volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

264 We Set Out for Dir.
he was deputed to go with me to Der, and asked me to
send men and camels to his house to fetch his large
wooden bed, bedding, water-pipe, etc. ; he had arranged
to take his servant with him, and he told me that he
expected me to provide a tent for each of them, and to
pay his servant's wages as long as he was at Der. He
was an amiable and courteous Turk of the " old school,"
and was much given to reading and study ;
among his
baggage were many printed Arabic books, and a Kur'an
and Al-Baydhawi's Commentary, both in manuscript.
We intended to go to Der on the 6th, but Nimrud and
several of his friends were particularly anxious to celebrate
a festival on that day, and we put off our start
till the 7th. Whilst wandering about with Clarke in
the bazar on the afternoon of that day, a dog came up
to me and began to show that he was pleased to see
me, and when I looked at him carefully I found him to
be the dog that had lived in my courtyard at Mosul in 1888.
He was larger and very gaunt, and Clarke told me that
he had come to Baghdad with a caravan about a year
and a half before, and that he haunted L5mch's khan,
where the men often fed him. The dog answered joyfully
to the name of "Saba'," which I knew him by at
Mosul, and trotted with us contentedly, and I decided
to take him out with us to Der to be our watch-dog.
On January 7th we crossed the bridge of boats, and
began to get our beasts loaded up on the west bank of
the Tigris, but in spite of all our efforts we did not manage
to start until nine o'clock, and we did not arrive at Khan
az-ZM until 2.30. Very soon after we began to march
the sky clouded over and rain fell in such quantities
that the tracks over the clay soil became covered with
a layer of slippery mud, which made going very difficult.
The camels seemed to lose all control over their legs,
and slid about in all directions. The Delegate turned
back as soon as it began to rain, and said he would join
us a day or two later ; for this I was very thankful.
At Mahmudiyah we rested for half an hour, and the
kindly folk there, knowing better than we did the sort
of weather which was in store for us, begged us to stay