southern France, his mother French and his father English. The latter
walked across the United States from ocean to ocean in the early forties,
so Soane came by his roving, adventurous spirit naturally. When still but
little more than a boy he went out to work in the Anglo-Persian Bank, and
immediately interested himself in the language and literature of the
country. Some of his holidays he spent in the British Museum translating
and cataloguing Persian manuscripts. Becoming interested in the Kurds, he
spent a number of years among them, learning their languages and customs
and joining in their raids.

As soon as we got a foothold in the Kurdish Hills, Soane was sent up to
administer the captured territory. His headquarters were at Khanikin,
twenty-five miles from Kizil Robat and but a short distance from the
Persian frontier. One morning during the time that I was stationed in that
district I motored over to see him. It was a glorious day. The cloud
effects were most beautiful, towering in billows of white above the snow
peaks, against a background of deepest blue. The road wound in and out
among the barren foot-hills until suddenly as I topped a rise I saw right
below a great clump of palm-trees, with houses showing through here and
there--the whole divided by a lovely river bestridden by an old seven-arch
bridge. I picked my way through the narrow streets, scattering ragged
Kurds right and left; past part of the covered bazaar, until I came to a
house with a large courtyard, thronged with a motley array of Kurdish
irregulars, armed with every sort of weapon. It was there that Soane
administered his stern but practical justice, for he thoroughly understood
how to handle these men.

The district had suffered fearfully, for it had been occupied in turn by
Turk and Russian, and then Turk again, before we took it over, and the
unfortunate natives had been pillaged and robbed mercilessly. Thousands