[11 July 1918] G.H.Q. Camp. Taq i Girrah July 11 Dearest Father. By luck I can send you down a letter tomorrow by the hand of Col. Godman, whom I found up here. It's being glorious and I'm drunk with mts. This camp is over 5000 ft. I left Baghdad by night on the 9th and came by train to a place called Ruz - a very comfortable night. At Ruz I found the Chiefs' motor and driver, a nice boy called Hanward. We started at 6.30 and got to Khaniqin [Khanaqin] at 8.30 where I stopped for half an hour to have tea and curds with my colleague, Major Goldsmith. So on by the familiar Qasr i Shirin [Qasr-e-Shirin] road - we have a marching place in the gorge where the armed Kurds stopped me in 1911 and demanded dues, which I didn't however pay. From Qasr i Shirin it was all new ground; the road runs through barren rocky hills, following more or less the course of the Alwan [Alwand] to Sar i Pul [Sar-e-Pol-e-azahab] where you cross and leave the river. We stopped there to feed the motor, and I to dabble in the clear water running over stones. The village like all the sparse villages on this road, was entirely ruined by Turk and Russian, but at the bridge head a little bazaar of reed and tent cloth has grown up, where the Kurds make an abundant livelihood by selling cigarettes and eggs to our men - a good comment on the ways of one army as compared with others. This is, and always has been, the great road into Persia from Mesopotamia, and it has monuments along it. First the ruined Sasanian [sic] palaces at Qasr i Shirin, then beyond Sar i Pul a rock cut tomb, Sasanian or Achaemenid, I don't know which. And next you come to a spectacular pass; the cliff rises shere [sic] in front of you and the road winds up devious gorges and is carved in precipices. Near the top there is the very famous arch which gives the pass its name - Taq i Girrah, the Girrah arch. It's like a Roman triumphal arch, but set back from the road against the solid rock, its mouldings and capitals pure classical. A mile or two beyond you reach the top and here is rocky mountain slopes, scattered over with dwarf oak. Under the oak trees our tents are pitched. I found half a dozen people here, including Col. Godman. The motor needed some overhauling and as we're in no hurry and I can't have enough of being up in this mountain coldness, we've spent the day here. I jumped up at dawn and climbed to the top of the hills, 2300 feet above the camp, a rough scramble up limestone rocks. But it was magnificent. The gentians and tulips were seeding - I send you some tulip seed which will you kindly give Hanagan - but the dianthus was still out, and gorgeous thistles and gypsophila and pecidularis - all the great garden of mts. I came in at 10 to breakfast, a little footsore - I haven't walked for 4 years - but feeling like a new-born creature. It's about 100 in the tents at noon, but one doesn't feel it because there's a cool wind. The country is almost uninhabited here. I met a few woodcutters on the lower slopes this morning, with whom I stopped and talked, but from the top you can see no sign of human habitation - just mountain stillness. Tomorrow I go on to Kirmanshah [Bakhtaran]. It's worth while to sit 2½ years in an office in Mesop. in order to do this at the end with such enjoyment! Your ever affectionate daughter Gertrude.