“Che voulez,” he commenced, “un ... un ... wurd, petit, peu de nitrate d’argent pour des darman ... medecang, c’est très nécessaire.” This I understood to be a request for nitrate of silver for medical purposes, but I speedily assured him that I had none, and he as quickly passed over what had evidently been an excuse for coming. Drawing his cloak close about him, he leant forward to where I sat upon my carpet, and lowering his voice, in halting phrases told me the subject of what I put down here. “You are, sir, a civilised man; I too am a civilised man, for I was not always thus;--my father was a distinguished doctor in Constantinople, and I was his eldest son, educated in the best schools and colleges. It was ill-fortune that sent me to the East, and an execrable stroke of bad luck that landed me here among the savages of Kurdistan. It is now thirteen years that I languish here, and I have lost the power, did I possess the means, to go back to Europe, which I have forgotten, and whose customs and language I only remember as one remembers a beautiful dream. Ah, sir, what folly induced you to leave civilisation and comfort and trust yourself among these cut-throats, these brigands?” “Why,” I said, “my country lies much farther yet, this is but a stage upon the way, and I am well content to stay awhile where I find kindness, as I do from those whom you call barbarians.” “Have a care,” he whispered, “you know not the depths of duplicity and insincerity in which the life of this place is sunk. Even now those who smile upon your face, frown at your back and seek to destroy you, and it is for that that I am come to warn you. There is a rumour, spread by I know not whom, that you are a Persian of the revolutionary party, seeking to spy out the land here, and disaffect the chiefs against the Turks. And with such they have a short way here. There was last year a foreigner who came from Sina, and he told us all he came to collect the ancient dialect of Aoraman. He was, he said, a Dane, but I tried him, and he could not speak German. But not desiring to be a party to his discomfiture, I warned him that he was upon dangerous ground, and that I knew him for a Russian, for he had books in that language in his possession, and I saw maps in his tent; for he was very friendly, and invited me to sit with him. So I warned him, but he persisted in his assertion of innocence. Well, one morning he was looking at a distant hill through a pair of field-glasses, and I was struck by their strange appearance, and taking an opportunity to examine them found a small camera concealed within. At this time Tahir Beg began to be suspicious, for he more than any of the chiefs resents the appearance, nay the very name, of a Ferangi, and he communicated with Uthman and Mahmud pashas. These each gave the traveller a note which he might show to the head-men as he passed their villages. It permitted him to stay half an