bivouacked with a machine-gun company and a battalion of native
infantry. The bed of the river was very wide, and although throughout the
greater part of the year the water flowed only through the narrow main
channel, in the time of the spring floods the whole distance was a riotous
yellow torrent. We had no sooner got the cars across than the river began
to rise. During the first night part of the bridge was carried away, and
the rest was withdrawn. The rise continued; trees and brush were swept
racing past. We made several fruitless attempts to get across in the
clumsy pontoons, but finally gave it up, resigning ourselves to being
marooned. We put ourselves on short rations and waited for the river to
fall. If the Turks had used any intelligence they could have gathered us
in with the greatest ease, in spite of our excellent line of trenches. On
the fourth day of our isolation the river subsided as rapidly as it had
risen.

We had good patrolling conditions, and each day we made long circuits.
Sometimes we would run into a body of enemy cavalry and have a skirmish
with them. Again we would come upon an infantry outpost and manoeuvre
about in an effort to damage it. The enemy set traps for us, digging big
holes in the road and covering them over with matting on which they
scattered dirt to make the surface appear normal. The nearest town
occupied by the Turks was Kara Tepe, distant from Mirjana eight or ten
miles as the crow flies. In the debatable land were a number of native
villages, and such inhabitants as remained in them led an unpleasantly
eventful existence. In the morning they would be visited by a Turkish
patrol, which would be displaced by us in our rounds. Perhaps in the
evening a band of wild mountainy Kurds would blow in and run off some of
their few remaining sheep. Then the Turks would return and accuse them of
having given us information, and carry off some hostages or possibly beat
a couple of them for having received us, although goodness knows they had
little enough choice in the matter. There was one old sheik with whom I
used often to sit and gossip while an attendant was roasting the berries
for our coffee over the near-by fire. He was ever asking why we couldn't
make an advance and put his village safely behind our lines, so that the
children could grow fat and the herds graze unharmed. In this country
Kurdish and Turkish were spoken as frequently as Arabic, and many of the
names of places were T