Damascus [Dimashq (Esh Sham, Damas)] March 3. Friday My dearest Mother. I have had another letter from you dated Feb 15 and one from Elsa from Egypt so I feel pretty well informed as to the doings of my family. Also your telegram has come. Mind you don't telegraph in code except Roboro and Verber, which are words I know for as I may not use it in this country I have not got the book with me. I hope Hugo is all right by this time. I am sending 2 small packets of books and maps addressed to myself which need not be opened. Also a box is coming from here for me. It contains lamps and may await my arrival. Now I must try to give you some idea of the wonderful days I have been spending here. I was greeted when I arrived by a distinguished native of the Lebanon, a Maronite Christian, by name Selim Beg Thabit, who has constituted himself my cicerone and has been very useful, though he is rather a bore. He was directed by the Governor to look after me during my visit and he has fulfilled his instructions to the letter! I wrote to you on Monday I think. That afternoon I went to tea with the American archaeologists and took the Consul, Mr Richards, with me - he happened to be calling on me when I was going to start. I spent hours in the American camp, saw their rubbings, their plans and their drawings, borrowed their maps, and when the Consul had gone, we 5 sat on and talked till after dark, unburdening our souls of all we had observed and heard. It was most interesting. One of them, Dr Littman who is an old acquaintance of mine, is a real learned man and I won his esteem by presenting him with a Nabathaean inscription which he had not got, and one in the strange script of the Safah [Safa] which he said I had copied without a fault. That was rather a triumph, I must tell you, for I remember as I did it all the Druzes and my Bedouin guide on his camel were standing round impatiently and crying "Yallah, yallah! oh lady!" Next morning I went to call on the Governor. He lives in a new house he has built himself on the outskirts of the hills looking over the town. He was extremely amiable; a polite, rather anxious looking man, grey haired and pale. He has cause for anxiety for his position here between the Sultan's spies and a turbulent Druze and Arab population is an exceedingly difficult one. He has been here 8 years, kept on here because he is too important a personage to be allowed to return to C'ple [Istanbul (Constantinople)]. They are afraid of him at court. He took me up into his harem and introduced me to his wife, a Circassian, and his charming children. There were 2 wives, but one died a few months ago, the favourite, gossip says. We sat in a big sunny room with windows opening onto the balcony and the children played tinkling polkas for me and recited French verses, while the Vali looked on with benevolent pride and the Circassian wife sat smiling and smoking cigarettes. A negro slave boy stood at the door and beamed upon the party. The Vali is very busy making a garden; we had a long gardening talk and I promised to send him out some English seeds. He doesn't speak Arabic and I cannot venture in Turkish; our conversation was in French. We went downstairs again and sat talking and there came in a son of the great Algerian, 'Abdul Kadir and then a sheikh, the head of a religious sect, a sect of dervishes, to both of whom I was introduced. The 'Abdul Kàdir son was half a negro, his mother having been a black slave. His name is Amir Abdullah Pasha, I have seen a lot of him. When I left, the Vali presented me with photographs of the famous MSS in the mosque here, MSS which no one is allowed to see and I think I am about the only person who has the photographs except the Emperor of Germany! I lunched with Mr Richards, and having thus evaded all the obliging people who offer to extort me everywhere, I dawdled off into the town and spent a heavenly hour or two flâmering through the most wonderful bazaars I know, the bazaars of Damascus. I made my way at last to the great mosque - which was a church of Constantine's - left my shoes at the door with a friendly beggar and went in. It was the hour of the afternoon prayer. In the courtyard, men of all sorts and kinds, from the learned doctor of Damascus down to the raggedest camel driver - Islam is the great republic of the world, there is neither class nor race inside the creed - were washing at the fountain and making the first prostrations before they entered the mosque. I followed them in and stood behind the lines of praying people, some 2 or 300 of them listening to the chanting of the Imam. "Allah!" he cried and the Faithful fell with a single movement upon their faces and remained for a full minute in silent adoration till the high chant of the Imam began again: "The Creator of this world and the next, of the Heavens and the Earth. He who leads the righteous in the true path, and the evil to destruction. Allah!" And as the name of God echoed through the great colonnades, where it had sounded for near 2000 years in different tongues, the listeners prostrated themselves again, and for a moment all the church was silence. When I came in I found Emir 'Abdullah Pasha who had come to call on me and he was followed by a troop of notables, the Procurator General, an aide de camp or two of the Governor, a sheikh, a doctor of the law - every afternoon I hold a reception and Damascus flocks to drink my coffee and converse with me. Next morning I went to the house of Abdul Kadir in which his eldest (and I believe ablest) son lives, Emir Ali Pasha - he is unfortunately away. A