Enemy on the Euphrates Read Online Free Page A

compiled from a report made to the Imperial Ottoman Government by an Engineer dispatched to the above mentioned Vilayets in 1901. The large map shows the distribution of the springs and deposits, the red Roman Numerals corresponding with the numbers scheduled in the following order. Where obtainable a large scale sketch has been appended to the verbal description showing the nature of the locality described. 2
    Maxwell ploughed on,
    No. I, Bohtan. 30 Kilometres up the Bohtan river … No. II Sairt … No. III Zakho … No. VI Baba Gurgur … The Petroleum Springs of Baba Gurgur are among the richest and most workable in the Vilayet of Mosul. They are situated in the vicinity of Kirkuk, being about 6 miles from the town at the foot of the Shuan Hills. They cover an area of about half a hectare and owing to the great heat are constantly burning, the petroleum in this zone seems limited to an area of 25 hectares, but still the deposits [are] of great promise. 3
    There followed descriptions of a further nine petroleum deposits, at the end of which the author had made the suggestion that they ‘could be worked by means of pipelines leading from the springs to the sea’.
    However, in a rather complacent letter to the ambassador of 25 October also classified ‘SECRET’, Maxwell merely commented thatprinting the report with or without the maps … ‘was hardly worthwhile, although it might be shown to D’Arcy if he would call to see it’. (William Knox D’Arcy’s company was currently exploring for oil in southern Persia.) Finally, the Foreign Office official added that Sykes ‘might be thanked for the trouble he has taken’. 4
    In Istanbul Sir Nicholas must have read the reply with some irritation. This was not the first occasion on which the embassy had informed the Foreign Office about the existence of potentially rich oil deposits in northern Iraq. A year earlier, with rumours circulating that the sultan had recently awarded an oil concession to the German company planning to build the railway to Baghdad, he had sent the foreign secretary, the Marques of Lansdowne, a map of the oil-bearing districts obtained by the embassy secretary, also from German sources.
    On that occasion the foreign secretary had instructed O’Conor to pass the map on to the representative of the British D’Arcy Group who were showing interest in obtaining their own oil concession in Iraq. O’Conor had suggested to D’Arcy’s agent that the embassy might intervene with the sultan’s ministers using its diplomatic influence to expedite a favourable response. But D’Arcy’s representative had declined the offer, replying that diplomatic intervention might actually complicate his current negotiations with those same ministers. It had been a serious miscalculation: negotiations had subsequently broken down. And now the Foreign Office seemed to be losing interest in the matter altogether in spite of the fact that Sykes’s report had provided precise details of the different oil deposits which confirmed the veracity of that original map O’Conor had sent to London. There was no doubt about it: in the matter of oil concessions the Germans were stealing a march on Britain.
    Sykes must also have been frustrated by the Foreign Office’s rebuff to his intelligence-gathering efforts. But then, he knew there were those in Whitehall who regarded him as just an amateur, a ‘gentleman’ interloper among seasoned professionals. Indeed, in reality, his claim to expertise on matters pertaining to ‘the East’ was somewhat flimsy. Although Sykes had usually travelled on horseback on the eastern journeys of hisyouth, these had not been dangerous adventures of discovery like those of the great Victorian explorers of the Middle East, men like Sir Richard Burton, Charles Doughty or William Palgrave. He had usually been accompanied by a retinue of Turkish soldiery, guides and servants and was offered considerable hospitality at the various staging posts