TCD MS 10516 folio 91 recto
[12th October 1916] draught must pass sixty-seven miles up the river to discharge their cargoes on its quays; the largest vessels cannot cross the bar. Thus Basrah is already stranded beyond the reach of the greatest ships, and as it moves further and further inland its facilities for trade must proportionately diminish; its prosperity must wane. Dredgers may for a time keep the ocean free to it; by new railways its fortunes may temporarily rise; but the die of the delta is on it; the time will come when it is so far stranded in the desert as to be no longer accessible to the sea, and then the city is doomed. Some more accessible port must replace it. And we hear of the town of Kuwait at the head of the Gulf proposed as a harbour for vessels; we hear of it suggested as an ocean terminus for the Bagh-