Buried Fortune in Garden.

Levin Daily Chronicle, 18 October 1917, Page 4

Buried Fortune in Garden.

SAVED FROM THE TURKS.

__ (From a Correspondent.) LONDON, Juno 21,

Like a new Arabian Night's tale sounds one that is told by H. J. Montgomery, a British man of affairs, who has just returned from Basra, the town on the Persian Gulf that is the reputed birthplace of Sinbad the Sailor. While there, he met a fellow Briton, a merchant well-known in the East, who had just returned from Bagdad, after some of the most surprising adventures that ever befell a trader.

This merchant, whose name I had to promise not to mention, has been carrying on business in the City of Haroun al Raschid for many years, and is one of the biggest men of his own line there. For some time after war broke out between England and Turkey he and his fellow-countrymen there were practically unmolested, but their position grew steadily more precarious. Our merchant, whose premises are located some miles outside Bagdad, began settling up his affairs as far as possible, and deposited a considerable amount of his available cash assets with a firm of American bankers. i At the last moment .however, when his arrest by the TurKs was a matter of hours, he found himself with securi- I ties to the amount of £25,000, which he had no means of getting to any place where they would be safe. So he buried them in his garden. Not long after doing so he was made a prisoner. With half a dozen other British subjects, after confinement in a vile local gaol, he was marched off to a prison camp situated in the desert several days' journey away. Half-way there, however, the Turks suddenly got tired of looking after their prisoners. "You can go," said the officer in charge of the party. "We don't intend to kill you. It isn't necessary Heat and thirst in the desert will do that in a few days." And then he told them to "beat it," or whatever is the Islamic equivalent. The merchant and his companions had no inclination for dying in the desert. They knew that they had a slim chance of dodging such a finish, but they determined to make a stubborn attempt to cross the hundred of miles of desert waste and to reach Syria, and finally Egypt. And they did it! They lived on dates and on various form's of desert vegetation, and one day, after incredible hardships, they staggered into Beyrout and into the presence of the amazed American Consul there. He looked after them, and finally, owing to his good offices, they succeeded in reaching Port Said. From there our merchant sailed for England. After the British Army took Bagdad, nearly two years later, he started off again for the East. Ho landed at Basra, and eventually got back to Bagdad. He had little hope of finding his £25,000 worth of securities, but when he dug again in his garden, ho found them exactly as he had left them. Now that there seems little chance that the Turks will ever possess Bagdad again, he is planning to re-establish his business in the City of Caliphs. This extraordinary exploit, with its happy ending, recalls the equally hazardous and arduous journey undertaken by a prosperous Russian Jew who was captured in Poland when the Germans over-ran that miserable country. For some reason the Germans decided not to hold the man, who begged to be allowed to return to his home in Russia, whero his family and his considerable fortune were waiting

for him. The Germans refused to let the Russian through their linos in that direction, but gave him full permission to travel westward. This he did. He had just enough money to take him southward, first through the Balkans, then west and north to England. There some friends advanced him enough money to continue his journey across the Atlantic. With funds borrowed in New York he took a transcontinental trip, but was in so much of a hurry that he never even saw tho scenery. From San Francisco ho took passage across the Pacific, J'® Vladivostock, and thence travelled by the Trans-Siberian railway into Russia, and so home. ■ He had then completed the circuit o± the globe, with the exception of a negligible few miles, and luck still was with him, for he found his family well and his fortune undisturbed.