Mount Carmel. Sunday 30. Dearest Father. I have really got the best parents in the world and I become the more conscious of it when I'm abroad for you both of you write me such delightful letters. This evening I received 2 from Mother and 2 from you, one of a most excellent length and I must answer it at once to show you how grateful I am. I am much shocked about Uncle Tom and will write to Auntie Kate by the next mail. I long for Mother's telegram which I hope to get on Tuesday. Hugo tells me of the birth of Margaret's daughter of which I am delighted to hear. How sad about Mme Wiel, dear little woman! I saw Col. Wilson's death in the papers and was very sorry about it. I have not got the railway dividend voucher for this year yet. It is probably at the Bank. They usually send me the vouchers when I send my pass book to be made up. Now my pass book is in my sitting room at Red Barns. I gave you the voucher for last year with the four B.B. vouchers. Your R'ton [Rounton] news sounds far from satisfactory - what an inextricable muddle they are in! I see no way out of it. You shee [sic], some daughters like living with their fathers! but mind, if ever you think I'm unbearable, just say it straight out and mention what you can't abide and I'll do my best to mend it. Whatever happens we'll never get into that impasse. Mind Father, you speak out and say how you like your daughters to be. R'ton is really such a solemn warning and I have dreadful nightmares sometimes that I may get more and more like my Aunt - I am very like her in many ways. But fortunately you are singularly unlike your father! Still I don't want all the unlikeness to be on your side! Well:- to return to the East. I'm having a comic time, but most amusing. I had a delightful afternoon by myself on Friday and rode out from 1 to 6 on the worst horse in the world. I rode and rode all along the top of Carmel and though the prophet declares that if you were to flee there the Almighty wd certainly find you, I think myself that he is mistaken. I can't find anything, not even a village, of which I am told there are some. But I rode over ridge after ridge of rolling hill, and round the top of valley after valley, rocky slopes covered with wild flowers running steeply down into waterless hollows and the whole mountain was heavy with the scent of gorse and the aromatic herbs that my horse crushed through from time to time to avoid an unusually slippery bit of rock in the path. The whole afternoon I saw only 2 houses and 4 people, shepherds with flocks of lop eared goats - ridiculous ears they have, 10 inches long I shd say, an absurd waste of skin. From the top of every ridge I had the opportunity of getting my direction again, for I looked out over the admirable bay of Acre ['Akko] to the NE and the stretch of coast with the Crusader castle of Athlit ['Atlit] sticking out into the sea to the SW. Sometimes I walked and drove my horse in front of me, and by this means I found out that he really cd gallop, for he galloped away from me and I had such a work to catch him (I quote Miss Skinner passim) that I concluded not to let him go loose any more. I gathered a bunch of scarlet tulips, the lovely little tulip with the curling green leaf; it is the same as the one of which Hafez says that, thus[?] doubting the promises of Fate, it carries always a wine cup through the wilderness. Towards sunset Mount Carmel is a vision of beauty. Every curve of the rounded slopes is touched by the level light, the gorse shines yellower and smells sweeter and across fold after fold of exquisite bare hill you turn and see the intolerable splendour of the sun across the sea. At dinner I had company. My little American friend, Nöldecke's pupil, turned up with 3 from the American College at Beyrout [Beyrouth (Beirut)], nice and cheerful though missionaries and we had a pleasant dinner. Oh I had had company at lunch too - the daughter of the Armenian engineer of the Vilayet with the daughter of the Turkish Pasha of Haifa and the Pasha's secretary, a pleasant enough Syrian, who told me he wd be delighted to be of service to me in any way. It's as well to be in with the authorities. The Engineers's daughter was charming - they are bothering on about the proposed railway from here to Damascus [Dimashq (Esh Sham, Damas)] for which we hold the concession wh. the Turks want to take back. Hence a crisis. Haifa is to be the town of the future, I must tell you. On Saturday I rode down for an Arabic lesson and incidentally transacted much business with Mr Monaghan re horses, the upshot being that I came back on a better one. I came back by a new way, a broad road that leads to destruction, for it is only half finished and suddenly you find yourself clambering over masses of dislodged rock and heaps of stones and a network of little trolley lines. Finally I got to the famous Carmelite monastery which stands on the extreme point of the mountain with the sea Bellow it. But the building is modern and uninteresting. I spent a most peaceful afternoon on my balcony with Arabic and Persian. Mr Monaghan came up at dinner time. We dined tête à tête - he is not a dangerous character! - and talked a little after, and then