We were accompanied by an officer going to Khaniqin via Halabja, and he had been granted an escort of twenty soldiers as far as the latter place. These at last appeared, and assuming the dignities of escort to the caravan, blew a bugle several times in the hopes of inducing it to start. Our caravan was a large one; half of its members were women returning from Sulaimania to their native places, villages along the Persian frontier--Kurds all, except for three blatant Bagdadiennes accompanying their husbands, Turkish officials, to Khaniqin. The little party to which I was attached had also its female element, an elderly woman of the mountain lands of Aoram, mother-in-law of the muleteer, and as such allowed to ride free of charge upon a minute ass, which expressed its unwillingness to proceed by sitting down frequently, in streams for choice. Once under way over the rolling spurs of the Azmir mountains, our military escort began to display that zeal for duty which they never fail to exhibit. Their duty, however, when on the march and in towns has always seemed to me and to the inhabitants to begin and end with a practical study of the science of combined annoyance and roguery, theft and violence, as bearing upon the populace, and in this they attain remarkable proficiency. On this occasion their first action was to cast from their donkeys three or four inoffensive Kurds, and appropriate their animals. An hour out from Sulaimania the sun began to grow hot, and the soldiers thirsty, and the water-pots of all travellers were emptied despite protest, and because of it in two instances, where the soldiers wantonly broke the pot and spilled its contents. There was considerable talk of robbers, for the road skirted the country of the rebellious Hamavand Kurds, and the sudden appearance of some horsemen upon a hillock caused the guard some uneasiness and alarm. Being armed with Mauser rifles, they were forced to show some spirit, and retiring precipitately to a depression they fired a volley at the riders, fortunately hitting no one. The perfectly peaceable enemy stopped and shouted something sarcastic, and by their dress and dialect were recognised as fellows of our own half-dozen horsemen. On learning this the condition of the army became piteous. Some six or seven, whose fear of tribal reprisals overcame the influence of military discipline, made off at the double for town, forgetting the men they had fired upon. These, seeing from afar the situation, set off after them with shouts of well-assumed fury. The remainder were penned about by our own horsemen and were receiving a merciless pounding with the butts of rifles wielded wisely and ably from the superior position of horseback. The “yuzbashi”[58] screamed in vain Turkish for bugler and “bash chaush.”[59] But both lay, one squashed under a horse’s heel, and the other senseless beneath the belly of a donkey that answered the yuzbashi with vociferous braying.