Sunday May 17. Azakh. Dearest Mother. I seem to have done a great deal these last two days without getting along very fast. The fact is there is so much to see in all this country; I'm at it all day without end. Yesterday I began by crossing the river and looking at Jezireh [Cizre] where there is an interesting castle and a very fine ruined bridge with most curious reliefs on it - Seljuk? Kurdish? I don't know. With all this we did not get off till 10 and then I rode up into a valley to see a Parthian relief. It was a most beautiful place - I've never seen anything more exquisite than these deep rocky valleys of the Kurdish hills and at this moment they are all one rosy mass of oleanders. I found my relief; it is a horseman and it is cut in a narrow defile where the rocks come down steeply into the river. There are remains of Kurdish fortresses on either side of the stream - all very wild and splendid. So I eat my lunch under the shade of the rocks in great content and talked to processions of delightful Kurdish women who were going up the valley on a two days' journey to see a famous sheikh who lives up in the hills. We made shift to understand one another in Turkish. Then we went down to the Tigris valley and rode up it through banks of oleander to Finik where I found the camp pitched in clover meadows by the river. The rocks here are extraordinarily bold and rugged, and on every point (so it seemed to me) there is a Kurdish fortress. There were 3 at Finik. I climbed up to the highest of them early this morning - a most attractive place, half rock cut and half built. And as for Finik itself, it's a troglodyte village in a deep, splendid gorge. I should think it looked much the same when Xenophon passed this way, though the Parthians had not in his time cut the stele in the rocks above which I went up to see. I had a Kurdish guide with me who insisted on giving me a meal of sour milk, omelet and bread before I left. So I sat under mulberry trees and eat mulberries till it was ready and then we went on our way through groves of flowering pomegranates back to the Tigris where we found the baggage being ferried over. So here I took leave of the rocky Kurdish hills and parted company with Xenophon, to my great regret: we have been travelling companions since the beginning of my journey. He went north through the mountains and I have turned west onto the great plateau which is called the Tur Abdin to see monasteries. I've a notion that some of the monasteries here are as old as any monasteries in the world and I expect thery are going to give me 10 days hard work.

Monday May 18. [18 May 1909] The monasteries haven't turned out very well so far. I've seen a great quantity today; they are not very old and all of them are entirely without architectural interest. The country is nice, however; a high upland, very sparsely populated. Round the few villages there are vineyards and corn fields and the rest of the world is oak wood through which you ride for hours between the little oaks without seeing a soul. I am camped tonight near a village called Sare in which there is a very curious stele, Parthian I should think, I have just been taking a rubbing of it. Sare appears to be the home of the principal agha of the district. He has just given me a red legged partridge which I propose to eat. He was entertaining guests who had come to pay a visit, the aghas of a neighbouring village, very splendid, with silver mounted daggers. Fortunately they talked a little Arabic - mostly I'm up against Kurdish or Syriac here. The church seemed to be old and interesting but I could not stay in it because it was alive with fleas. I had to rush out and tear off my stockings, which were covered with fleas, before they should get any further. The priest says they clear out the fleas on Sunday, but I don't believe it for a moment. However it probably doesn't interfere much with the devotions of the worshippers for they assured me that their houses were just as full of fleas, in proof of which I saw them hopping all over their white clothes.

