A three days journey from Barzan takes the traveller to the domain of the great rival of the chief of that ilk, viz. the Sheikh of Shamsdin, who has his palace at Neri. This man is at least as powerful as his neighbour; and indeed Obeid-Allah of Shamsdin, grandfather of the present Sheikh, had thoughts of carving out for himself a separate principality, a buffer between Turkey and Persia. He was able to invade the latter country in force, and to besiege the city of Urmi for some weeks in the early "seventies." He failed, however (though the success of the Sheikh of Koweit in an analogous scheme shows that it was not impossible under favourable circumstances); and he and his son Abd-l-Kadr were removed to Constantinople as state prisoners, while his second son, Saddik or Zadok, was left as head of the tribe. Shrewder than his father, Saddik was content with the reality of power, and accumulated wealth by tobacco smuggling on the most magnificent scale. His caravans went down to Persia, often 100 mules strong, in open defiance of the "Regie" officials; and a large portion of the proceeds was invested in rifles, smuggled from Russia to Urmi. If the troops in Trans-Caucasia were not much libelled, many of them came from their barracks, in exchange for _vodka_! A _kaimakam_, and an inspector of the "_Regie_" (the Governmentally recognized tobacco monopoly) both reside at Neri; and are generously provided with apartments in the fine house built by the Sheikh out of the profits of the industry which their official duty is to stop. But both of these domestic animals are most gratifyingly tame. Not all of the Sheikh's income went in rifles, or even in _bakhshish_. He once wrote politely to the author, asking for a recommendation to an English bank, as he had some savings to deposit with them. The writer named a bank or two; and knowing that his Holiness expected ten to fifteen per cent. on money ready at call, did not think much would follow. But eventually some thousands of pounds did actually find their way to Lombard Street; for this prince of tobacco smugglers was in very solvent circumstances indeed! A Kurdish brigand chief with a large banking account in England sounds a wildly impossible conception. Yet William Hickey records how another wholesale smuggler hailed a homeward-bound China clipper in mid channel, and purchased all her skipper's private stock of tea with a cheque for £800, which was accepted without the least demur. So such things were certainly done in the England of 1770!