Passing through a low, marshy district, peopled with solemn-looking storks and croaking frogs, I meet a young sheikh and his personal attendants returning from a morning's outing at their favorite sport of hawking; they carry their falcons about on small perches, fastened by the leg with a tiny chain. I try to induce them to make a flight, but for some reason or other they refuse; an Osmanli Turk would have accommodated me in a minute.

Soon I arrive at another Koordish camp, fording a stream in order to reach their tents, for I have not yet breakfasted, and know full well that no better opportunity of obtaining one will be likely to turn up. Entering the nearest tent, I make no ceremony of calling for refreshments, knowing well enough that a heaping dish of pillau will be forthcoming, and that the hospitable Koords will regard the ordering of it as the most natural thing in the world. The pillau is of rice, mutton, and green herbs, and is brought in a large pewter dish; and, together with sheet bread and a bowl of excellent yaort, is brought on a massive pewter tray, which has possibly belonged to the tribe for centuries. These tents are divided into several compartments; one end is a compartment where the men congregate in the daytime, and the younger men sleep at night, and where guests are received and entertained; the central space is the commissary and female industrial department; the others are female and family sleeping places.

Each compartment is partitioned off with a hanging carpet partition; light portable railing of small, upright willow sticks bound closely together protects the central compartment from a horde of dogs hungrily nosing about the camp, and small "coops" of the same material are usually built inside as a further protection for bowls of milk, yaort, butter, cheese, and cooked food; they also obtain fowls from the villagers, which they keep cooped up in a similar manner, until the hapless prisoners are required to fulfil their destiny in chicken pillau; the capacious covering over all is strongly woven goats'-hair material of a black or smoky brown color. In a wealthy tribe, the tent of their sheikh is often a capacious affair, twenty-five by one hundred feet, containing, among other compartments, stabling and hay-room for the sheikh's horses in winter.

My breakfast is brought in from the culinary department by a young woman of most striking appearance, certainly not less than six feet in height; she is of slender, willowy build, and straight as an arrow; a wealth of auburn hair is surmounted by a small, gay-colored turban; her complexion is fairer than common among Koordish woman, and her features are the queenly features of a Juno; the eyes are brown and lustrous, and, were the expression but of ordinary gentleness, the picture would be perfect; but they are the round, wild-looking orbs of a newly-caged panther- grimalkin eyes, that would, most assuredly, turn green and luminous in the dark. Other women come to take a look at the stranger, gathering around and staring at rne, while I eat, with all their eyes - and such eyes. I never before saw such an array of "wild-animal eyes;" no, not even in the Zoo.

Many of them are magnificent types of womanhood in every other respect, tall, queenly, and symmetrically perfect; but the eyes-oh, those wild, tigress eyes. Travellers have told queer, queer stories about bands of these wild-eyed Koordish women waylaying and capturing them on the roads through Koordistan, and subjecting them to barbarous treatment. I have smiled, and thought them merely "travellers' tales;" but I can see plain enough, this morning, that there is no improbability in the stories, for, from a dozen pairs of female eyes, behold, there gleams not one single ray of tenderness: these women are capable of anything that tigresses are capable of, beyond a doubt.

Almost the first question asked by the men of these camps is whether the English and Muscovs are fighting; they have either heard of the present (summer of 1885) crisis over the Afghan boundary question, or they imagine that the English and Russians maintain a sort of desultory warfare all the time. When I tell them that the Muscov is fenna (bad) they invariably express their approval of the sentiment by eagerly calling each other's attention to my expression. It is singular with what perfect faith and confidence these rude tribesmen accept any statement I choose to make, and how eagerly they seem to dwell on simple statements of facts that are known to every school-boy in Christendom. I entertain them with my map, showing them the position of Stamboul, Mecca, Erzeroum, and towns in their own Koordistan, which they recognize joyfully as I call them by name.

They are profoundly impressed at the " extent of my knowledge," and some of the more deeply impressed stoop down and reverently kiss Stamboul and Mecca, as I point them out. While thus pleasantly engaged, an aged sheikh comes to the tent and straightway begins "kicking up a blooming row" about me. It seems that the others have been guilty of trespassing on the sheikh's prerogative, in entertaining me themselves, instead of conducting me to his own tent. After upbraiding them in unmeasured terms, he angrily orders several of the younger men to make themselves beautifully scarce forthwith. The culprits - some of them abundantly able to throw the old fellow over their shoulders - instinctively obey; but they move off at a snail's pace, with lowering brows, and muttering angry growls that betray fully their untamed, intractable dispositions.

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Adapted from Thomas Stevens, Around the World on a Bicycle