I retired to my books. And this morning we started off at 9, a most exquisite day and I on a capital horse belonging to an absent missionary doctor which Mr M. had procured for me, and rode to Athlit - across a spur of Carmel and down by an execrable path, and along the foot of the hills through olive gardens to a village inhabited exclusively by robbers - I am told - and over the soft plain, good for galoping [sic], to the road by the sea. This road runs inside a ridge of limestone rock which divides the sea from the plain, a most curious formation like a natural fortification, broken in here and there by an arm of salt water. One of these breaks is famous in Crusader history - Les Detroits they called it, the Arabs call it Destrey still - and they built a fort over it of wh I saw the ruins. But the road into Athlit passes through an artificial cutting, wide enough for a chariot to go through and in the rock are funeral niches, who knows how old, for the promontary was a Phoenician stronghold and the Tyrian purple was loaded in the port. This rock cut road opens onto an expanse of marsh, gleaming pools fringed with tamarisk, and straight ahead, the great Crusader tower stands - one wall of it only but that 80 ft high and 15 thick with a splendid ashlar facing without and the spring of the vaulting arches within, resting on colossal carved corBells. Bellow it the ruins of the Custom House with the sea thrashing round its walls. At the extreme point, beyond the squalid houses of the Arab village, the Crusader work begins again in a series of gigantic buildings; the walls and arches of the banqueting hall where they eat their last solemn meal before they took ship and abandoned the castle they had held for 200 years, the vaulted stables built into the rock itself and still as perfect, every stone of it, as when they left it; the great cistern with its barrel roof, and the walls and arches of the sea ward fort with the whole Mediterranean dashing against them, blue masses of water breaking over the rocks and the ruins in towers of spray. It is all on a scale of magnificence: the huge walls, the enormous masses of fallen vaulting, the great splendour of the sea and the gorgeous defiance of the broken fort - not crumbled you understand, broken by great force or standing by great force, with the rush and swirl of the sea Bellow it and the roar of the sea echoing through its vaults, and as loud - though not to the sensual ear - the echo of battle, Phoenician, Jewish, Christian, all holding out here to the last. Titanic conflicts like the battle of man and nature that rages here still without coming to an issue: between the marsh and the sea, the great stronghold of defeated warriors and itself yet undefeated, superbly, endlessly, victorious. On the W side is a sheltered little bay, the walls curving round it and a long stone landing place, running out into the water, with the boats moored to it. Above, on the highest point of the promontory, the ruined apse of the Crusader's church and splintered columns lying round. We had a noble lunch by the edge of the sea under the shade of the walls and a delicious gallop home along hard sands - a wonderful day altogether. Mr Monaghan is quite a pleasant unobtrusive companion - he had arranged everything very well, sent on lunch and so on, but I find it rather difficult to remember that he is there. He is, however, very intelligent and has a vast knowledge of Arabic though he speaks badly. His language is Turkish. He is, rather unfortunately, summoned to Jerusalem [(El Quds esh Sherif, Yerushalayim)] for 3 weeks to replace Mr Dickson who is ill and wants rest. I'm sorry for he is useful and obliging - but I don't think I am as sorry as he is! I am much entertained to find that I am a Person in this country - they all think I were a Person! and one of the first questions everyone seems to ask everyone else is, Have you ever met Miss Gertrude Belll! renown is not very difficult to acquire here. Two tourists, Englishmen, appeared at dinner, soon after which I went to bed.

Monday 31. [31 March 1902] Today I came down into Haifa early with Mr M. [Monaghan] and established myself in my new hotel. I had an Arabic lesson and interviewed a Persian who is to come and teach me every evening after dinner. My hotel is most comfortable, kept by Syrians and I hear and speak nothing but Arabic which is really ideal. I have a large sitting room - you shd see how nice it looks with all my books and things and great pots of mimosa and jasmine and wild flowers. Mr M. came to tea. In manner he is exactly like Frollock, but exactly. He is fearfully shy and doesn't know when to go away. Then I had a visit from Mr Gee the younger who is a photographer and very keen about it. He's a sort of dragoman I gather. He is coming this evening at 9 after my Persian lesson to develop with me.

Tuesday April 1. [1 April 1902] All passed well - the Persian lesson and the developing. Today I expect a telegram from you about Uncle Tom. I feel anxious about him for one doesn't lightly have such a shock at 70. He would have been safer in Asia Minor after all! Ever your affectionate daughter Gertrude
I'm so glad the glass has returned.