The same was also true with regard to the native Christians, most of whom can read and write and are of a better class than the Mohammedans of the country.

When Turkey threw in her lot with the Germanic powers, the attitude toward the Jews and Christians changed radically; but of this I shall speak later.
It was a hard life we led while in training at Saffed; evening would find us dead tired, and little disposed for anything but rest.

As the tremendous light-play of the Eastern sunsets faded away, we would gather in little groups in the courtyard of our mosque--its minaret towering black against a turquoise sky--and talk fitfully of the little happenings of the day, while the Arabs murmured gutturally around us.
Occasionally, one of them would burst into a quavering, hot-blooded tribal love-song.

It happened that I was fairly well known among these natives through my horse Kochba--of pure Maneghi-Sbeli blood--which I had purchased from some Anazzi Bedouins who were encamped not far from Aleppo: a swift and intelligent animal he was, winner of many races, and in a land where a horse is considerably more valuable than a wife, his ownership cast quite a glamour over me.
[ILLUSTRATION: THE AUTHOR ON HIS HORSE KOCHBA] In the evenings, then, the Arabs would come up to chat.

As they speak seldom of their children, of their women-folk never, the conversation was limited to generalities about the crops and the weather, or to the recitation of never-ending tales of Abou-Zeid, the famous hero of the Beni-Hilal, or of Antar the glorious.