chance and change of Australian station life. The
Australians told me that when he was at his prime he was regarded as the
best rider in Australia. A recent feat about which I heard much mention
was when he drove three hundred mules straight through Cairo without
losing a single animal, conclusively proving his argument against those
who had contested that such a thing could not be done. Although he has
often been in England, Major Paterson has never come to the United States.
He told me that among American writers he cared most for the works of Joel
Chandler Harris and O. Henry--an odd combination!

While in Egypt I met a man about whom I had heard much, a man whose career
was unsurpassed in interest and in the amount accomplished by the
individual. Before the war Colonel Lawrence was engaged in archaeological
research under Professor Hogarth of Oxford University. Their most
important work was in connection with the excavation of a buried city in
Palestine. At the outbreak of hostilities Professor Hogarth joined the
Naval Intelligence and rendered invaluable services to the Egyptian
Expeditionary Forces. Lawrence had an excellent grounding in Arabic and
decided to try to organize the desert tribes into bands that would raid
the Turkish outposts and smash their lines of communication. He
established a body-guard of reckless semioutlaws, men that in the old days
in our West would have been known as "bad men." They became devoted to him
and he felt that he could count upon their remaining faithful should any
of the tribes with which he was raiding meditate treachery. He dressed in
Arab costume, but as a whole made no effort to conceal his nationality.
His method consisted in leading a tribe off on a wild foray to break the
railway, blow up bridges, and carry off the Turkish supplies. Swooping
down from out the open desert like hawks, they would strike once and be
off before the Turks could collect themselves. Lawrence explained that he
had to succeed, for if he failed to carry off any booty, his reputation
among the tribesmen was dead--and no one would follow him thereafter. What
he found hardest on these raids was killing the wounded--but the dread of
falling into the hands of the Turks was so great that before starting it
was necessary to make a compact to kill all that were too badly injured to
be carried away on the camels. The Turks offered for Colonel Lawrence's
capture a reward of ten thousand pounds if dead and twen