British Legation,
Adis Ababa.
15 May 1914.
My dear Gertrude –

I wonder will you have heard that they have offered to nominate me as one of our candidates for some job as Turkish commissioner at Basra for the Shatt-el-Arab – the Turkish Govt is to choose between the two of us, and I don’t know who the other fellow is – I have wired to accept nomination, but I don’t want to go yet – I am bust over things here – where there are many things to do – so I’ve asked for time –

And my dear when I got that wire I had just been reading you - of Baghdad, of Tod, of your going north – of your wish for a gulf book, & what a splendid one you’d write - & then came the wire, and inshallah at Basra, (which is in its way a pestilential hole) there we will foregather you & I again – But before that is England also – For if I go to Basra I come home first.

The work will be interesting I hope – most work is, but its all vaguely telegraphic as yet, - I am to have a staff of British Technical Officers – what to do? Am I to dredge bars or improve your Tigris? What I hope is none of those things – no that’s not true – because I’d do them & like them, but they are not my trade – I’d would [sic] like the trouble to smooth between Turk & Arab, the railway v. the river, the Kuweiti – oh but most of all I’d like you to talk to – Shall it be also Mohammerah! But no for I am to be a Turkish official – therefore no Kuweit either - & no little ride over the desert with you a-camel to see Ibu Sa'ud –

But against these things are the heat (I can’t stand it now as I could once) & the fever & the [?] – my wife has accepted it as in the days work, but groans a little – And perhaps after all the other fellow will get it – I never bother about these things – they are from God – Perhaps if I had known where you were I would have wired to you before accepting, for advice – you might have heard what there is to do – But still it’s the road the stretches –

I would like to tell you of the place – not the place which is lovely & full of air, fit for you & me – but the work – just now I have begun to negotiate for the L. Tsana barrage or rather the option for it, for which I have offered from K. £10,000 a year – Harrington tried once to do this for Cromer, and failed – I shall fail too probably, for all my trouble – I am advising that we pay a lump sum say 10 or 15 years purchase – with another lump on the completion of the works which will cost about a million – but it’s a sacred lake, & there are priests - & the old saw that the rulers sell the people & drown their land for foreign money - & Italian opposition –

But besides the lake I want to stave off a French financier loan to Abyssinia – 12,000,000 francs on the railway forwards towards the Indon –

I’ve got to stop that somehow - & then the Habesh & the Italians are nearly at war - & that must be stopped & made useful - & I want to build a telegraph line – oh there are heaps of things - & the most hopeless opposition & procrastination & incompetency – but its all in the day’s work, a full day thank god –

There’s lots more – the E. African frontier where (whisper it not in Earth) Thesiger made an ass of himself, spurred on by a bigger ass called Dodds - & arms & the Baro – I don’t think Basra will give me more scope, only a step up (as this ceases at Xmas) & more pay - & what I want which is Gertrude – that’s the great thing –

Here I write to you at odd times – this morning at 7 a.m. in a verandah – over roses & flowers where the gardeners water, through the young trees which I planted, down hill to the field where the racing ponies are trotting with the Indian sowars - & then away 3 days four days of journey blue & misty to Gukwala the sacred mountain, 14,000ft, with its lake & its priests – a grand old volcano – If you were here someday we’d go – slipping easily away to take refuge with God – the real gods of lake & mountain – And the other side if I turn my head, another mighty stretch with the Palace in the middle distance, and thirty miles away Managasha the mountain of forest – 12,oooft – there are gods there too –

And in the palace unburied lies the great king – for none dare say he is dead. King Yasu his grandson is surrounded by soothsayers and witches & Mahommedan “fikus” – They tell him he must be the son of a king - & therefore he will crown his father Ras Mikhail king of Tigre – war or no, what does it matter – he must follow the prophecy – And they tell him that once Emperor he shall die soon – So he will not be crowned till he must, nor announce the Emperor’s death, but lead a merry life with drink & women & other delights – and every adventurer keeps holiday & they get concessions & monopolies for some new vice, or their wives or daughters – for such are they, & the worst is the Austrian Consul –

King Yasu is a boy of eighteen, not a bad boy if they’d give him a chance - & the Abyssinian ministers & the council - & my visits & talks! They are always a delight – and on the whole I rather like Abyssinians, & they all like me.

I have told you a very little, - why are not you sitting here with me this morning before we dress drinking tea and mountain air – for we live at 8000 feet –

Before I forget I will send you a flower now blooming because its queer – it is a red lily but it climbs – It has a bulb and an open flower something like a passion flower in shape, and at the end of each long lily leaf it has a creeper tendril & by them lefts through bushes its long straight stalk – I’ll dig them up before I go –

Well I’ll stop & go dress – This is a business letter – dressed we should go & criticise two despatches I wrote yesterday - & weigh the daily crop of rumours – I am also a high court but I don’t sit today –

All this I shall regret in the heat & flies & fever of Basra – but good if god will.

Dick