I had long wished to visit the banks of the Khabour. This river, the Chaboras of the Greek geographers, and the Habor, or Chebar, of the Samaritan captivity, rises in the north of Mesopotamia, and flowing to the west of the Sinjar hill, falls into the Euphrates near the site of the ancient city of Carchemish or Circesium, still known to the Bedouins by the name of Carkeseea. As it winds through the midst of the desert, and its rich pastures are the resort of wandering tribes of Arabs, it is always difficult of access to the traveller. It was examined, for a short distance from its mouth, by the expedition under Colonel Chesney; but the general course of the river was imperfectly known, and several geographical questions of interest connected with it were undetermined previous to my visit.

With the Bedouins, who were occasionally my guests at Mosul or Nimroud, as well as with the Jebours, whose encamping grounds were originally on its banks, the Khabour was a constant theme of exaggerated praise. The richness of its pastures, the beauty of its flowers, its jungles teeming with game of all kinds, and the leafy thickness of its trees yielding an agreeable shade during the hottest days of summer, formed a terrestrial paradise to which the wandering Arab eagerly turned his steps when he could lead his flocks thither in safety.