It was nearly sunset before we finally got across, and found ourselves on the broad plain of the Euphrates valley. With all despatch we harnessed up and set out. Arriving at the caravanserai, we found it full of the effendi and his chattels, and the travellers who had followed him; so, making the best of a bad job, we went on, trusting to luck to find a place to sleep. We had traversed the plain and were gradually ascending a pleasant hilly country by moonlight, when the driver descried a cluster of sugar-loaf roofs just off the road, and we stopped to interview the inhabitants. A couple of finely built men came out, apparently Arabs, but they had not spoken half a dozen words to one another before we saw that they were Kurds. This resolved both the driver and myself to stay, for the Kurds, with all their bad reputation, are better hosts than Armenian, Turk, or Arab. Eventually, when a number of children and sheep had been dragged out from what appeared to be a cellar, they told me that the best room in the place was at my disposal. Descending three steps, and passing along a dark narrow corridor, I found myself in a circular chamber whose high sugar-loaf roof was invisible in the gloom undispersed by a tuft of burning brushwood. The Kurds, with continual joking and merriment, tripping one another up, as they brought in the baggage, eventually deposited all my belongings in the room, and then installed themselves. The hamlet had a population of some fifteen men and women, and within five minutes these were all gathered around my strip of carpet. One of them knew Turkish, and tried it on me, taking me for a Turk; but when I replied in Kurdish, telling them I did not understand Turkish, they evinced considerable satisfaction, and hailed me as a brother Kurd, albeit of some other tribe (these were of the Milli), but nevertheless a fellow-countryman, and to be treated as a guest. And right well did these simple people act up to the fine old Kurdish law of hospitality. They possessed little enough of the world’s goods, but their best fowl was sacrificed to the occasion, eggs in numbers sufficient for ten men were produced. Every one of them except the headman, who sat by as host, busied himself about something. One made a fire in the centre of the room, making gloomier the gloom with pungent smoke; another fetched water for washing--they would not let me go outside in the keen wind, to the spring. One heated water for tea, while his companions killed and plucked and commenced cooking the fowl. Surplus eggs they hard-boiled and put up for my journey next day. I felt ashamed to be imposing thus upon these simple and genuine people, only I knew that utter incredulity would have met any attempt I might have made to undeceive them. What could they think of a man whose only means of communication not only with them, but with the whole world of Syria, was Kurdish? I found, however, that the appreciation they