leader it was never to be theirs. On the ground itself one could
appreciate how great a masterpiece the retreat really was, and the
hardiness of the soldiers which caused Xenophon to regard as a "snow
sickness" the starvation and utter weariness which made the numbed men lie
down and die in the snow of the Anatolian highlands. He remarks naïvely
that if you could build a fire and give them something hot to eat, the
sickness was dispelled!

The rain continued to fall and the mud became deeper and deeper. It was
all the Arabs could do to get their produce into market. The bazaar was
not large, but was always thronged. I used to sit in one of the
coffee-houses and drink coffee or tea and smoke the long-stemmed
water-pipe, the narghile. My Arabic was now sufficiently fluent for
ordinary conversation, and in these clubs of the Arab I could hear all the
gossip. Bazaar rumors always told of our advances long before they were
officially given out. Once in Baghdad I heard of an attack we had
launched. On going around to G.H.Q. I mentioned the rumor, and found that
it was not yet known there, but shortly after was confirmed. I had already
in Africa met with the "native wireless," and it will be remembered how in
the Civil War the plantation negroes were often the first to get news of
the battles. It is something that I have never heard satisfactorily
explained.

In the coffee-houses, besides smoking and gossiping, we also played games,
either chess or backgammon or munkula. This last is an exceedingly
primitive and ancient game--it must date almost as far back as jackstones
or knucklebones. I have seen the natives in Central Africa and the Indians
in the far interior of Brazil playing it in almost identical form. In
Mesopotamia the board was a log of wood sliced in two and hinged together.
In either half five or six holes were scooped out, and the game consisted