n a really
deplorable condition. Some of them go so far as to cut off a finger or
two. The officers, however, have learned to see beyond these little
tricks, and few Arabs succeed in wriggling through their drag-net. I
have watched dozens of Arabs being brought in to the recruiting office
on camels or horses, so weak were they, and welcomed into the service
with a severe beating--the sick and the shammers sharing the same fate.
Thus it often happens that some of the new recruits die after their
first day of garrison life.

Together with twenty of my comrades, I presented myself at the
recruiting station at Acco (the St. Jean d'Acre of history). We had been
given to understand that, once our names were registered, we should be
allowed to return home to provide ourselves with money, suitable
clothing, and food, as well as to bid our families good-bye. To our
astonishment, however, we were marched off to the Han, or caravanserai,
and locked into the great courtyard with hundreds of dirty Arabs. Hour
after hour passed; darkness came, and finally we had to stretch
ourselves on the ground and make the best of a bad situation. It was a
night of horrors. Few of us had closed an eye when, at dawn, an officer
appeared and ordered us out of the Han. From our total number about
three hundred (including four young men from our village and myself)
were picked out and told to make ready to start at once for Saffed, a
town in the hills of northern Galilee near the Sea of Tiberias, where
our garrison was to be located. No attention was paid to our requests
that we be allowed to return to our homes for a final visit. That same
morning we were on our way to Saffed--a motley, disgruntled crew.

[ILLUSTRATION: SAFFED]

It was a four days' march--four days of heat and dust and physical
suffering. The September sun smote us mercilessly as we straggled along
the miserable native trail, full of gullies and loose stones. It would
not have been so bad if we had been adequately shod or clothed; but soon
we found ourselves envying the ragged Arabs as they trudged along
barefoot, paying no heed to the jagged flints. (Shoes, to the Arab, are
articles for ceremonious indoor use; when any serious walking is to be
done, he takes them off, slings them over his shoulder, and trusts to
the horny soles of his feet.)

To add to our troubles, the Turkish officers, with characteristic
fatalism, had made no commissary provision for us whatever. Any food we