The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1870-07-09
Bagdad.

a correspondents of the New York Herald,
writing from Bagdad, gives some interest
ing account of the city of the Caliphs:
CITY LIFE.
Among the natives life runs on in the
same smooth chanel that it did in the time
of Haroun al Raschid. The rich loaf away
their time in the bath, in the harem and in
the divan, everywhere smoking nargeelahs
and drinking coffee and solemnly chatting.
And the poor, rising at daybreak at the
call of the priests, from the half a score of
minarets, perform their ablutions, spread
their little devotional carpet, say their
prayers and then betake themselves to their
various avocations. Laboring, not very
actively, rs it seems to us, until sunset,
each man goes home to his pibob OF pilaf
melons and oranges, his coffee and hubble
bubble, served to him by the fair hands of
his brace of wives. This is the story Of
their lives from year to year. The Bag
dadees have no amusements except such as
they find in talking politics in the coffee
shops, or in laughing at the misfortunes Of
their acquaintance, or in telling stories,
or in the society of their wives, or in a
wedding or a funeral. Every night the
Pacha's band (for there is a Turkish band
here) plays in front of the SERIAL, but the
Bagdadees do not care to listen to it. A
company of Italian acrobats and singers
have also come here and fitted up house
as theatre, but are playing only to empty
benches. And a newspaper, published in
Turkish and Arabic, by the Pacha's printer,
amusing as are the lies it tells of the won
derful prowess of the troops fighting against
| the Arabs, finds no subscribers and subsists
only by official advertisements. Your Bag
dadee has no soul for music, no taste for
the trapeZe or the ballet, no appetite for
journalistic sensations. Society here, in
deed, has reached, as Chinese society did a
couple of thousand years ago, the fossil
stage of existence. 1t has only been thus
/ fixed for a few hundred years.
COMMERCE.
Bagdad, as l have already said, is great
commercial city. 1t is one of the few mar
kets accessible to the people of Central
Asia and Persia, and caravans are con-
stantly setting out for Aleppo and Damas-
Gus, for Mosul and Diarbeker, for Teheran
and Ispahan. Its seaport is, of course,
Bassorah 800 miles away; but couple of
steamship lines make communication easy
and speedy. A great deal of bulky pro-
duce is still, however, sent down the river
on rafts,o L brought up in bugalas-small
Arab vessels towed by rope against the
current by dozen Arabs. The chief arti-
cles of export are wool and grain. The
imports are mostly English and French
dry goods, cutlery, Indian fabrics, &C.
The trade in European goods passes each
year more and more out of the hands of
the European houses into the hands of
American and Jewish and Arab merchants,
who have agencies in India and Europe
The custom duties are now very light-a
uniform al valorcm tariff of eight per cent.
One great obstacle in the way Of foreign
traders is the complex system of currency
prevailing in Bagdad. There is no regular
currency, but any money Of any country is
current. Payment of small parcel of
goods will perhaps be made in Austrian
and Mexican dollars, in Mahomed shah
kerauns, in Turkish medjidies, in Indian
rupees, and in French francs. Scarcely any
gold is in circulation. Owing to this variety
of coins current, the government fixes a
specific rate of exchange, at which it will
accept payment of imports in alien money,
and in which it will in its turn make pay
ments. But this rate is very different to
the general rate of exchange, fixed by the
merchants in the bazaar indeed this latter
rate fluctuates very greatly. Indian rupees
are perhaps the best currency for the trav-
eler to take with him to Bagdad.
| ANTIQUITIES.
The antiquities of Bagdad have been so
often and SO exhaustively described that
shall not inflict an elaborate account of
them upon the reader. The tower from
which criminals used to he thrown; the
| gate, now closed up, at which thirty three
thousand Persian threats were cut by the
Sultan Morad !; the Tombs of Sheikh Omer
Shahab-ood-leen and Sheikh Maruf; no
doubt when any one is in Bagdad, those
are all well worth seeing, though it is not
worth while to go to Bagdad to see them.
LADY zoBEIDE.
The great sight, though, is the tomb of
the Lady Zobeide. AS work of art this
is not very imposing it is graceful and
beautiful, that is all. In shape it is octa-
gonal with slender dome springing to a
hight of sixty or seventy feet. The inte-
rior is lighted by openings in the roofs,
protected from the rain, by slight preiec-
tions. There are three simple tombs of
ruined brickwork, once, no doubt, covered
with marble, which has since been carried
away. The central one is that of the Lady
Zobeide, consort of Haroun al Raschid.-
Poor as it may be when viewed from a
merely architectural standpoint, this ruined
mausoleum gives the traveller more pleasure
than the mosque of Mossa- ell Iadem.-
Who would not grow sentimental at the
tomb of Zebeide?
THE TOWERS OF BABEL.
About nine miles from Bagdad there is
an immense Babylonian ruin, which, ac-
cording to tradition, Is the Tower of Babel
There is another Tower of Babel near
Hillah, but an tiquarians doubt the anthem
ITCHY of both.) 1t is called Agasoof. 1t
is simply a shapeless mass of sun-baked
bricks, worn away at the base into mound
of rubbish. Between every five or six lay
ers of bricks is layer of reeds and r,,shes
Fragments of pottery and broken bricks
are strcwn about the vicinity of the ruin
That is all there is to see, though several
large volumes of most interesting and
profound p speculation have been written
about it by learned antiquarians.
OPPOSING IMPRoyEMENT.-In 1910, an
English manufacturer, unfortunately for
himself, revived the practice of hardening
| roadlae in oil instead of in water Tho