on 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.

After waiting a few days further, to be certain that an attack would not
be unexpectedly ordered, I set out on my return trip to Baghdad. The river
at Taza was still up, but I borrowed six mules from an accommodating
galloping ambulance, and pulled the car across. We went by way of Kifri, a
clean, stone-built town that we found all but empty. The food situation
had become so critical that the inhabitants had drifted off, some to our
lines, others to Persia, and still others to Kirkuk and Mosul. Near Kifri
are some coal-mines about which we had heard much. It is the only place in
the country where coal is worked, and we were hoping that we might put it
to good use. Our experts, however, reported that it was of very poor
quality and worth practically nothing.

VIII

BACK THROUGH PALESTINE

Several days later I embarked at Baghdad on one of the river boats. I took
Yusuf with me to Busra to put me aboard the transport for Egypt. It was
the first time he had ever been that far down-stream, and he showed a fine
contempt for everything he saw, comparing it in most disparaging terms to
his own desolate native town of Samarra. The cheapness, variety, and
plenty of the food in the bazaars of Busra were the only things that he
allowed in any way to impress him.

I was fortunate enough to run into some old friends, and through one of
them met General Sutton, who most kindly and opportunely rescued me from
the dreary "Rest-Camp" and took me to his house. While I was waiting for a
chance to get a place on a transport, he one morning asked me to go with
him to Zobeir, where he was to dedicate a hospital. Zobeir is a desert
town of ten thousand or so inhabitants, situated fifteen miles inland
from Busra. The climate is supposed to be more healthful, and many of the
rich and important residents of the river town have houses there to which
they retire during the summer months. To an outsider any comparison would
seem only a refinement of degrees of suffocation. The heat of all the
coastal towns of the Persian Gulf is terrific.

Zobeir is a desert town, with its ideals and feelings true to the
inheritance of the tribesmen. It is a market for the caravans of central
Arabia. A good idea of the Turkish feeling towa