The bazaars were well filled with goods of every sort. I picked up one or two excellent rugs for very little, and a few odds and ends, dating from Seleucid times, that had been unearthed by Arab laborers in their gardens or brick-kilns. There were some truck-gardens in the outskirts, and we traded fresh vegetables for some of our issue rations. There are few greater luxuries when one has been living on canned foods for a long time. I saw several ibex heads nailed up over the doors of houses. The owners told me that they were to be found in the near-by mountains, but were not plentiful. There is little large game left in Mesopotamia, and that mainly in the mountains. I once saw a striped hyena. It is a nocturnal animal, and they may be common, although I never came across but the one, which I caught sight of slinking among the ruins of Istabulat, south of Samarra, one evening when I was riding back to camp. Gazelle were fairly numerous, and we occasionally shot one for venison. It was on the plains between Kizil Robat and Kara Tepe that I saw the largest bands. Judging from ancient bas-reliefs lions must at one time have been very plentiful. In the forties of the last century Sir Henry Layard speaks of coming across them frequently in the hill country; and later still, in the early eighties, a fellow countryman, Mr. Fogg, in his _Land of the Arabian Nights_, mentions that the English captain of a river steamer had recently killed four lions, shooting from the deck of his boat. Rousseau speaks of meeting, near Hit, a man who had been badly mauled by a lion, and was going to town to have his wounds cared for. Leopards and bears are to be met with in the higher mountain regions, and wild boars are common in many districts. They inhabit the thickets along the river-banks, in country that would permit of much sound sport in the shape of pig-sticking. Game-birds are found in abundance; both greater and lesser bustard; black and gray partridges, quail, geese, duck, and snipe. A week's leave could be made provide good shooting and a welcome addition to the usual fare when the wanderer returned. Every sort of shotgun was requisitioned, from antiquated muzzle-loaders bought in the bazaar to the most modern creations of Purdy sent out from India by parcel-post.