Our mules carried some boxes of ammunition and a load of books--the new instructions of the Parliament for the regulation of rent contracts and municipal affairs. The muleteers were highly amused at this load, commenting upon the waste of money involved in sending regulations to a town where order never existed, and if it did, rent contracts and municipal affairs were unknown, even by name. As one looks east from Kirkuk towards Kurdistan, a low range of red barren hills shuts out the view, and over these runs the road to Sulaimania, and after crossing the plain behind, through the only gap in a second range to the plain of Bazian, the centre of the Hamavand country. This gap is the place where the wild horsemen have always assaulted caravans going east, and two months after our journey to Sulaimania, attacked and totally defeated a body of soldiers, killing several, and capturing every arm and cartridge in their possession. But two days before we had started two ragged fellows had come in from this gap to Kirkuk--two long days’ journey--and described the sack of a small caravan there; so prospects for us were not bright. [Sidenote: SHUAN KURDS] Judge, then, of the joy when our leader, the Shefiq Effendi, struck off the road and began taking a course among some low hills almost due north. For by so doing he left almost behind us the Hamavand country and headed for that of the Shuan Kurds, a powerful but peaceable tribe engaged in the keeping of flocks and herds--as their name implies.[48] By noon we were appreciably rising, the hills were closing in, and we could never see far ahead, for the track wound in and out among steep downs. We passed a Kurdish village, a collection of huts upon a mound, about this time. The women, unveiled, bright in coloured robes, turbaned as only Kurdish women are, came out to stare and to inform men within of our arrival. Soon mounted men came galloping over the hills, appearing from apparently deserted corners of the landscape, and approached our leader. Coming up to him they dismounted and took his hand, greeting him with affection, and then we discovered that he--the military accountant--was a chief of the tribe. And no sooner were we away from Kirkuk, than away went the fez from off his head, to be replaced by a Kurdish handkerchief. Despite the invitation of these villagers, our leader would not stop, and we continued our way through the valleys. Here in some places, surrounded by hills, the wind dropped, and the sun’s heat became so intense as to make the hardiest of these inured folk complain.