when travelling with ten dogs, is a fascination about a long On we saw very few tracks. the Mackenzie River there was the occasional moose and cariboo track. I had one long shot at a moose myself, but, after leaving the river and taking to the bush, we came across very few tracks indeed. During the last three days of the trip-on the Slave RiverI saw thousands of geese and ducks flying north. On one open. pool in the river there must have been several hunIdreds of duck. trip with dogs. One gets to know the disposition and peculiarities of each dog, and becomes very attached to them. Looking back after a lapse of two and a half years, I sometimes picture again some of our camp fires just south of the circle, and I often feel that it would be good to shake the dust of the cities from my feet and return to that vast lone land where the mountains are nameless and the rivers all run God knows With all its hardships there where." 66 BUSRAWI OF MANY WILES. BY C. LEONARD WOOLLEY. BEFORE 11th November 1919, when the British forces evacuated Syria, I had been acting as political officer in the north, with Jerablus as my base; in less than a month after the evacuation I was back there, but this time as a civilian, to resume the British Museum excavations on the site of ancient Carchemish, interrupted by the years of war. With me was Guy, and Hamoudi of Jerablus was, as before the war, my foreman in charge. Our programme was to carry out during the winter such minor pieces of digging as weather would allow, and with the beginning of spring to embark on the big job of working out the whole system of the city's defences. We carried out our programme, but in the face of greater difficulties than we had ever expected. I had anticipated trouble. Long before we left Syria clouds were gatheringin the north. The long delay in the formulating of peace terms for Turkey, the disastrous occupation of Smyrna by the Greeks, the Nationalist campaign organised by Mustapha Kemel against the Turkish Government of the day, all gave promise of trouble. were expected to favour unduly the Christian minority of the population, partly thanks to propaganda put about by Algerian exiles in Damascus, partly, too, because a vague Nationalism was beginning to ask why Syria should not have that" self-determination which means the licence for every man to plunder his neighbour. When the French did come, their obvious inferiority both in numbers and in military equipment to the forces which they replaced was an encouragement to violence which agitators were not slow to use. Of course, I knew this, but it was no longer my business to keep in touch with the politics of the country, and we were soon too hard at work to bother much about the rumours which, in the East, are always so plentiful and may mean so little. One day towards the end of January, Colonel C., who commanded the French forces and had his headquarters at Jerablus railway station, came down to see me with a very serious face. Trouble had broken out farther north; the garrisons of Urfa and Birijik and of one of the railway stations on the In Tell Abyad line had been atSyria itself the coming of the tacked, and he had news, as French was unwelcome to the yet not fully confirmed, of Moslems, partly because they large numbers of the enemy no advancing on Jerablus itself. mounds of Carchemish were He was not strong enough to reinforce or to relieve the outlying posts, not strong enough even to hold the railway station at Jerablus if it were attacked. He proposed to move his forces down into the ruins, and to content himself with holding the ancient walls of Carchemish and the great bridge of the Baghdad railway which lay at their feet. Had I any objection to the move? It was polite of the Colonel to ask, but, of course, I could not have objected if I had wanted to, and I did not want to, for we were very good friends; but I did not relish the idea of any interruption to the excavations. I pointed out that we as Englishmen had officially nothing to do with what was not a recognised war, but a local disturbance; that we would go on working as long as we could, and clear out if work became impossible. Our sympathies were, as he knew, with the French, and we could be of much more use to them if we could retain the position of being strictly neutral, but we appealed to him to respect the antiquities of the site. Colonel C., who was keenly interested in archæology, of course agreed. It was arranged that a number of trial pits dug by Campbell-Thompson in 1912 should serve as dug-outs for the troops, the Colonel to have a bedroom and staff office in the expedition house, and the other officers to live in tents alongside. The wall to be wired and emplacements dug in them for the two machine-guns which formed the total of the French artillery, but otherwise there was to be disturbance in the ruins. And apart from the rooms allotted to the French, the expedition house was to be neutral ground; any natives desiring to see us were to have free access through the French lines; visitors and workmen alike were to leave all firearms with the French outposts, and have them returned on leaving the lines. We all felt that it was a rather Gilbertian position, but probably the best that could be devised in the circumstances. On the other side of the Euphrates, where the trouble had begun, the nearest tribes were the Kitkan Kurds under Busrawi Agha, and the Barazi, also a Kurdish tribe, the headship of which was