyah, Hawr al], will run back at low Euphrates into the river at Feluja [Fallujah, Al]. That is now the idea. Not to let it go into deep Abu Dibs, or at least not yet. Ibn Hadhdhal is much perturbed about Ghazazeh which he thinks will be under water if the Abu Dibs scheme is carried out. Mr Warbrick replied that it was not to be yet - and Fahd knew the Ott. Govt and its delays. Moreover if the water came he would gain a 1000 fold what he lost at Ghazazeh. So back and to the tennis court where they played running after the silly little ball as if it only mattered - and the roar of the Euphrates through the stony[?] piers they had built was in our ears. The Arab boys enchanted looked on over the wall - a frieze of dirty heads. Quantities of dogs; the Arabs now covet these dogs which they think valuable. They have grown kind and friendly living with English people. So back to wash and change. Then looked at quantities of photographs of the work on the Hindiyyeh. Mr Warbrick agrees that the Pearson competition is to be regretted. It gives the Turk another reason for not making up his mind. The people wd not believe that the dam wd stand. At the very last moment M. Pasha Daghestani was persuaded that there wd be too little water in the Hindiyyeh and refused to cut the sod - of course the water wd have washed away the little dam he was cutting in a week. They sacrificed 20 sheep and Mr W. killed 30 more and distributed them to the workmen.