Wed May 20. [20 May 1909] We had a tremendous day yesterday, not very profitable archaeologically but unforgettable in itself. We set off with a guide from Sare at 6 in the morning and rode for 2 hours and more through oak woods, up and down valleys entirely and absolutely desolate by narrow little rocky paths. And at last we came to a hill top from which we saw in front of us, across a deep valley, the great castle of Hatem Tai which commands the gorge leading up from the Mesopotamian plain. There was no road to it unless we went miles round, which I was determined not to do, so we struggled down the hillside, the horses hopping as best they might over rocks and trees, and got to the foot of the castle hill without mishap. I climbed up with my guide; it was a splendid place, with 2 lines of wall and a citadel on top of all, Byzantine, I should think, in the beginning - one of the outposts of the empire - and then probably a Yezidi stronghold. We came down into a troglodyte Yezidi village where the people gave us bread and sour curds and were very anxious, when they heard I had visited Ali Beg, to kill a sheep for me. And now came a grave disillusion: there was no road through the hills to the place to which I had sent my camp and if we wanted to get there we had to go down into Mesopotamia and up again by another pass. The country is unmapped and in mountains who can tell what difficulties may lie ahead. There was nothing else for it, so we set off at 10.30 and toiled down the rocky valley into the plain and then for hours across the low ground, until at last I made out which was the pass we were heading for and turned up over the pathless foothills towards it, to the great disgust of my soldier and my guide. This determination was justified by the events, there was nothing impassible between us and the gorge and at 5.30 we found ourselves at the foot of another great crag-built castle guarding the second pass. There was no time to climb up to [it], for Heaven alone knew how far the winding mountain paths might yet take us; it remains for me a vision of tower and wall and preciptious rock lifting itself up into the sunlight above a dark gorge full of shadow - a citadel more stern and menacing that any I have ever seen. So we climbed up and up, walking now for our poor horses had done about as much as they could, and a little before 7 we found ourselves once more at the top of the hills, but a long way still from our camp. I left the men to bring the horses along and plunged down through the silent oak woods, on and on through shallow winding valleys where there was never a soul to be seen, and just as I was beginning to feel that I must be walking in a dream, and that nothing would ever put an end to the oak woods and the winding rocky path, the valley opened and there was my camp. I got in at 7.30. But it is bewitched this country; today we rode for 2 hours through the oak woods and found ourselves in the 4th century AD. Just over the lip of the rocky hills, with all Mesopotamia spread out before it, lies the mother monastery of all this country - it was founded by St Eugenius who was a disciple of St Anthony, and the rule he instituted holds good to this day. I have never yet seen one of the earliest monasteries still inhabited. There are 10 monks who live in caves hollowed out of the rock; they eat nothing but bread and lentils and oil and some may see no women, so that they had to lock themselves up in their caves while I was planning the church. The prior made a special exception for me (since, as he explained, very few travellers came that way); not only did he show me all over the monastery and climb with me into the cave-cell of St Eugenius, but he prepared me a lunch of omelet, lentils and raisins (the monastery kitchen is a big cave) and served it for me in his own cell, which is also a cave. High up in the rock, almost unapproachable except by a very athletic climber, lives an old bishop. He has taken a vow of silence, his food is hoisted up by him once a day in a basket, and when his last mortal sickness comes upon him he will send down word (in the basket) that he is about to die and they may come up to fetch his body. The prior was a young man of about 30; he proposes to spend the rest of his life in the monastery and in due time I suppose that he in turn will mount to the bishop's cave. They say the church is 4th century; the greater part of it certainly can't be later than 6th century, I judge, and I don't doubt that the cell of St Eugenius is authentic; so here you have the earliest hermit ideal of monasticism going on uninterrupted and unchanged until today. Half an hour away across the hills is another monastery founded by a disciple of St Eugenius, not quite so interesting, but still very wonderful. Like the first it lay on the steep mountain side, the walls climbing up almost to the top of the hills. There was a bishop here too - they seem to be plentiful - but though he is not quite so exclusive as the other bishop he was too exclusive to wish to see me. Perhaps you wonder why a monk from Egypt should have come so far. I know why: it was because Iris Sasiana grows wild among the rocks. The great grey flowers lift themselves up in masses in the open spaces between the oak bushes, gleaming silver in the strong sun, so perfect in form and so exquisitely delicate in texture that you hold your breath in wonder. I looked at them, too, with despair, for they won't throw up one littlest flower on our rock garden, do what I will. I shall have to come and live here in a cave every spring.

