The next day we ride over a bleak, stony country, exposed to fierce lashes of wind and rain. Smooth faces of rock lie across the scarcely perceptible path, less slippery for our flat-shod horses than the mud in which they are embedded. We can see nothing ahead but low, rounded hillocks covered with broken stone. Suddenly yellow dogs spring from under our very feet and tall figures emerge out of the bowels of the earth. We have stumbled into the middle of a Kurdish village. The huts are hollowed out of the earth and roofed over with the stones which cover the whole ground.
The chief of the village welcomes us at the door of his hut, and we descend the dark passage, blinded by the smoke of the dried camel-dung fire. We sit on strips of felt, thankful to be out of the wind and the rain, and stretch our frozen hands and feet in the direction of the thickest fumes.
The tears run down our cheeks from the smarting of our eyes, but we hardly notice it, for it is heaven to be out of the bluster outside. Slowly our eyes get more accustomed to the darkness and the fumes, and we find the hut is full of arms and legs and motionless bodies, and gleaming eyes fixed on our eyes. But they are friendly and curious, and we feel at home.
Then we crawl out to where Arten has prepared hot Maggi soup in the tent. It has been impossible to pitch ours, but they have tied the men's little tent on to the big stones forming the wall of our house, and the roof of another; we can see smoke mysteriously crawling out of the crevices of the ground at our feet. A sudden furious gust shakes the whole tent, and a Zaptieh's rifle, leant against the side, tumbles across and upsets the steaming soup. We pick our belongings ruefully out of the little trickling streams of thick liquid, and make a meagre meal by soaking bits of native bread in what remains. Then we get to bed as best we can, and all night long the wind howls and the tent flaps, and dogs sniff stealthily on the other side of the canvas.
A hard, broad, high-road runs ostentatiously some miles out of Urfa on the side which we were approaching. From the town it looks as if it were going on like that for ever. We stumbled suddenly out of our stony track on to it—where it ends abruptly in the middle of nowhere. The native does not walk on it much; he prefers the soft places at the margin, where the caravans, also shunning it, still make wobbly tracks. At one place, where it passes through a deep gully, the bank has been made up to make a more level run; but even here, as we rode over it, we noticed an old man and a boy driving a couple of mules, slowly crawling up the narrow path down below, which marked the line of the original road.
We could see Urfa some little way ahead of us, and wondered whether the missionaries would have heard of our arrival through their friends at Aintab. For the post travelled quicker than we did; it had passed us days ago, borne at a gallop by two mounted men.
"If ever we wanted cleaning up," I said, "it is at this moment; what with the rain and the mud and Maggi soup and camel-dung fumes, we are almost unfit to be seen even by a missionary."
The words were hardly out of my mouth when a party of some twenty mounted soldiers appeared in the distance. As they got nearer they fired off a volley into the air and ranged up in a line down the road. The Captain rode up and saluted us. There was no mistaking it. We were Royalties once more.
The Captain explained that the Governor was sending his carriage for their Royal Highnesses to make their entry into the town, and that he was expecting to receive them at the Konak. The carriage appeared up the road, a smart landau with red cushions, drawn by two splendid Arab horses, and followed by outriders in uniform.