However, we started next day in the afternoon. The mules were on the opposite side of the river, so porters had to carry the luggage over the bridge of boats and its stone continuation to the flat beach on the other side, where loads were piled, awaiting mules for Kirkuk and Keui Sanjaq. The mules appeared about four o’clock in the afternoon, and we started. My steed was loaded with two boxes, slung at either side; upon these bedding was laid, and the whole secured by a long girth, and I climbed to the summit of the erection and experienced once more the joys of sitting on a sloping half-yard of bedding through which all the knobs of the pack-saddle asserted themselves. Upon such a seat one has to sit for twelve hours at a stretch very often, and to the inexperienced the question of balance is usually sufficient to occupy attention till the lumps beneath him begin to bruise. To my surprise, instead of heading south-east, we commenced to go in a northerly direction, but this I found was to reach a good camping-ground for the night. For an hour or so we went through a kind of thicket, and at last, emerging on a little plain where the grass grew high and green, we cast our loads, and the mules were led off to water. Our party was a small one, all natives of Sulaimania, except one muleteer, a Kurd of Halabja, a place I was to see later. The muleteer himself, Rashid, had an assistant, an ancient man of vile temper, and he in his turn boasted a menial youth. There were two other travellers, a servant clad in a long green overcoat and pegtop trousers; and a kind of pedlar. These last strongly advised me to discard my fez for a skull-cap and turban, and provided me with the necessary articles for constructing one. [Sidenote: SULAIMANIANS] It appeared that in wearing the conspicuous scarlet headgear I was a source of danger both to myself and the others, for the Kurds, who hate anything and everything appertaining to Turks, have a way of singling out this mark of the beast as a target. Even the overcoat I wore was a subject of deprecation, for we were getting to the land where, if one is not a Turk, it is “aib”--a fault--to wear anything but what custom sanctions. The costume of Sulaimania cannot be termed Kurdish, though the wearers style themselves Kurds, with what accuracy will be seen later.