€54 The Bight Hon. Earl Percy [May 17, 



believe that a traveller need have little hesitation in traversing the 

 whole district under their escort, provided that he had made careful 

 inquiries beforehand as to the state of feeling at the time between 

 the rival tribes, and satisfied himself that those to whom he entrusted 

 his safety were numerically strong enough to ensure it. 



Of course much depends on the character of the chief for the 

 time being. In the district of Shemsdin, for instance, between Neri 

 and Girdi, there are two great Kurdish chiefs, one of whom, Moussa 

 Beg, is looked up to by all the surrounding Christians and their 

 " Matran " Mar Khnanishu, as their special patron and protector ; 

 while the other, Sheikh Sadiq, is the biggest fanatic and scoundrel 

 unhung, and has more than once invited guests to his house at Neri 

 for the express purpose of murdering them. It so happens that 

 Moussa Beg, although he has neither the quasi-religious prestige nor 

 the wealth which the Sheikh derives from his monopoly of the famous 

 Shemadin tobacco, is a far abler man, and with a small but highly 

 efficient fighting force he is able to defend himself and his clients, 

 besides inflicting severe reprisals on his enemies, by sallying out at 

 intervals from the strong martello tower which he has built on the 

 top of a steep isolated hill at the south edge of the Diza plain. The 

 result is that the Sheikh finds it more profitable to turn his attention 

 to lesser fry, and in the only case which I came across of the massacre 

 and depopulation of an entire valley the victims were not Christians, 

 but Bradost Kurds, who chanced to have embroiled themselves with 

 the Herki, and so offered an easy prey to any third party— in this 

 case Sheikh Sadiq — who chose to attack them. 



Time forbids me to enter into more details to-night, but I trust 

 that I have said enough to show that Hakkiari is a not uninteresting 

 country. It presents a large field for the mountaineer, the botanist 

 and the geologist; the mineral deposits include zinc, rock alum, lead, 

 sulphur, copper, mercury, iron, coal and tin, and the sportsman will 

 find a fair amount, if not a large variety of game. Wild boar and 

 the Syrian bear abound in the woods of oak and terebinth, magnificent 

 ibex heads can be obtained on the higher peaks of Jelu and Oramar, 

 and in Tiyari the rare " giant " partridge is not infrequently met with 

 in addition to the ordinary red-legged variety. The right season of 

 the year to visit the country (for any one but an M.P.) is of course 

 the late spring, when the soil, which in autumn yields little but 

 thistles and the prickly gum-tragacanth, is in many places covered 

 with iris, gentian, anemone and violets ; and all but the higher crests 

 are free from snow. The Nestoriau Christians are always hospit- 

 able, and so far as my limited experience goes, the Kurds will treat 

 you very well if they have not already waylaid and robbed you before 

 you arrive at their villages. As for the Turks, they have little real 

 authority in the interior, and mainly for that reason they try to prevent 

 you from going anywhere where you are likely to be attacked and so 

 involve them in trouble. Their policy is very like that of the Indian 

 government, which does everything in its power to debar travellers 

 from entering the trans-frontier districts ; and when people blame the 



