In the meantime we must purchase food for some days; the journey, if we received no checks, would occupy five days, but if high winds arose or much rain fell we must be resigned to twelve days or even longer. So we visited the bazaar. First to a baker’s, where we ordered a sack full of thick flaps of bread, that he would cook by noon, and half toast besides, making them as it is called, “firni,” which prevents the bread going mouldy. Then to buy sugar, at which operation my knowledge of “European”--as Haji Vali called an ability to read Latin characters--was needed, for the Armenian shopkeeper tried to pass off upon us as “English sugar” some inferior produce of Austria, and his surprise and Haji Vali’s delight were about equal when I exposed the fraud by reading the label. To buy anything was a great nuisance. When I was alone I never had the patience to beat the seller down to the last farthing, and would pay an eighth of a penny more for an article than its proper price; but old Haji Vali would have none of this. He knew the price of everything in every city from Medina to Bagdad, and woe betide the Christian who swore to a false price. At last, however, we actually did finish our purchases, which, if I remember, were as follows: a sack each of charcoal and bread, ten pounds of rice, one pound of tea, three sugar loaves, six pewter teaspoons, seven pounds of clarified butter, odd quantities of lentils and pease, three long strings of dried “lady’s fingers,” a little vegetable; pepper and rock salt; some dried fruits. These we carried to the caravanserai, bent double under the sacks and bags we shouldered. The purchase of these things took us from nine in the morning till nearly sunset, and involved as much talking and argument as a session of parliament. [Sidenote: A SENTIMENTAL KURD] Having locked up our purchases and tied up our goods, ready to be taken away next morning, we went out for a last look at Diarbekr; but the old man, sick of bazaars, surprised me by a request, unlike what one would expect from one of a people that usually expresses so little regard for the aspect of things natural, and the beauties of the world we live in. Taking my arm, he said: “Musa, my son, after the day’s toil, let us go outside the gate to a quiet spot among the trees upon the cliff, where we can sit and look upon the view.” So, very gratefully, I consented, and we took our way by the gate, turned to the right, and passing the hideous military school, came to the cliff that overhangs the Tigris. We descended a little by a footpath, and found a clump of trees on a narrow ledge, whence, sheltered from the view of passers above, we could look out northwards, across the plain, and to the ever dark hills of Kurdistan. The old man sat silent for a long time, but at last expressed his sentiments in one long “Allahu akbar!” (“God is great”).