Adis Ababa.
7 May.
My dear Gertrude.

To you I begin in the intervals of typing my views as to an extension of the Abyssinian telegraph system to the Sudan frontier and the Italian opposition - & in planting abstramerias [?] and decoding Cairo wires - In the intervals I said, but there aren’t any, Queen of the Desert – I must go at once & decode for fear lest being swept away by the [?] devils to you and the abiding glory of you I forget the rest of the world altogether – no I go now but I’ll come back having decoded – And since then having settled certain things about currency & the Bank at Gambela, & written some advice to the Consul there – a good man – to the effect that it is well to make friends & use every scoundrel just so far as he is useful - I come back to you & peace –

I’d love to tell you all about Abyssinia – to make you as you me – oh delightful long letter – a theatre for my actions – But I can’t – you don’t know the mise en scene – while with you at Baghdad Babylon, Mysagih, Mesiner Pasha, & Alexander the Great – not to mention the vivid day in the launch & the river & the palms – with all those settings I find you I know you and I’d love to be with you - yes it was a most delightful letter – it lies now on my desk – The other one, - where she of the garden wrote to me of the garden – (the one I won’t talk about now, its another world of ours) that one I have still locked up with my secret papers –

My dear when people love each other there are things for them alone and times – but not less than public meeting, the road of the world, where we walk like the sect and yet with the secret of happiness held close –

So we’ll walk like the rest – I with you in a way better in the desert or in Bablyon than you with me in the road of mine –

Why shouldn’t you come here someday? There is only one reason why not – which is that by Christmas I shall be gone – or so I think – till then or nearly then you will be busy – there will be people to see – many things to do - & the new book to write and a great book it will be “met den Winendon zu stelen” –

Of course you were pleased with Koldewey – but how much more he with you my dear – he for ten years past of the old dust of Babylon – oh yes I know the dust of dreams, but still dust - & then come you out of the desert but touching life at how many points – so it was Koldewey who envied – if people of the magic dust do envy –

It is most interesting that view of the railway and the river – I expect you’re right you usually are – If it was easy to beat the railway by the river, then Messner & Co are idiots – if the other way then its Inchcape – unless & in so far as there is or there is going to be too much for either route to carry all alone – Surely it would be cheaper for one competitor to but the other out, with rights reserved, goodwill etc – Perhaps that is where Inchcape is to make his money – he’ll sell –

I remember Tod –

Its a lamentable picture you draw of our Consul General – Its so often like that – I remember when I was there in the time of one Col. Newmarch, who had never heard tell of Bashid or Sa'ud – and didn’t care in the very slightest for the whole of Arabia – But your man must be a bigger fool still, as he had only to sit awhile at your feet - & get Arabia into focus – Its like going to a window, and seeing the chiefs and Hayil and the roots whence shall grow interests and affairs – but the idiot sees nothing but his desk and his bankbook and perhaps his wife –

The Turkish C.G. from Itarar, a Constantinople acquaintance of mine, whose name woe on it eludes me, is coming here – He may stay with me, if the Habesh do not give him some Ras’ house - But the curious thing to me is the real lining for Turks which these fanatical Christians have – The Turk who gives them privileges in Jerusalem the beloved – The Turk who in some way unknown to them stands with them against Europe – Its queen and I remember once thinking that Abyssinia might be useful as a little help in that vast Moslem revival which is to drive us out of Africa. It isn’t so – Africa for the Africans would pull them harder – one must have a saint & the power of God and death & blood and heaven to win - & all that long ago left Christianity – we don’t burn people anymore & virtue has gone out of us –

Things fade so quick – I mean the landscapes we walk through – Turkey, Albania, are already dim, dimmer still Baghdad & the Euphrates, except that you, companion of so many ways, you have painted them afresh – I am now an Abyssinian – but out of Abyssinia as out of all the rest, there us still the short road, the swift flight – a moment, a thought, and one is back secure serene in the garden of the goddess – to which you have the key.
Dick.