the night with them. We had smashed the bottom plate of one of the cars,
so that all the oil ran out of the crank-case, but with a side of the
ever-useful kerosene tin we patched the car up temporarily and pushed off
at early dawn. Our route wound through groves of palms surrounding the
tumble-down tomb of some holy man, occasional collections of squalid
little huts, and in the intervening "despoblado" we would catch sight of a
jackal crouching in the hollow or slinking off through the scrub. Deli
Abbas proved a half-deserted straggling town which gave evidence of having
once seen prosperous days. Some Turkish aeroplanes heralded our arrival.

In front of us rose the Jebel Hamrin--Red Hills--beyond them the
snow-clad peaks of the Kurdish Range. A few months previous we had
captured the passes over the Jebel, and we were now busy repairing and
improving the roads--in particular that across the Abu Hajjar, not for
nothing named by the Arabs the "Father of Stones." Whenever the going
permitted we went out on reconnaissances--rekkos, as we called them. They
varied but slightly; the one I went on the day after reaching Deli Abbas
might serve as model. We started at daybreak and ran to a little village
called Ain Lailah, the Spring of Night, a lovely name for the small clump
of palm-trees tucked away unexpectedly in a hollow among barren
foot-hills. There we picked up a surveyor--an officer whose business it
was to make maps for the army. We passed through great herds of camels,
some with small children perched on their backs, who joggled about like
sailors on a storm-tossed ship, as the camels made away from the cars.
There were villages of the shapeless black tents of the nomads huddled in
among the desolate dunes. We picked up a Turk deserter who was trying to
reach our lines. He said that his six comrades had been killed by Arabs.
Shortly afterward we ran into a cavalry patrol, but the men escaped over
some very broken ground before we could satisfactorily come to terms with
them. It was lucky for the deserter that we found him before they did, for