I am writing under an old Roman stone bridge. Nisibin was once the outpost of the Roman Empire, and ruins of an ancient university life are found on the plain and along the wall. It is frightfully hot. There is little food in the bazaar and prices are the highest yet met, a handful of raisins being about half a crown. I set out yesterday for the hospital to recover a topee, as I heard a British officer had died there. After many wanderings through tiny streets and dark quarters and backyards and many redirections, I was led through a doorway of matting hanging from the mud-brick wall into a courtyard, where through an opening in the wall I saw a sight that staggered the imagination. A bare strip of filthy ground ran down to the river some two hundred yards off. Along the wall, protected by only a few scanty leaves and loose grass flung over some tatti work of branches through which the fierce sun streamed with unabated violence, I saw some human forms which no eye but one acquainted with the phenomenon of the trek could possibly recognize as British soldiery. They were wasted to wreathes of skin hanging upon a bone frame. For the most part they were stark naked except for a rag around their loins, their garments having been sold to buy food, bread, milk, and medicine. Their eyes were white with the death hue. Their sunken cheeks were covered with the unshaven growth of weeks. One had just died and two or three corpses just been removed, the Turkish attendant no doubt having heard of the approach of an officers' column. But the corpses had lain there for days. Some of the men were too weak to move. The result of the collection of filth and the unsanitary state in the centre of which these men lay in a climate like this can be imagined. Water was not regularly supplied to them, and those unable to walk had to crawl to the river for water. One could see their tracks through the dirt and grime. Three or four hard black biscuits lay near the dead man. Other forms near by I thought dead, but they moved unconsciously again. One saw the bee-hive phenomenon of flies which swarmed by the million going in and out of living men's open mouths. I was discovered talking to the men by a Turk and "haideed" off to the Turkish officer. Having assured them of doing all in my power, and having given them the two or three poor useless little coins I could spare, I went to the Turk, having got the topee of Lieutenant O'Donoghoe, who had died under conditions little better, with no doctor, no medicine, and no food but "chorba" (vegetable soup, practically water). He had lingered in this awfully lonely place for weeks and no transport had been offered him.