They explained that the Persian government, being very weak, made use of them to terrorize whatever section of the country seemed rebellious--surely a sad way to govern a land! There were not very many of the Khans.

They are used to raiding in parties of thirty to fifty, or perhaps a hundred.

I think there were not many more of them than of the German party and us combined; and at that the Bakhtiari Khans were all divided into independent troops.

So that the danger was not so serious as it seemed.

But guerrilla warfare is very trying to the nerves, and if we had not had Ranjoor Singh to lead us we should have failed in the end; for we were fighting in a strange land, with no base to fall back on and nothing to do but press forward.
The Kurds, too, who escorted the Germans, began to grow sick of it.
Little parties of them began to pass us on their way home, giving us a wide berth, but passing close enough, nevertheless, to get some sort of protection from our proximity, and the numbers of those parties grew and grew until we laughed at the thought of what anxiety the Germans must be suffering.