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 "THE UNCROWNED KING OF ARABIA." and until the day I met him in the palace of the Governor of Jerusalem I had been unable to picture him as a real person. Cairo, Jerusalem, Damascus, Bagdad, in fact all the cities of the Near East, are so full of colour and romance that the mere mention of them. is sufficient to stimulate the imagination of matter-of-fact Westerners, who are suddenly spirited away on the magic carpet of memory to scenes familiar through the fairy story-books of chid- A BEDOUIN SHEIKH READY TO JOIN COLONEL LAWRENCE ON ONE OF HIS SPECTACULAR RAIDS. THE LIFE OF A THOROUGHBRED ARABIAN HORSE IS VALUED MORE HIGHLY BY THE BEDOUINS THAN THE LIFE OF THE AVERAGE MAN. THE ARAB FEEDS HIS HORSE ON CAMEL'S MILK AND GOAT'S MEAT COOKED TO SHREDS. hood. So I had come to the conclusion that Lawrence was the product only of Western imagination overheated by exuberant con- tact with the East. But the myth turned out to be very much of a reality. WHAT THE MAN HIMSELF IS LIKE. The five-foot-three Englishman standing before me, in his brown camel's gown, over which hung his kuffieh or head-dress of heavy white brocaded silk, covered with gold embroidery, underneath a snow-white robe tied with a gold-embroidered belt in which he carried the curved sword of a prince of Mecca, all set off regally by the agal, the head-band of heavy cords wrapped with silver and gold threads that held the kuffieh in place-was the real ruler of Arabia. He was the commander-in-chief of an army of more than two hundred thousand Bedouins mounted on racing camels. and fleet Arabian horses. He was the terror of the Turks. Destiny had never played a stranger prank than when it selected as the man to play the major role in the liberation of Arabia an Oxford graduate whose life ambition was to dig in the ruins of antiquity and uncover and study long-forgotten cities. I. was greatly impressed with Lawrence from the first. Realizing that he was a man destined to occupy a prominent position in history, and not knowing at that time that Digitized by Google 43 it would be my good fortune to join him later in Arabia as the only person given the opportunity of recording his almost un- believable achievements, I spent a good deal of time with him during the following days in Jerusalem before he returned to his Arabian army. When Lawrence was in the company of officers who were more or less strangers to him, he usually sat in a corner, listening intently to everything that was being said, but contributing nothing to the conversation himself. After we became better acquainted, through his discovery that archæology held a fascination for me also, he would invariably, when we were alone, get up from his chair and squat on the floor Bedouin fashion. He had lived so long in the desert that it was more natural for him to act like an Arab nomad than a European. I made many unsuccessful attempts to induce him to tell something of his life, but he always adroitly changed the subject. Even concerning his connection with the Arabian army, he would say nothing except to give the credit for everything that happened in the desert campaigns to the Arab leaders. The only subjects on which I could persuade him to talk in other than monosyllables were archæology, comparative religion, Greek literature, and Near Eastern politics. His home is in Oxford, and his parents belong to the higher middle-class. His Original from CORNELL UNIVERSITY