'Turkish Arabia: Being an Account of an Official Tour in Babylonia, Assyria, and Mesopotamia, 1886-87' [‎22r] (43/72)

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I ^ et " ee ( n m0d k erate h ' ll 1 s ea,Ied b )' g"ide Suf Slf, with the snow-capped Zawzln in the
ne ar dl stance 7 about midday a vast steppe was entered. At first the only living things seen
to wereflocks ofbustard. or ^^>, the florican of India. These were feeding by fifties,
iin 7 f 1 great securit y' A man might dismount and walk them up, without their
being in a hurry to rise. But the moment a gun was handled, the same instinct the rooks
)n seemed to them warning. Arabs never even think of firing at anything moving.
^ They know it would be no use, and only a waste of powder and lead. Sportsmen trust
^ to hawks while they who think only of the pot or market carry a gun with a wooden rest
e fixed to it. This having been brought to bear on an unconscious gazelle or bustard, hare
^ 0r par " ge, W r ^ 1 aS much deIlb eration as if it were a camera or theodolite, is let off with
ie ^ ^ W f rds midda y the pastoral wealth of the Mustav tribe began to show
a. ' Se ^ in J f ° r " 1 f enormous fl ocks of sheep and Angora goats. Nothing could surpass
it. "J 6 la r tter ' whlch are ' however, too well known in Europe to require descrip-
is l0 u' i, ature marked at once the purity and " quality" of their race, and their
si ky hair at least eight inches long, was pearly bright after the morning mists* The
^ largest flocks required but two or three shepherds. These they followed, eastern fashion •
and there being very little "driving/' the duty of the sheep-dogs was chiefly watch and
• war . The Kurdi, like the Albanian ,shepherd is famed for his breed of dogs, getting very
■ Z ar to ^ ns ' resemblin g Great St. Bernards of the rough variety in the wilder parts.
S ekh Mustav s strain, if that which is left mostly to chance and nature can be called a
strain at all, though not so imposing as that of the Di^rbakr mountains, is a very superior
one ; and would need to be so where the wolves are so fierce and numerous The females
were commoner looking than the males. Some of the latter were regular little lions; slate
black, or rufous, pied with white, and having the tail turned over. To favour them in'
their combats with wolves, their ears are cut off when they are puppies, not " cropped," as
' with us, but made a clean sweep of altogether. The ears are very good naturally, huno-
terrier, rather than hound,fashion, and not at all those of mongrels. But for these faith
ful animals, sheep farming would scarcely be possible in Mesopotamia. Once a wolf has
seized his victim, and run the gauntlet of the shepherds^ blunderbusses, it is doubtful if the
dogs have either the speed or courage to make him drop it. Their part rather is, by
keeping watch at night, to warn the robber of the fold away, or give notice that he is
near. A lucky shot from a Martini-Henry carbine having stopped, at what these simple
people thought a miraculous distance, a wolf that had picked up an Angora lamb, and was
galloping like a race-horse, the applications put in during the next twenty-four hours for
that carbine were rather embarrassing. If it had been given, the Embassy at Constanti
nople would perhaps, about three months afterwards, have received a complaint from the
Babu'l aali, or "Sublime Porte," that the Baghdad Consul-General had visited the barbarous
population of Northern Mesopotamia, and distributed among it arms of precision ! The
shepherds all said the Shekh and his people were on a piece of ground called Hamukar.
After holding on and on till past dark, and covering between forty and fifty miles, suddenly
their tents appeared, lighted up by fires of blazing thorn, and packed closely together, at
least a hundred roofs, large and small, all of black blanket, with it is hard to say how
many men, women, and children stowed away in them. Mustav came frankly out to do
the honours—a great burly man, in an Arab cloak, with the florid Tatar face, and rounded
beard—the ow ner of more sheep than he can count. The public tent, as big as a market,
which it really was, and filled already with all sorts of people, soon became fuller still, as
the news spread that a stranger of a kind that had never been seen before had arrived.
Kochar, unlike Bedouin, manners do not permit women to appear too freely in public; but
they sent out their little sons instead to scout. Having spent some years in prison at
Mosul the Shekh spoke Arabic without being able to read or write. As to this he was
sarcastic. " A man," he said, "rubs a pointed reed on a bit of paper, and in a moment
produces something he is sorry for all his life." One Mulla keeps their accounts and
conducts their correspondence. The place of honour was in the middle of the tent,
beside a roasting fire. All round reclined on Kurdi carpets members of the Shekh's
family, intermixed with wool-merchants and butchers come hundreds of miles to buy. In
the darker corners some slept, and others jsaid their prayers, with a fine unconsciousness
of company. Food was soon served, not, as among Bedouin, in one vast trencher, but in
a number of smaller ones. Another sign this was not an Arab tent was the appearance
of a roasted chicken. Of course there were no forks. When the feast was ended the
* The local name for these Angoras is Mir-Yiz, explained in Arabic dictionaries as the down beneath or amid
the hair of a goat. A small flock of them was once obtained from Mosul, for export to the Cape of Good Hope ;
but the change from the chalky soils of Upper Mesopotamia to the mere alluvium of Babylonia killed most of
them. On some of the plateaux of the Mysore country, or the Nizam's Deccan, perhaps they might do better.
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