The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1905-03-17
THE ARTISTS STORY.


Doubtless, most uptown New York
ers remember distinguished looking
man who used to ride in Central Park
every morning last spring and sum-
mer on a magnificent cream-Wh1te
Arabian stallion. Be that as it may,
it is certain his advent caused quite
flutter of curiosity. | have known
him since we were boys together
boys in little North OF England town.
He's in South Africa now and will
hardly resent what | am going to tell
the readers of the Pathfinder about
him. His name is f'ord-Charlmers
Ford 1t is a name not unknown
among artists. If you have attended
the exhibitions you have probably seen
it at the bottom of more than one wat
er color.
l happened in at his coy studio one
evening last August, only day or
two before he sailed. The walls or
the room were covered with the tro-
plies of his travels. My attention was
fixed by a sketch in water cClors OF
young girl Of the dark-haired Eastern
type. On it | read the name "Zule1ka'
You world-royers gather good
many barnacles in your wanderings,
l remarked. Il suppose too, many OF
these relics of yours have history,
/ added, DESTROYS of drawing him out.
Eyes, that's so. That sketch, for
instance could tell story, and this Old
thing here could corfoborate it," he
answered, handing me venerable pis-
tol with a long barrel of large caliber
THAT ancient piece of ordnance not
only saved my own life, but was the
chief instrument in the rescue OF one
of her majesty's vessels out in the Per-
sian Gulf last December"
Ford is man singularly reticent
about his own exploits, though he has
had enough of them. But the cigar
handed him made him communicative.
| only wish l might have taken his
story down in shorthand, for he told it
infinitely better than | can. However.
this is about what he said:
Il had taken passage on the British
India Company's steamer Kilwa at
Bassorah, for Bombay. | was just
again after more than six months OF
privation and adventure in the interior
of Asiatic Turkey. With much Difficult
ty had made my way overland all the
way from Trebizond, on the Black sea.
Part of the distance had followed the
route traversed by Xenophon and his
devoted 10000 in their disastrous 'Ka-
tabasis" had visited the squalid city
Of Mosul-once renowned for its mus
Inns and like fabrics, and whence, in
fact, the name muslin is derived
to make some drawings in the excavat-
ed ruins of ancient Nineyeh, near by.
1t Is there, by the way that the royal
palaces of Sennacherib and Sardan-
apalus, after twenty-siX centuries of OBJ
livion, have been laid bare. After stop
ping en- route at now decayed and in
glorious Bagdad, l had completed my
arduous journey at Hillah, a modern |
town built near the site and from the !
ancient brick of Babylon. Finally |
having finished some further archaeo-
logical observations in the neighbor-
hood, respecting some ancient irriga
ing works, had caught passage on a
small dhow loaded with dates AID |
floated down the lazily-fowing, mystic
Euphrates. At first, beyond the will |
low and plar e-lined banks of the great |
river, stretched the once poisoning |
levels of Yrak, the very cradle of his
tory; then came lagoons which merged |
ultimately into a pestilential swamp. |
Thus had reached Bassorah, the mod
ern Balsora of the Arabian Nights
tales-once, during the ascendency of
tie Caliphs, the port and entrepot OF
Btgdad, but now, like that city, duapi-
dated and dwindled into insignifcance
"The. Kilwa had sailed from Bassor-
ali at midnight. 1t was late in the af-
ternoon of the next day when, after
touching at Bushire, an important
town about 200 miles down the Persian
coast. we headed for the small Arab
port of Linga, where we were to leave
some cargo.
LAS the sun sank toward the watery
horizon and dissolved in the purplish
yapors of the west, Parsee merchant,
a so-caled 'fire-worshipper,' first re-
moving his odd-looking, shining oil
cloth hat, paced the deck repeating de-
voutly his alteration of the orb that he
looked upon, not as an intrinsic deity,
but as the highest manifestation of
God. A crowd of Musselmans kneeled
OF, their praying carpets, with their