Friday May 22. [22 May 1909] Midyat, which you may see in the maps perhaps. I had a great day with monasteries yesterday. The first lay on our road and I stopped for an hour and planned its little chapel. Nothing more could be done; the plan was such a rabbit warren of rooms and vaults in all directions and on all levels. There was a bishop here very unlike the other bishops. He was affable to the point of being boring and I was not sorry when I got to Der el Amer at noon to find that its bishop was away. It is a splendid place standing all by itself on the top of a hill. I spent hours and hours working on its vaults - they say Tamberlane destroyed it in part. Oh I wish he had destroyed the fleas at the same time! They are really a most serious drawback; one can scarcely give proper attention to places, however beautiful, when they are absolutely chock full of fleas. Today I suffered more from the inhabitants of Midyat than from the fleas. The principal church was ruined, so they took up points of vantage about the walls, hundreds and hundreds of them, and I had to sweep them off when I came round with the measuring tape. The result is that I haven't done that church anything like in the way it deserves, for it is a most interesting place, with fine mouldings and all sorts of reconstructions.

Friday May 28. [28 May 1909] Oh my dear Mother we've had such a week! Now that we have come to the end of our terrible adventure, and to a prosperous end, I must tell you about it, but while it was going on I could think of nothing else. Well, we left Midyat on Saturday and I had a long day, seeing and planning on my way to Khakh 3 wonderful churches. I got in to Khakh late in the afternoon and found my camp pitched by a great pool Bellow a charming village and at my very tent door one of the most remarkable churches I have ever seen, 5th century if not 4th, domed, with exquisite carved mouldings - in short perfect, and all standing. There was another ruined church higher up the village and various other buildings that needed examination; I took a hasty survey of them before sunset and determined that things of this kind could not be dismissed in a hurry and I must spend the next day at Khakh. This resolve was warmly applauded by the priest and the nun who inhabited the church and I accordingly passed the whole day planning, photographing and incidentally solving one or two difficult points that have puzzled me for the past 2 years. For the buildings in this country are a revelation and their importance has certainly not yet been recognized. So I went to bed well pleased after having prepared everything for an early start next day, packed my 2 notebooks (which were now almost full of plans) into my saddle bags, together with my camera and everything needed for the day's work, and put my riding clothes ready on the chair by my bed. In the middle of the dark night a rustling woke me; I looked up and saw a man crouching in my tent, a shadowy figure outlined against the sky. I tore open the mosquito curtain, lept [sic] out of bed and made for him, but while I got myself out of the mosquito net he had had time to get himself out of my tent and I just saw him disappear between the tents, I shouted to my servants who had chosen that night to sleep like the dead and it must have been a full minute before I roused them. Of course one of the two soldiers with me ought to have been on guard, especially as neither of them had done anything but sleep all day while I was working - but they only slept all the sounder by night. Finally we were all roused (and I remembered that I was standing chatting in my nightgown so I retired to put on a skirt but first I looked round to see if anything was missing. Everything lying loose was gone, clothes, saddle bags, boots and half one of my mule trunks had been emptied and the contents (including a Bellt with úT42 in it) taken away. Far the greatest misfortune, however, was that the two notebooks in my saddle bags contained every scrap of work that I had done since the beginning of the journey, except the big ground plan of Khethar [Ukhaydir]. And to crown all, Jusef came with the news that the bag containing every finished film since Baghdad was gone too. So in a moment there was a clean sweep, photographs, plans, notes, all had vanished - Rakka [Ar Raqqah], Samarra, half Khethar, all the churches at which I had toiled, all the odds and ends along the road: I might just as well not have travelled at all. I was overwhelmed. There we stood helpless in the dark night while my goods were hurrying away somewhere over the rocky hills and through the oak woods. At this point arrived the priest, who had been roused by two shots that my servants had fired into the night, and everyone began to give me his advice. I had an hour or two before the dawn came to consider what was best to be done and I decided to send Fattuh and a soldier to fetch the Chelabi who lived in a village about 7 hours away. Now the Chelabi is the great magnate of the district. All the people, from Jezireh [Cizre] to Mardin, all the Tur Abdin, Bellong