'The Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society. From January 1865 to December 1867. (Edited by the Honorary Secretary.) Volume XVIII.' [‎20] (155/268)

OVERLAND JOURNEY FROM
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thirds of tli6 iohI number. There is fin upper and a lowei town, the foruief
mclosed within walls, and covering the flat top of an abrupt hill about
150 feet high ; the latter, scattered over the plain below Kerkuk, is the
seat of a Pacha, who is under the authority of the Governor General
of Bagdad. We were housed in the lower town, which is very filthy.
The streets are irregular and ill-constructed. There are a few shady
and pleasant fruit-gardens, to which the inhabitants resort in hot
weather. The Telegraph Office is a large and roomy building, but the
Pacha has converted the best part into a prison ! There is something
picturesque in the first view of Kerkuk. It looms out in the distance
like the background of an Oriental stage melodrama. It is just the
sort of scene which would foreshadow the coming of the conventional
stage Pacha, accompanied by Turks, Arabs, Kurds, men and women,
with scimitars and choruses. The more classical and famous Arbeil,
or Arbeia, which we passed without entering on our third march from
hence, is about 55 miles off in a northerly direction, and has a very
simliar appearance. I was told there were two Chaldean churches at
Kerkuk. The mound on which the citadel is built is probably
artificial.
26. Mosul is too well-known from the works of recent travellers
and explorers to need any particular
^ osu ^ description. Nearly thirty years ago
Mr. Southgate, a missionary of the
American Protestant Episcopal Church, estimated its population at
40,000, of which 6,000 were Christians. The accounts given me were
conflicting, but I am of opinion, on good authority, that the propor
tion of Christians to the whole number of inhabitants is greater than
fifteen per cent. Before crossing the Tigris to the town we looked at
the scene of the Nineveh excavations, and entered the Mahomedau
musjid at Nubbi Yunas. Mr. Rassam thinks this last must have been
at one time a temple of fire-worship, from the blackened apppearance
of the roof. The town of Mosul is dirty and irregular, but its Moorish
doorways are pleasant to the eye, and there are many quaint old-
fashioned figuies seen beside them which almost recall forms and faces
of our own country in the reigns of Henry YU. and Edward VI.
me of tlm children aie especially beautiful. I was introduced here
^ n ^^ a ldean patriarch, a Chaldean bishop and Syriac bishop, of
t e normsh Church, and visited with the latter the Chaldean church