_ 60 _ He says that from this city of Bira there are two roads to Basra, one of them by way of a city called Al-Hilla and the other through Baghdad, which is rather more direct. But it happens that for three months of the year the river becomes dry near Baghdad. For this reason it is better to bring ships by way of Al-Hilla because however low the water falls and however many channels are cut to run through the fields, the lowest it ever falls in the whole year is between two and a half and three bracas, so that all carracks and ships however two and a half and three baracas, so that all carracks and ships however large they are can pass. From the city of Bira to Basra takes twenty-four days down stream because there is always water flowing in the Euphrates down to Basra. The river winds this way and that but it is still so wide and so deep that it supplies other irrigation channels. Hajji Fayat also told me that a slave of the Grand Turk has recently arrived in Basra with a message for Muhammed Pasha, and that he had taken forty-two days to come from Constantinople to Basra, and that by the solemn oath he had taken on the Koran he was telling me the truth in all these things.
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