Above the man’s head are traces of an inscription which even in Layard’s day was indecipherable. Our guide hurried back to the village while I was examining the tablet, and when we came down we found him spreading a meal of omelets and bread and bowls of irân (a most delectable drink made of sour curds beaten up in water) under the shade of some mulberry-trees--a welcome sight to those who have breakfasted early and climbed over many rocks. A less pleasing surprise awaited us when we reached the Tigris; not half the horses had crossed, and the ferry-boat was engaged in intricate and lengthy manœuvres on the opposite side. There was nothing to be done but to wait for its return, and I lay down among the clover under a hawthorn-bush. It was here that we were to bid a final farewell to the Greeks who had accompanied us from the outset of the journey (Fig. 191). “When they had arrived at a spot where the Tigris was quite impassable from its depth and width, and where there was no passage along its banks, as the Carduchian mountains hung steep over the stream, it appeared to the generals that they must march over those mountains, for they had heard from the prisoners that if they could cross the Carduchian heights they would be able to ford the sources of the Tigris in Armenia.”[184] They turned north, therefore, and fought their way through the land of the Carduchi, which are the Kurds, until they reached the sea, while we, having a ferry-boat at our disposal and a smaller force to handle, passed over the Tigris into the Ṭûr ’Abdîn. So at length we parted, and Cheirosophus in advance with the light-armed troops scaled the hills of Finik and led slowly forward, leaving Xenophon to bring up the rear with the heavy-armed men. Their shields and corselets glittered upon the steep, they climbed, and reached the summit of the ridge, and disappeared.... “Effendim!” Fattûḥ broke into my meditations. “Effendim, the boat is ready.” “Oh Fattûḥ,” said I, “the Greeks are gone.” Fattûḥ looked vaguely disturbed. “The Greeks of old days, who marched with us down the Euphrates,” I explained. The history of the Ten Thousand is not included in the Aleppine curriculum, and since Fattûḥ can neither read nor write, he is debarred from supplementing the acquirements of his brief school-days, but he searched his memory for fragments of my meaningless talk. “Those?” he said. “God be with them!”