Lord Kitchener himself had good reason to remember it.

As a young lieutenant of twenty-three, in the Royal Engineering Corps, he was nearly killed there by a band of fanatical Arabs while surveying for the Palestine Exploration Fund.

Kitchener had a narrow escape of it (one of his fellow officers was shot dead close by him), but he went calmly ahead and completed his maps, splendid large-scale affairs which have never since been equaled--and which are now in use by the Turkish and German armies! However, though Saffed combines most of the unpleasant characteristics of Palestine native towns, we welcomed the sight of it, for we were used up by the march.

An old deserted mosque was given us for barracks; there, on the bare stone floor, in close-packed promiscuity, too tired to react to filth and vermin, we spent our first night as soldiers of the Sultan, while the milky moonlight streamed in through every chink and aperture, and bats flitted round the vaulting above the snoring carcasses of the recruits.
Next morning we were routed out at five.

The black depths of the well in the center of the mosque courtyard provided doubtful water for washing, bathing, and drinking; then came breakfast,--our first government meal,--consisting, simply enough, of boiled rice, which was ladled out into tin wash-basins holding rations for ten men.