The Telegraph Compound which, during our occupation of Mianeh, served as Wagstaff's headquarters, stood on the brink of a knoll overlooking the main street leading to the Bazaar Quarter. On the face of a corresponding eminence opposite, and divided {163} by a bend of the road, was the local Potter's Field, where friendless peasants and penniless wanderers from afar who had paid the great debt of Nature within the inhospitable walls of Mianeh were interred (when the lazy townsfolk found time to give them sepulture) in a hastily dug and shallow grave. In the meantime the defunct ones were wont to be dumped down on a rude bier and left there, sometimes for a whole day, under the fierce rays of a mid-June sun. Mianeh was as uncomfortable for the dead as it was unhealthy for the living. Truly, few Persians seem to possess any olfactory sensitiveness. They would pass the Potter's Field hourly, showing no concern at the repulsiveness that must have assailed their eyes and noses. News filtered down the road from Tabriz that the Turks there were displaying great activity. They were daily being reinforced, and made no secret of their intention to attempt, when sufficiently strong, the task of chasing the British from Azerbaijan. They established posts on the Tabriz road southwards as far as Haji Agha, about sixty miles from Mianeh. The answer to all these Turkish preparations for breaking our slender hold upon Azerbaijan was for Wagstaff urgently to ask for reinforcements and especially mountain guns. In the meantime he sent Osborne back up the Tabriz road, with all the fighting men that could be spared, to watch the enemy and to attempt to prevent his breaking farther south. {164} Osborne's chief reliance was placed on the few British N.C.O.'s who accompanied him. Beyond these, all he had to stem any Turkish advance was about half a squadron of newly enrolled irregular horse and a couple of platoons of native levies who had been taught the rudiments of musketry and elementary drill. Their appearance, at all events, was very warlike, not to say terror-inspiring, and, like some of the wild tribes of Polynesia, they relied chiefly on the effectiveness of their make-up when on the "war-path" to bring about the discomfiture of their enemies. The Sowars were unusually awe-inspiring, hung about as each was with two or three bandoliers studded with cartridges. Each carried a rifle, a sword of antique design, and a short stabbing blade. The Naib, or Lieutenant, who commanded them, was equally formidable from the point of view of arms and equipment. He had a Tulwar shaped like a reaping-hook, and a Mauser pistol, the butt of which was inlaid with silver.