We left Nisibin on June 29th at 6.30 p.m. with some very unsatisfactory donkeys, taking with us all the sick we could. One or two of these had slipped out from hospital unawares, and joined us as we passed on. They begged to be allowed to come, saying they preferred dying on the desert to going back to the terrors of Nisibin. We put them up on every available donkey, and some in our hospital cart, and our orderlies helped the rest along. For the most part they did well, although, as the trek wore on, one after another collapsed, and those that did not die at once we left in the most congenial camp we could. The first two nights were bad. The donkeys went stubbornly, as they invariably did, before getting into the swing of the trek. The pace of the column was coming down to about two miles and often less an hour. The local Arabs seemed wilder, and we had to keep together, as one party of Turks had been recently massacred outright. We were reinforced with vigilant gendarmes. For the stragglers it was certain death at the Arabs' hands. The tail of the column was an awful place. Sometimes one got here when one's donkey collapsed or kit fell off, or when one felt too seedy to sit on one's donkey, or too tired to walk fast when it was one's relay to walk. Four of us shared one donkey, Stapleton and I and our orderlies. At the rear of the column the mounted gendarmes, Turk and Arab, galloped about, exhorting the sick and dying to hurry, almost riding them down and driving them on with blows of sticks and their rifle butts. We, of course, stopped this when we could. One night I got badly left, and the column was miles off. My donkey and orderly had collapsed at the same time, and Stapleton was not available on this occasion, in fact he was probably ill himself. A small band of us we were, and more than once I was practically knocked over by the impetuous horsemen.