to him; they are his tribe and he rules them with far more authority than the government possesses. Moreover, if I sent for soldiers they would be quartered on the villagers of Khakh, who were, I was pretty sure, guiltless. Anyhow I determined to send for the Chelabi first. We had a clue. In the afternmoon three men from Zakhuran, a village about 2 hours away with a very bad reputation, had been seen hanging about the tents; when dawn broke, we found a little bag containing loose change lying on the path to Zakhuran and later in the day, a shepherd brought in a glove that he had found about an hour away on the same path. Meantime Fattuh had gone and I had nothing to do but to wait for the Chelabi. I spent the whole day reading the Bible in Spain, which Mrs Ramsay had given me, and that magical book carried me far away from all my troubles and took me wandering up and down the rocky hills of Spain without a thought for anyone but Borrow. (Will you please give me a complete edition of him for my birthday? He is, without doubt, one of the greatest of writers and I one of the most illiterate of people.) In the evening arrived the Chelabi, pacing on his mare through the stony paths with 20 armed men behind him and Fattuh by his side. In great state the Chelabi was brought to my tent, a splendid handsome Kurd he is, the six feet of him robed in white and cloaked in a gold embroidered abbayah. So we sat and drank coffee while he heard my tale (he hasn't much Arabic, but the priest interpreted in Kurdish) and finally the Chelabi and his men walked away in procession and took up their abode on the roof of the priest's house. No sooner had he arrived than deputations from all the villages came pouring in - the Chelabi had sent word to each of them - and he held his court on the monastery roof. So the evening passed, but no decision was reached. Next day the Chelabi and Fattuh and all the party rode off to Zakhuran to make an inquest there. I spent the time examining some churches among the hills and in the evening Fattuh came back and said that matters had not advanced. I was in despair. The more I thought of all my vanished work, the more miserable I became. That night I sent a soldier in to Midyat with a letter to the Kaimmakam asking for soldiers, and also telegrams to the Vali and the consul at Diarbekr [Diyarbakir (Amida)]. The Chelabi came back the following morning with 5 prisoners, selected, I fancy, pretty much at haphazard - oh, I must tell you, they found another glove upon the Zakhuran road, which was providential, a glove in the Tur Abdin being a most incriminating piece of evidence. At night 10 zaptiehs arrived from Midyat and early the next day a body of 50 infantry with 3 officers. The Kaimmakam had entered into the business like a man. At dawn the Chelabi and the zaptiehs all went off to Zakhuran to renew the process of intimidation. I found it almost impossible to preserve a sober judgment. No one knew anything and everybody accused everybody else. At the same time it was quite certain that a great many people must be in the secret and rightly or wrongly I suspected the head man of Khakh of having information. But I began to make my deuil of my notebooks and with a heavy heart measured and photographed the Khakh churches all over again. Something at any rate had to be saved from the wreck. The 3 officers were kindness itself, indeed I can't say enough in their praise. The Chelabi worked like a Trojan, but he had a personal reason, poor dear, for in the end suspicion was bound to rest on him as the head of the tribe, as in fact it does now rest, though I am persuaded unjustly and I mean to clear him before the government at Diarbekr. In the afternoon he sent back word that man, woman and child had fled from Zakhuran, carrying with them all the sheep and cattle into the hills. At this, the officers got ready, called up their men from the monastery roof, gave them their rations, and taking with them the 5 prisoners and the headman of Khakh, marched away to Zakhuran. I have seldom spent a more unhappy evening. I bitterly regretted my carelessness in not having seen myself that a watch was being kept; if the master forgets, the men are bound to forget too. The truth was we had all grown thoughtless with so much safe travelling through dangerous places, and we needed a lesson. But it was a bitter one. I had brought confusion everywhere and driven a whole village into the hills; if it had not been for all the hard work that had disappeared with my notebooks, I should have recalled the soldiers, let the thing go and paid the price, but as it was, the price was too big and besides I had gone too far. Fattuh was just as unhappy and we were both on the point of swearing that we would never travel again. I decided that evening that I would leave him with the Chelabi and myself go away to Diarbekr. I was only giving more trouble and I was doing no good, whereas if I left Fattuh, he would be of use to the Chelabi and if the things were found he could bring them to me. So it was settled. And then what do you think happened? In