Note 152 — Chapter XVI · THE GRAVES OF DEAD EMPIRES (MOSUL TO BAGHDAD)

Herodotus seems to have confused the keleg and the ghufa in his notes; for both existed, on the evidence of the sculptures, in his day. He speaks of “circular craft, covered with skins and caulked with bitumen,” and made on wooden frames. He adds that at the journey’s end the wood was sold, and the skins carried back “to Armenia” on the back of a donkey that had made the voyage down on the vessel. All his details are right, as regards one or other of the two types, save only the voyaging donkey. An experienced jackass will jump readily into a ghufa and be ferried across, or some way down, the river; but he does not, in these days at any rate, come all the way down from Diarbekr to Baghdad. However, there is no reason why he should not.