whole quarter of the town belongs to the Algerian family and they live side by side in a series of palaces such as you can find only in Damascus. A small door in the narrow winding street leads you into a dark passage - you turn a couple of corners and behold! a marble courtyard with a fountain in the middle and orange trees growing round. All the rooms give onto it; they opened one after another and each was more beautiful than the last, decorated with the priceless Damascene work of 200 years ago. You sit down on a divan, coffee and cigarettes are brought in and the conversation begins. The house of the Emir Ali has an interest of its own. It was here that 'Abdul Kàdir sheltered a thousand Christians in 1860, the year of the massacres. All the rooms are full of relics of him, prints of the Emir leading the Algerian forces, being received by Napoleon, accepting a jewelled sword from him - I saw the sword, it's the great treasure of the family - and finally photographs of him as a very old man in Damascus. A stream runs outside the house and by a bridge you cross into a garden full of violets and so to the stables where I saw some lovely Arab mares - there was a stately simplicity about it all, you felt that the owners, like the mares, were asìl, of race. Only I wish they would not fill their lovely rooms with obscene pink glass bases and bead mats! Salim Beg next took me to the house of a famous scribe, an old man of 80 whom I had met in the street and who had begged me to call. This house was even more beautiful in itself than the Emir Ali's. The decoration on the panels and the ceilings was beyond price. The old scribe took me into his work room, which was hung with specimens of celebrated handwritings. We sat on low stools and drank coffee and turned over illuminated MSS hundred of years old and when I left my host gave me 3 or 4 texts in his own hand which are valued at a great price by those who know. That day I lunched in the bazaars, in the fashionable restaurant, unknown to foreigners, and eat pillaf and the delicious dishes for which Damascus is renowned. And in the afternoon came the Governor, returning my call, and the usual stream followed him, so that I sat in audience till dinner time. Yesterday I spent the whole morning in the house of the Emir 'Abdullah. The 'Abdul Kadir family has a traditional friendship with the Beni Rashid which is kept up by yearly presents to and fro. They are going to help me in my journey thither and perhaps I shall take one of them with me. They are men; one of them, the Emir Omar who lives outside the town - I called on him too one evening, I forget which, after my visitors had gone - is a mighty hunter. We found him in his garden among the hills, arrayed in a dressing gown and an embroidered cap. He took us up onto his house top where we sat drinking coffee and watching the snows of Lebanon turn pink in the sunset, and he and I discussed every detail of the journey into Nejd [Najd]. I think he may possibly join the expedition. Yesterday morning at Amir Abdullah's there dropped in one of a great family of Hamah, and then appeared a famous sheikh, an old man, very learned in Arabic, a firebrand suspected and feared of the government, and we talked politics of a sort which would not have been pleasing to the Sultan, or to my friend the governor. I lunched again with Mr Richards and in the afternoon I got permission of the Commandant (after an endless making of antichambre) to see the old Citadel, which is built on Roman foundations and is a fine and splendid place. Then came my friend of the morning, the Sheikh Tàhir, and after him a troop of poets and politicians and officials vide passim. And after dinner I went to an evening party. It was in the house of a corn merchant who is the agent of the Druzes of the Hauran. I found there one of my visitors of the afternoon, a Druze of a famous Lebanon family, the Arslan; he is a poet - have I not been presented with his latest ode? - and a man of education and standing. I wish I could picture the scene - some 8 or ten of the corn merchants, dressed in blue silk robes and embroidered yellow turbans, my friend the poet in European dress and me, all sitting on the divan in a room blessedly empty of everything but carpets and the brazier. And then coffee and talk and talk and talk, till I got up and took my leave about ten o'clock, and went away laden with thanks and blessings.
Yes, this has been a visit to Damascus that I shall not easily forget. I begin to see dimly what the civilization of a great Eastern city means, how they live, what they think; and I have got onto terms with them. I believe the fact of my being English is a great help. There is no doubt of it with the Druzes, but I feel it too with the 'Abdul Kàdirs, and with the learned. We have gone up in the world since 5 years ago - the difference is very marked. I think it is due to the success of our government in Egypt to a great extent - that counts with the learned who see their brothers in Cairo able to write and study as they please. The defeat of Russia stands for a great deal, and my impression is that the vigorous policy of Lord Curzon in the Persian Gulf and on the Indian frontier stands for a great deal more. No one who does not know the East can realize how closely it all hangs together. It's scarcely an exaggeration to say that if the English mission had been turned back from the gates of Kabul the English tourist would be frowned upon in the streets of Damascus.

I'm off tomorrow to Baalbek and Homs [Hims]. Ever your affectionate daughter Gertrude.