Wed Ap. 14. Tigris bank, opposite the Median Wall - that's as near as I can get for a date[?]. Dearest Mother. It's positively absurd that I shd not have written to you for a week. The fact is I've been so busy I have not known where to turn. I posted a long letter to you in Baghdad where I stayed till Monday 12. I hoped to have had an answer from you to my telegram - don't you remember it was always our habit that when I telegraphed to you, you should answer to the same place? I was rather unfortunate too in the matter of letters, for at least 2 posts were held up at Amara ['Amarah, Al] by the Arabs - you have doubtless read all about it in the papers - with the result that the last letter I have had from you is dated Feb 22. For the same reason I did not see Sir W. Willcocks which was a great disappointment, but I could not wait either for him or for the letters - Heaven alone knows when they will arrive. I am very sorry to hear of Marie's illness. Will you please send her messages from me next time someone goes to see her and tell her I hope she will recover quickly, poor little thing. The rest of your letters I think I answered. The Ramsays were kindness itself. She is however a dull dog, a very stiff, narrow and formal Englishwoman, dreadfully afraid of giving herself away or of doing anything not entirely consistent with the duty and dignity of the wife and daughter of Indian officials. With him I ended by making great friends. I say ended advisedly for when I arrived he looked upon me with the extreme of suspicion. What he expected I was going to do or say, I don't know, but he was most carefully upon his guard, weighed every word when he answered a question of mine and trembled whenever I announced I was going to see anyone. I'm proud to say I overcame these doubts - it was a great conquest - and he ended by putting all his secret papers into my hands and by discussing with me everything that was going on as if I were a colleague. The result is that I have written a very serious letter to the Times about irrigation and railways. I don't know whether Domnul will see fit to print it, but I very much hope he will, for I feel convinced that this business is one of the few real chances this country has. I'm going to write a separate letter to Father about it for I want him to lend a hand if he can. Yes, I know I'm becoming dreadfully Turkish! The fact is one ends by feeling so much bound up with this country that one thinks all the time of what can be done to help it. And much can be done if we set about it the right way. That I don't doubt. We are all right so far, thanks to Sir Edward. Well now as to Baghdad: I had a fine time! The Ramsays concluded that it was best to let me go my own way, so they gave me a very intelligent kavass and I used to sally forth every day in search of adventure - like Harun er Rashid, only my adventures were by daylight. There is very little of the old Baghdad to be seen, but that little I saw exhaustively. And incidentally I saw people. My kavass, Amin, soon got the hang of the thing and whenever we came to the house of a distinguished man, he would march in and inform the servants that a famous beg was at the door and he supposed their master would wish to welcome her. The first of these was a holy man called the Nakib. I really felt rather anxious; our political relations with him are so very delicate (he has a quantity of followers in Afghanistan) and he is so particularly holy. However before I knew where I was, Amin had ushered me into the courtyard and there was the Nakib strolling about. He received me with effusion, took me upstairs and talked to me without stopping for an hour and a half - he's a great talker is the Nakib! He began by instructing me as to the history of Chaldaea from the flood up to the present day, and when we got to that point (after about half an hour) he branched off into modern politics and gave me his views equally exhaustively. They were remarkably interesting, not so much because he told me things I didn't know, but because he told them to me from the point of view of a great leader of Islam. He talked a long time about our rule in Egypt and about Lord Cromer. He and his like are furious with Lord C. for his chapter about the future of Islam; they won't forgive him for saying that Islam has no future, and their anger burns all the more brightly because the Lord's statements are so difficult to disprove. He ended by inviting me to pay him a visit that afternoon in his house on the river next to the Consulate, to which I replied gaily that I wd bring Col. and Mrs Ramsay with me. When I related this episode at lunch, Mrs Ramsay made a dog's face and said she did not go into Mohammadan society (sic!) but Col. Ramsay, with whom I was beginning to get onto terms, laughed long and said I had walked in - where I shouldn't! For the fact was he was on cool terms with the Nakib owing to the latter's having built a balcony that overlooked the Ramsay's garden. However both he and Mrs Ramsay came with me in the