I was proposing to give him a penknife I possessed, but he saw he had nothing of equal value, and would only accept a handful of dried dates, in exchange for which he gave a cake of sweet bread. He had just received his pay for five days’ hard work, which required skill, experience, and probity, the sum of two shillings. No wonder people employ Kurds in preference to lazy and incompetent Arabs and Turks. The third day an extra row of skins with three more rafters was added to our raft, and half an hour before we were supposed to start, eight soldiers of a Turkish regiment from Kharput calmly walked on board, knocking the captain overboard, for he would have protested. These creatures, by their behaviour and subsequent cowardice and brutality, disgusted us to such an extent that had we foreseen the annoyance their folly and bestiality would cause, I think we should have all got out and walked from Jezira to Mosul. However, we were trying to coax them to sit in such positions as would not endanger the raft’s equilibrium, when upon the ruined wall above two uniformed persons appeared, and a third, who came aboard with a confidential serious air, told us the police required us. Haji, the Arab merchant, the soldier, and myself, climbed the wall and were ordered in a surly manner to produce passports. The others had not theirs with them, but mine was ready, and I produced it, hoping that affairs would pass off as easily as at Diarbekr. Not so, the policeman read the whole thing, then turned sharply upon me, and informed me that I had stolen an English tourist’s passport, that I was obviously an Oriental, or why this method of travelling, this dress, this acquaintance with Kurdish. In vain I protested, and he asked me my name. With horror I heard the voice of Haji, just arrived, answer: “This is Musa Effendi, a Persian gentleman, for whom I vouch; my very good friend and comrade, a good companion, and a devout Muslim.” The policeman folded up the passport with a triumphant air, and directed his two men to take me to the police office. A sudden thought helped the situation. “I am a British subject,” I exclaimed; “touch me at your peril; thank God we have a consul in Mosul who awaits me. If I do not arrive, there will be the devil to pay.” And heartily glad I was that the passport supported the statement of British subjectivity. “Then how comes it,” said the policeman, who never doubted that I was a Muslim, “that you do not bear a Muhammadan name? and are described as Protestant? which all know is a kind of Christian?” [Sidenote: MORE PASSPORT DIFFICULTIES] The feeblest bluff saved me; perhaps they distrusted the truth of the details written there.