Such feelings are well-nigh universal among all the more reputable chieftains. They would appreciate any strong Government, no matter of what nation or creed. The only folk really content with the present condition of Asiatic Turkey are those who have merited hanging: and we grant that this class would poll strong.
Hearing that we were returning to England within a few months at the latest, the Sheikh volunteered to accompany us--of course with an adequate "tail." He would call on the Archbishop of Canterbury and get him to establish schools in his villages; and then he would go on to see King George at Windsor, with whose aid he made no question he could arrange for the settlement of Kurdistan. Alas! We could hold out no hopes. But the suggestion was made in dead earnest; and we fear that when we did start homewards we were careful not to let the Sheikh know.
Finally he desired to consult us medicinally. He was troubled with an affection of the eyes[89]--in point of fact trachoma--and begged us to give him some medicine which was capable of affording relief. We could do nothing for him at the time; but shortly afterwards we were able to bring up an English doctor from the C.M.S. hospital at Mosul and let the Sheikh have the benefit of his professional skill.
It then transpired that in the interval he had consulted a native practitioner; a wandering Yezidi medicine-man who had recently drifted to Barzan. The Yezidi had diagnosed the watering of the eyes as due to an excess of moisture behind the eye-balls, and had proposed running a red-hot skewer through the Sheikh's head from temple to temple, in order to dry up the "superfluous moisture" at the fountain head! This horrifying suggestion was both made and received quite seriously. But the Sheikh, very reasonably, had elected to consult the English doctor first. We did not feel much surprised at his Holiness's reluctance to submit to this treatment: but we did feel some admiration for the heroic assurance of the Yezidi doctor in proposing it. Being pierced through the temples with a red-hot skewer would not be a pleasant way of dying; but it would be luxury compared with the sort of devices which the Sheikh's followers might be expected to practise on the operator, by way of obtaining consolation for the patient's untimely decease.