divided between two brothers, Mustapha and Bozan ibn Shahin Beg. Between the two tribes there had been a long-standing feud, which I had patched up before the war; during the war it broke out again, and in 1919 we had only with difficulty maintained peace. The sheikhs were old friends of mine, and at the beginning of the previous November I had been at especial pains to urge on them the wisdom of submitting cheerfully to the French occupation. Both parties had agreed to do so, and to Lieutenant B., the French Political Officer, I had confidently reported that he hostile; the Shahins felt that would find them friends; but I had failed to allow for Busrawi's diplomatic astuteness. The day after the arrival of the French staff Busrawi had presented himself, and had been lavish and quite sincere-in his professions of goodwill; his old enemy ibn Shahin's name was mentioned, and Busrawi spoke of him in the warmest terms; he went off leaving an excellent impression. Immediately after his visit the rumour spread that Busrawi, with his usual cunning, had got in first with the French, and had seized the opportunity to poison their minds against the Shahins. Busrawi indignantly denied this, and declared that he had gone out of his way to recommend his old foe. It was true, but it was so improbable that every one was convinced of the contrary, and each denial was taken as a further admission of guilt. The Shahins, feeling that the pitch had been queered, remained at home awaiting events. The sheikh of the Kitkan sent them a message urging them to call at French headquarters, and that, of course, decided them to stop away. Lieutenant B., on Busrawi's second visit, asked him why the Shahins had not called. He replied that he had urged them to do so, and if they did not come, it was presumably for some good reason of their own; beyond that he would not discuss the matter. The French naturally suspected the Shahins of being deliberately it was too late to remove the bad impression, and resented the influence which, as they imagined, the French had allowed Busrawi to acquire over them. By the time I reached Jerablus the Kitkan sheikh, without doing a thing which was not strictly correct, had succeeded in creating a definite breach between the new Government and his old enemy. When the outbreak occurred, the Barazi tribe were inevitably on the side of the Turks; Busrawi, on the other hand, came in at once to Jerablus and talked the matter over with Colonel C. and myself. He was disarmingly frank. He had, he said, no particular love for the French, and certainly owed them no loyalty; his only motive was to save his own skin and to preserve his tribe. He could quite understand that in the end the French were bound to win, and it was therefore best to be on their side; but in the meantime the Turks were calling on him to rally to the Nationalist cause, his neighbours the Barazi were seeking an occasion against him, and they and the Turks together could crush him in a moment. Were the French prepared to give him efficient support ? His eyes twinkled, for, of course, he knew the answer. C. was not less frauk. He replied that for the moment he could do nothing; if he could not relieve the threatened railway posts, he certainly could not send men out into the blue to defend Busrawi's open villages. Busrawi must temporise, pretending to stand in with the Turks, but in reality doing nothing against the French. When the latter were strong enough to take the field, then he could show his true colours, and his loyalty would be properly rewarded. The sheikh went off promising to do his best. It was, I think, on the last day of January that the Colonel came to me with more serious news, sent in by Busrawi. A large force of Kurds and Arabs, with some Turkish support, was marching against Jerablus, and was already only some thirty miles away. It was a bad look-out for the French, and also for our excavations. I asked him if he were anxious to fight. "Good heavens, no," he replied. "I was sent here to preserve the peace, and there is nothing I should so like to do, especially as we are not really strong enough to hold this place if seriously attacked." But you'll be shot on sight!" I assured him I should take good care about that, though I could not be sure of succeeding in the mission; Guy, if he could borrow a mount, would go with me, and we looked forward to a very pleasant picnic. Colonel C. laughed, and remarking that, after all, General Gouraud had suggested that I should be consulted on matters of local politics, gave the scheme his official blessing. Two days later we passed through the French outposts, Guy on the Colonel's horse, a fine Arab grey, and Hamoudi, who was to act as go-between, on a less showy mount, but far outdoing us in the brilliance of his attire. A few miles out we were met by the Kitkan escort for which I had arranged, headed by Busrawi's son, and together we rode on in the direction of Busrawi's house. Our track took us within à mile or two of Arab Punar, a station on the Baghdad line, and as we came along we heard, quite distinctly, the sound of shots away to the north, and once or twice the thud of a rifle-grenade; the station was being attacked. Suddenly a man galloped up and drew the chief of our escort aside. He listened, shouted an order to the rest, and with the exception of one elderly man they all turned their horses and cantered off in the direction of the firing; the Kitkan were taking part in |