the grey dawn we were wakened by a man of the village shouting to us "Your goods have come back! your goods have come back!" All the servants set off running up the rocky hill, opposite the camp and there on a big stone they found everything, piled in a heap. Everything but the money which was after all the least important. So peace was restored and all the village came to congratulate us and I sent the camp into Midyat and went off with Fattuh to Zakhuran, to save the honour of the Chelabi. But when we got to Zakhuran - we were joined by several officials, I must tell you, and some stray zaptiehs, a strange party - we found the village absolutely deserted. Every soul had fled and the Chelabi and the soldiers had gone off into the hills to sieze the cattle. We sent word to them and decided to wait a few hours - it was still only 8 o'clock. I went to sleep and the others sat under an oak tree and smoked cigarettes. When I woke I was not at all surprised to find that a bishop had joined the party. There he sat in his purple robes with a gold and jewelled cross in his hands and we entered into amicable conversation while I eat my lunch under the oak tree. He had come, good man, to protect his diocese, for incidentally, it appeared that the Chelabi had swept up sheep Bellonging to two Christian villages in the hills - Zakhuran is Moslem and such a robbers' nest as it looked lying in its deep stony valley, I never hope to see again. By this time it was noon and I had 6 hours' ride in to Midyat, so I wrote various letters to the Chelabi and the officers, asking for the return of the Christian sheep and the release of the headman of Khakh (this rather reluctantly) and then we took our leave of the bishop and the rest and made our way back to Midyat. There I found the Kaimmakam and the officials all at my beck and call, having received peremptory telegrams from Diarbekr where the consul had not been idle. I sent telegrams and received another bishop and gave instructions to the Kaimmakam, and having borrowed úT5 from him, this morning (Sat. May 29 [29 May 1909]) I left for Diarbekr. On the way I met a dragoman whom the consul had sent post haste to my aid, a worthy Armenian who is rather a bore, for he has turned back with me and I am obliged to entertain him, honest[?] man. I think I shall get all the money back, for the Chelabi will produce it and eventually I don't doubt that he will lay his hands on the thief or thieves, but I'm heartily ashamed of the whole business and would cheerfully give a great deal more than I lost to blot it out. However, there it is, and Fattuh and I will know better in future, Inshallah. I haven't much pity for the villagers of Zakhuran for when they are not robbing me they are pillaging the Christian villages and these last can get no redress. But as far as I know we are no nearer to finding the real offenders, though Heaven alone can tell how many prisoners the Chelabi has taken by this time! The methods of Turkish justice are simple, but they are very effective and as Sir Alfred says, it does more good to punish the wrong man than the right one for it frightens everybody into good behaviour. Still though I agree with this in principle I would rather not have it put into practice on my behalf.

Monday May 31 [31 May 1909] Diarbekr [Diyarbakir (Amida)]. I arrived here this morning after a prosperous journey with the good old dragoman - his name is Thomas Effendi. And here I am staying with the consul and his wife, Rawlins is their name, she is a German and he nephew of the Eton master. She had a baby 3 weeks ago, poor dear, and I feel I ought not to be bothering them but they insisted on my coming. And here I found an immense mail - all the delayed letters from Baghdad and letters from you and Father here. I think nothing has missed and I must tell you how rejoiced I was to have them. Also a letter from Elsa and one from Moll telling about the death of the poor little Paul - I am so very sorry about it and sympathise deeply. I telegraphed to you as soon as I arrived and I hope perhaps you will telegraph to me here. You are busy with the army! it's splendid of you. I feel an awful beast for not being there to take a hand too. Tell Father his long long letter about his journey was perfectly delightful and I read the tale of the adventures of the lady with the utmost excitement - but I think I agree with Mother in not wishing to admit her as yet to the recesses of the innocent family circle. I had a delightful letter from Hanagan too which I must answer. I have some work to do here so I expect I shall be kept 4 or 5 days. Things are quiet now but it was touch and go. There can be no doubt that Abd ul Hamid ordered a massacre of all Christians and why it only took place at Adana [(Seyhan, Ataniya)], I can't think. However, Heaven be praised! The country I am now going through is perfectly peaceful. Ever your affectionate daughter Gertrude
I love the photograph of Mary.

[Note on back of envelope] Thank you so very much for the photographs - please send me any more that come from the Photographic Asso.