68 THE DESERT. 



By the greatest bad luck a flying column of 

 Turkish soldiers, returning to Mossul from a punitive 

 expedition against the Shammar Arabs, — they had had 

 an encounter in the desert a few days before, leav- 

 ing, according to their own account, thirty Arabs dead 

 upon the field, while they had despatched eight of 

 their own men severely wounded to be looked after 

 at Deir, — had elected to pass the night at the very 

 village which I reached tired and hungry some two 

 hours after sunset, with the result that every house 

 was full of men and mules. My baggage was far 

 behind, and I was unwillingly constrained to make the 

 best of things in a mud shanty along with half a 

 dozen Turkish soldiers and an odd villager or two, 

 who had apparently been ousted from their own 

 houses and overflowed into ours, as providing the 

 only available space. This about filled up the room, 

 and all were settling down comfortably for the night 

 when the owners, who not altogether unnaturally 

 seemed to think that they had some claim at least 

 to standing-room in their own house, appeared upon 

 the scene. The difficulty, however, was happily solved 

 by the ejection of the family donkey, who, with 

 stolid indiff'erence to the unwonted company, was 

 munching straw in a corner of the apartment. It 

 was certainly a night to cause one to ponder some- 

 what regretfully upon the discarded comforts of civilis- 

 ation, more especially when, to crown all, the occu- 

 pants insisted on lighting a smoky wood -fire in the 

 middle of the floor — there was no fireplace or chimney 

 — and closing the only aperture, the door ! 



of their religious duties." — ' Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Baby- 

 lon,' by A. H. Layard. They seem to have many strange superstitions, and, 

 according to Dr Wolff, if a circle be drawn round them "they would 

 rather die within it than attempt to escape out of it unless a portion of the 

 circle be effaced."—' Bokhara,' by the Eev. Joseph Wolff, D.D., LL.D. 



