Читать книгу With Lawrence in Arabia онлайн

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An American traveler and director of missions in the Near East happened to visit the camp of these lonely excavators. He gives us a vivid picture of his visit and an indication of how Lawrence received the training which enabled him to gain such an amazing hold over the desert tribes when the Great War overtook him.

“It was in 1913,” says Mr. Luther R. Fowle. “Easter vacation at the American College in Aintab had given us the opportunity to make the three days’ trip by wagon to Curfa, the ancient Edessa. After Curfa, we had visited Haraun, a few miles to the south, whither Abraham migrated from Ur of the Chaldees.

“Our return trip to Aintab was by the road farther to the south, which brought us to the Euphrates River at Jerablus, over which the Germans were building their great railway bridge, an essential link in the Berlin-to-Bagdad dream. On the western bank, a few hundred yards from the bridge, was the site of Carchemish, and there we found the quiet British scholar, who, under the stress of the war, was soon to turn from his digging among the ancient ruins beside the Euphrates to become a shereef of Mecca and leader of a vast Bedouin host in a successful war to throw off the Ottoman yoke.