afternoon and the Nakib was as pleased as Punch and the quarrel is at an end. Next morning with whom do you think I breakfasted? with Thora! Mrs Hall, I should say. There she was, just the same as ever only a little older and paler, and she and the good old Hall couldn't do enough for me. I do respect her, for she does not have the slightest hesitation about saying she was a maid; she was perfectly simple and natural and exceedingly kind and helpful to me. I led her a fine dance that morning. She came with me shopping in the bazaars - I wanted various odds and ends such as nailbrushes - and then I took her into all sorts of official places where I wanted to photograph remains of old Baghdad. Finally we landed up at the arsenal where there are a few rooms that belonged to the palace of the Khalif, and there I had all the military authorities out one by one and asked for permission to go in. Finally they sent me to the Commander in Chief, a delightful old rogue of a Turk, and he said firstly there was really nothing, and secondly that what there was was filled with military stores, and thirdly there was nothing at all, o that I saw he didn't intend me to go in and after sherbet and conversation I took my leave. Not however before he had shown me a pair of Mesopotamian lions which he keeps on his roof, the short maned lion of the Assyrian reliefs - I was thrilled to see them. I spent an afternoon in Sir W. Willcock's house and his brother and Mr Watts (you remember I met him at Khethar [Ukhaydir]) showed me a number of the new maps and surveys and gave me a great deal of interesting information about the irrigation schemes. The brother is an old dear, but I wished Sir W. had been there - and I do most devoutly wish he were safe out of Amara. It wd be a catastrophe if anything happened to him. The Ramsays kindly invited to dinner another man I wanted to see, a German called Richarz. He founded the German consulate in Baghdad and now lives on and sees that his work is good and entertains all travellers. He's a great friend of the Rosens. He asked us to dinner one night and we met all the leading people of Baghdad - Lynch's people and so forth. Among others an amusing little lady called Mrs Langridge who told quantities of tales about the habits and customs of travellers and especially about Vi Buxton. She has left an indelible record; it's almost incredible that any civilized being should behave so preposterously, but people seem to undergo a sea change when they reach remote parts of the world. I do pray they have not reason to tell that kind of story of me and I can't tell you how desperately civil the fear of it makes me! George is one of the few travellers who was universally liked; no one has anything but good to say of him. By the way, I read Miss Jebb's book in Baghdad and I read it with great pleasure. It has the breath of travel in it and there are not many books about which one can say that. I laughed aloud over it more than once and more than once I recognised the true spirit of enjoyment and shook hands with her in spirit. I would however gladly cut out some pages; her reflections are often singularly jejune and when she wishes to write like the Old Testament it's a lamentable failure. The Old Testament is not easy to copy, but why try? There is scarcely a page without some quite ludicrous error. For example it's a little discouraging to find the Residency at Baghdad, the biggest and most important Consulate General in Asia, described as H.M.'s British Vice Consulate - H.M.'s British Vice Consulate! as if he kept several sorts! You should see the Residency! We are swells there. They have 12 cawasses and 30 sepoys and Heaven knows how many Indian servants. I should perhaps say that Heaven and I know, for I had to tip them all when I left. They appeared smiling one by one and hoped that God would bring me safely to my journey's end, and what other reply could I make? I drew the line at the soldiers; I really couldn't run to 30 sepoys. And besides they only presented arms and said nothing. The Ramsays have planted the most charming garden that I have seen in Asia; they are both very clever with flowers. It was one blaze of roses when I was with them. The garden was a great link between us. Of an evening we used all three to walk up and down the broad walk along the river and talk. H.M.'s British Vice Consul keeps his gunboat moored a few yards out into the stream and at sunset the bugle blows and the flags come down on the Residency and the gunboat. There was besides a motor boat which was lent to me whenever I wanted to take the air on the river. Now Baghdad from the river is a really fine city. The great houses and gardens come right down to the water's edge and the bridge of boats stretches across exactly the same place where it was when Xenophen saw it - so I'm told. On Monday morning when I left, the good Col. Ramsay mounted and rode with me for an hour and a half. There was a strongish wind and we rode through clouds of dust and took an affectionate farewell of