436 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES IN TURKEY, 
in spite of my endeavours to stop him and, as every attempt I made to 
approach them caused a renewal of their fire, and some of their bullets 
come too close to be pleasant, and I saw no signs of the plunder of my 
baggage, I halted and let them go off and then resumed my original 
road. A little way on we came to a party of villagers who had just 
been robbed by these Shikaks and stripped to their under-garments. 
I gave them some assistance, for which they thought themselves in 
very good luck, and on reaching the village where we were to encamp, 
I was right glad to see my tents pitched all safe, the baggage-train 
not having been fallen in with by the Kurds. 
Neri, Sheikh ObeydullaKs village, lies in a deep valley in the 
mountains south of the plain of Gevver. Gevver is, without doubt, 
the dried bed of an ancient lake. The soil is a deep alluvium, very 
fertile where sufficiently dried, but a considerable portion of the surface 
is still occupied by swamps and morass. Here we suffered from clouds 
of the most bloodthirsty flies, like very large house-flies, with grey 
bodies and metallic green heads. I rode a white horse and at the end 
of the day he looked as if he had been in the thick of a battle, covered 
with blood that had flowed from the bites of these flies. As we ap¬ 
proached the end of the plain nearest to Neri, we came into a region 
where the villagers told us that they were entirely in the hands of the 
Sheikh, that they paid tribute to him, but not to, the Turkish Govern¬ 
ment. 
On leaving the plain of Gevver we passed into the mountains and, 
crossing two ridges, arrived at Neri, a large village very finely situated 
among fig-trees and forests in the bottom of a narrow valley surrounded 
by high mountains of picturesque form. The Sheikh had sent his 
tribe out to meet me and I was accommodated in a very large, hand¬ 
some room in the Sheikhas own house. One side of the room consisted 
entirely of glass sashes opening on to a verandah, the place being very 
hot, at all events in summer, and the floor was covered by a magnificent 
Persian carpet of very large size. 
Here I was visited first by the Sheikhas Khalife or Minister and by 
the Turkish Mudir, whom the Sheikh permitted to reside in the village, 
though without any authority, and afterwards by the Sheikh himself. 
He seemed in very delicate health and was dressed entirely in white. 
His Khalife, Sheikh Hamid, struck me as an exceedingly able man. 
The next day I paid a visit to Sheikh Obeydullah in his own room 
and was amused to see an iron French bedstead. The Sheikh was 
evidently anxious for the friendship of England and said he had 
correspondents in India who spoke well of the English rule there. It 
was evident that he aspired to become ruler of a principality independent 
of the Turkish and Persian Governments. 
His further history was briefly this The following year he collected 
Kurdish tribes to the number of about 20,000 and invaded Persia. 
He swept over the country almost to the gates of Tabreez, plundering 
and exacting contributions, but then appeared the universal weakness 
of all such Kurdish levies. Having got as much plunder as they could 
conveniently carry, and Persian regular troops coming on to the scene, 
