"gouverneur." But Ibrahim could only find a saddle-bag. X turned over the leaves of the vocabulary in the hopes of finding suitable greetings. We bowed and scraped mutually, and X delivered herself of the first greeting.

"We are very pleased."

The "gouverneur" bowed and made, no doubt, what was a suitable response; but as we could only attack single words we were no wiser. There was a pause while X collected the words for another.

"Beautiful country," she attempted.

The "gouverneur" bowed very gravely.

"I hope I have said that," said X nervously, "he looks rather shocked."

At that moment Constantin appeared with coffee and cigarettes, which gave us time to recover.

"I should not bother to talk to him," I said. "That is the best of these people—they understand how to sit happily in silence, just looking at you."

But X determined to make another try; it was good practice.

"Health good?" she said.

The "gouverneur" turned to his companion and said a few words in Turkish. The young man looked rather terrified, and began to speak to us in what sounded like gibberish. Constantin came to take the cups away.

"Parle français," he said, pointing to the young man.

We strained our ears to try and catch an intelligible word, but could only shake our heads.

So we all took refuge in silence and looked at one another. There was no sense of gêne. The Turk and his companion seemed as content to sit and look at us as the women had been. When he had finished his cigarette he rose, and, bowing once more in Turkish fashion, took his leave.

We picked up our papers once more, then Constantin came and said lunch was ready. We sat on saddle-bags outside the tent and ate chunks of mutton and onions out of the tin bowl keeping hot on the charcoal brazier at our side. Ibrahim filled our cups with water from the brook, and the grass tickled our hands each time we lifted them from the ground. The pots and pans lay about all around, and Constantin, squatting in the middle of them, brought the coffee to the boil three times in the little Turkish pot.

"Sheker, effendi?" he called out, "un, deux?" as he ladled in the sugar. Constantin's language was always of a hybrid nature, consisting of alternate words of French and Turkish.

Then we had returned to the carpet under the tree and sipped the thick, hot coffee out of the little Turkish cups, and sent thoughtful rings of smoke up into the branches of the tree above. And with the rings of smoke went up thoughts of the coffee they were drinking now in the drawing-rooms; the little cups there would have handles, and each one would help himself to sugar off a little tray.

"I guess you find it slow here!"

An American tourist couple from Brusa stood over us. They had seen us off at Madame Brot's hotel, and had then announced their intention of driving to Nicæa in a landau.

"We thought we would just look you up and see if you had got here all right, but we cannot stop a minute; we've only had an hour to see the walls, they were so long getting lunch."

"You ought to see the tower on the site of the church where they discussed the Nicene Creed," said X.

"The Nicene Creed—eh, what?" said the American, as he consulted his guide-book.

"Say, we just ought to have a look at that," he said to his wife.

"We shall miss the Augusta Victoria if you do," said the lady. Then she turned to us. "We go on to Smyrna in it to-morrow morning," she explained, "so we must get back to-night."

The landau appeared at that moment; time was up. Smyrna, Beyrout, Damascus, Jerusalem, Cairo, and Luxor had to be got in during the allotted time, and there had been no provision made for the Nicene Creed. So in they got and dashed away over the plain.

They had come as a whirlwind over from the West, sweeping the surface of this Eastern land and catching up the loose fragments on it; but its traditions were too deeply rooted to be caught in the blast; these had merely bent their heads and let the blast pass by. Strong as it is, it cannot unloose the sway of ancient customs. Even for Americans the East will not move. The natives gazed at the landau, hardly wondering at it; then they forgot it. But we did not forget it so easily. For us an odour of the West was left hanging over the plain—and above all, our sense of time had been offended.

A French engineer with his wife and family were the next to appear on the scene. They were the only Europeans living in the place, and rejoiced over the sound of their mother-tongue. The man poured out volumes of it, and was interesting about his work up to the point when we became fatigued.

"Ah! mademoiselle, what it is to be in civilised company again! We live here from day to day and year after year, and have no one to speak with, no one with whom to exchange ideas. C'est comme la mort."

"Do you not see anything of the natives?" we inquired. "They seem very friendly, and you can speak Turkish."

"Ah! mademoiselle, what can one do with such people? how can one associate with them? They are canaille, mere canaille."

"We were talking to some of them," we said, "and thought them very intelligent."

He held up his hands in horror.

"But, mademoiselle, do you not understand? Certainly there are the Christian races, but for the most part, ce sont des Turques, des infidèles, des chiens. There is Marie there, pauvre Marie! it is bad enough for me, but then I have my work; but Marie, the pauvre Marie, she dies of ennui, she can speak to no one but me and the children."

The pauvre Marie seemed indeed to have lost the power of speech; she sat silently as her husband poured out his contempt of the canaille.

We had found the Greek women very entertaining in the morning, and they too had sat and looked at us in silence. But they had not been ashamed of their silence; Marie was, and felt awkward; so we all felt uncomfortable, and tried to talk to her.

One felt then how little actual language had to do with social intercourse. We could not get into touch with Marie, whose language we understood, in the same way that we had got into touch with the native women, whose language we did not understand.

They sat on and on; it was not until the sun began to send out long warning shoots of colour, heralding its disappearance behind the purple mountains, that they rose to go.

And we, worn out with this final effort in sociability, gave ourselves up to the quiet of the deserted camp, and watched the shades of night creep once more over the ruined walls and the distant hills, over the houses of the French engineer and the canaille.

CHAPTER IV

THE DAWN OF THE BAGHDAD RAILWAY

I

There is something very weird and uncanny in the terminus of a railway in the middle of a wild and desolate country such as this. The Monster runs his iron fangs into the heart of its desolation and shoots you into it like a ball out of a cannon's mouth. Roaring and hissing and sending out jets of flame, he comes racing through the darkness to a certain definite spot; here he discharges you in the blackness of night and subsides. Next morning when you awake he is gone, and you are left to shift for yourself as best you can. But there is a certain human friendliness about this Monster while you are travelling with him. He seems to draw all the signs of life out of an apparently dead country and collect them at the stations for you to see. Great warehouses filled with sacks of corn testify to the productiveness of a country which, judging it from the train window after harvest time, one would dismiss as mere barren soil; an occasional MacCormick's "Daisy" reaper awaiting delivery on a side platform, native carts hanging about, and truck-loads of empty sacks tell the same tale. Groups of peasants, idly gossiping, gathered together by the whistle which heralds the Monster's