one another in a dust storm. When he left, I called up my servants and heard all their tales. They had enjoyed Baghdad just as much as I had. Fattuh is well known there and they had been asked out to dinner every night. These entertainments are conducted on Mr Jorrock's principle: where they dines they sleeps. But they don't have breakfast apparently; they get up about 4 AM and come home. The wind rose into a hurricane - fortunately it was behind us - the whole world was in a thick fog of dust and it began to rain. We were riding along the Sidd, the high embankment of the Tigris and I thought at every turn we should be blown off it. One of the baggage horses was blown over, but fortunately on level ground. I've never been out riding in such a wind. At 2 in the afternoon we came to a Khan standing in a desolate wilderness. This was our stage for the day. There was no possiblity of pitching tents; no tent could have stood half an hour in that wind even if we could have got it up; and in the Khan there were no rooms, only stables. Fattuh cast an eagle eye round and spyed [sic] - the barracks! or rather perhaps I should call it the guard house. Instantly we knocked up the soldiers who were all asleep, found that there was a nice empty mud room (the barracks consist of two rooms) and in a moment Fattuh had swept it out and put all my camp furniture into it. It was luxurious; I sat inside and laughed derision at the wind and rain. The result of this storm has been a blessed drop in the temperature. I can't tell you what a relief it is. The week we rode into Baghdad we had a temp. of 95¯ in the shade at 4 o'clock of an afternoon. Added to this there was every day a scorching little wind, as hot as fire, that burnt you to a cinder. It felt like the breath of a furnace and you shrivelled up in it. I never knew before what thirst was. Since Monday the thermometre [sic] has dropped an average of 10¯ and the air is cool and fresh after the rain. We are going north and with luck I hope we may get up to the hills before the Mesopotamian summer sets in for good. These last two days I have been riding along an old dry channel of the Tigris and examining the pottery on the innumerable mounds that mark the sites of towns. It's mostly Arab but some is earlier, Parthian I think, and I've carried off bits of it to show the Germans at Shergat [Sharqat]. It's been a very pleasant and interesting ride. Last night we camped in a palm garden in a village belonging to the Sultan. All this bit of country is Saniyyeh, the personal property of the Sultan; he grabbed it 10 years ago. It's quite exquisitely cultivated; the little villages are all spick and span and the people look as prosperous as you please. Certainly he's a good landlord. We have just ferried across the Tigris and are camped on the W. bank. I felt rather sniffy about the Tigris at first, but I'm beginning to have rather an affection for it. It's a splendid river and quite as big as the Euphrates, and today it has given me the most delightful camp. Now I must see what Xenophon says about it; I'm travelling along the line of retreat of the Ten Thousand.

Thursday Ap 15. [15 April 1909] Samarra. I had a short ride and a great deal of work before I reached this place. We measured a whole town on the way; fortunately only the outer walls were standing but it took us 3 hours. Now Samarra is the most important place in the world for early Mohammadan buildings. Two people have worked here, a Frenchman and a German. The good old Frenchman (he's a general with a taste for archaeology) published a short paper after a still shorter visit and gave some very interesting information. The plans were not so good because he confessed he had lost his notes before drawing them out - rather an innocent admission! The German published a monograph with a great flourish of trumpets and was particularly pleased because he said his labours proved Strzygowski to be all wrong. I confidently expected to find all the things he had done could not be improved on; I have only seen one of them as yet (one of the originals) and Herzfeld's plan, except as to the general outlines, is the creature of his fancy. I shall therefore have to do this one over again and I rather fear that the same will apply to the rest of his work. He's an architect. How an architect could spend an hour in that mosque and not see the extraordinarily interesting details of construction which escaped his notice, I can't imagine. Sometimes when I have occasion to go closely over the work of professional archaeologists, I think I'm something of an archaeologist myself - but of course that's going too far! At any rate one can always have enough respect for the things one is studying to reproduce them as they really are. And that's half the battle. I shall send this letter from here. I shall certainly have to spend 2 days here. We've got a most delightful camping ground high up over the widening Tigris. The floods are coming down and the river grows daily. Ever your affectionate daughter Gertrude