Sat. Feb. 20. Tell Ahmar [Tall al Ahmar] - which by the way is very likely Balaam's city of Pethor. Dearest Mother. The water of the Euphrates is much esteemed by the inhabitants of the river banks; I think it is an acquired taste. In my cup it has the colour of rather dingy coffee - I boil it sedulously before drinking it and though the foreign ingredients remain, they are I hope tolerably innocuous. But whatever you may think of the Euphrates as a table river, your respect for him from other points of view increases on better acquaintance, if only because of the trouble he gives you. He has behaved very kindly to us, and indeed today I crossed him twice, but I begin to realize what he might do if he liked. The fact is I am much taken up with the Euphrates; in these parts he runs through your mind as ceaselessly as he runs actually at your feet, and your doings and not doings depend a great deal upon him. Last night brought still and cloudless weather and before dawn we sent a villager up the river to bring down a boat for us to a point about half an hour above my camp; if we had crossed at Tell Ahmar ferry we should have had the boatless Sajur [Nahr Sajur] to ford on our way north and the water is said to be deep. We rode off at 7.30, Fattuh, Hajj Muhammad and I, and took the road to Carchemish [Barak (Karkemis)] in complete uncertainty as to whether the River would allow us to come back to our tents at sunset. The boat, rather to my surprise, was waiting for us at the foot of a neighbouring Tell - but not ready, that would indeed have been miraculous; it was half full of water and we had to send up to a village near at hand for a tin to bail it out. Meantime I rode off to look at another Tell, a quarter of an hour away; it must have been a big town but nothing remained above ground. When I came back the water was bailed out and we drove our 3 horses into the boat. Whereupon Hajj Muhammad's animal began to fight so energetically with Fattuh's that I thought we should all come through the bottom of our craft. Moreover a little sharp west wind had got up and the boatmen began to shake their heads and eye the ruffled Euphrates gloomily. In the end we made Hajj M. take himself and his horse out and Fattuh and I went on alone. The wind drove us a quarter of a mile and more down stream; what with wind and stream we made very slow progress and at one moment I thought we should be forced to return, but with a good deal of labour and much invocation of God and the Prophet we were at length landed on the other side. You think our troubles were over? not at all. We were on an island and had still an arm of the river to ford - we and 4 nondescript foot passengers who had taken the opportunity to cross with us. When we got to the water it was very wide and deep, for the river had come down in the night after yesterday's rain, and some boys on the other side shouted to us that we could not ford it. This would have been almost too provoking to bear so we exhorted our companions to show us the way, they gathered up their skirts and in we went. We had to make a long round over the shallows; it wasn't really very deep, just over our girths, but the stream was swift and we were none of us sorry to come out of it. We left a message that the boat was to be told to come across to this point and wait for us, and so rode off over the top of a high bluff above the river. In that rocky upland country we met a cheerful old man with a donkey and a rifle who said: "Whither going, in peace?" We said: "To Carchemish, please God" (only we called it Jerablus) and suddenly I thought how often the bare hills must have heard the same answer given to the same question when Balaam and his people rode up and down from Pethor to see what was doing in the capital. As for us we pushed on with a steady jog trot for 2 hours, past a little tell by the river and across the arc of a great bend till we came to the huge mound of Carchemish. It is covered with immense blocks of stone - later than Hittite I imagine - and sometimes you can see clearly the line of the streets and sometimes the pavements of temple or palace courts (for the mound was the royal city and over the plain Bellow lay the city of merchants and poorer people) and all round are huge earthworks marking the line of the walls, while at the NE corner stands the citadel, a great hill of earth washed on two sides by the Euphrates. It is one of the most splendid sites I have ever seen. The British Museum dug here rather spasmodically some years ago and removed those Hittite inscribed stones we saw in the Museum - do you remember? Two great slabs carved in relief were also uncovered and left at Carchemish, being I suppose too heavy to transport. At any rather there they are and one of them was the priest and his attendant standing on the back of a huge lion which I showed you once in Perrot. I lunched there, for it was midday and spent a couple of hours walking about the mound with a friend of Fattuh's, a landowner who lives in a village close by, and then we rode back by the way we had come. Fortunately the wind had gone down; but when we got back to the boat we found some 20 persons with 4 donkeys waiting to cross with us and as soon as we were fairly in they precipitated themselves after us. At this Fattuh rose up in wrath and ejected half of them and we set off upon our voyage, grounding presently (as it was obvious we should do) upon the upper end of the big island on which we had landed in the morning. Our fellow travellers then proved useful for they got out into the water and pushed and tugged till we floated out into the main stream. So we recrossed without mishap and got back to our tents soon after 5. It has been well worth doing, one can't be within a few hours of the capital of an empire without visiting it; but it has been a long hard day. I gave Fattuh's friend a letter to you telling him to send it to be posted at Aleppo [Halab]. I hope it will reach you. There is no way of sending letters here.

Sunday Feb 21. [21 February 1909] Serrin. We came a short day's journey and got here at noon and here I camped because there were a couple of tombs near by which I wanted to see. They stand up on a neighbouring hill like great towers and they are very interesting because one is dated with a Syriac inscription of the year 74 AD - it is the oldest Syriac inscription known. Oppenheim copied and published it but as he has published nothing but the inscription and these tombs are architecturally very important (the more so as their date is certain) I thought I had better take a few photographs and measurements myself. Also there was a wonderful view over the wide Euphrates valley to the W and a wide rolling desert to the E., uninhabited except by Arabs. Today has been the first hot day; the temperature in my tent at 4.30 is 69° - delicious!

Mon. Feb 22. [22 February 1909] Rameileh, Sheikh Sallal's tents. We have left villages behind and are now camped among Arabs, praise be to God! We saw the last village half way through the morning and what is more there was a mosaic pavement on the top of the mound round which it was built. I wonder what sort of a fine house once stood there. We rode through wonderful pasture land scattered over thinly with Arab tents - the tribes have not yet come out of the east for the grass is not grown. And then we came down to the Euphrates and rode across a long stretch of sand; and then we crossed over a pass through a bare rocky ridge and came out onto rolling, stretching grassland, empty and peaceful and most beautiful, bounded on one side by the Euphrates and on the other by a low range of hills that stand back from it in a semicircle. So we came down near the river and camped on an open lawn near some tents of the Weldi Arabs. The Sheikh's son, Muhammad, came out to bid us welcome and took us to his father's tent where he made a fire and roasted coffee beans over it. And soon after Sheikh Sallal came in and sat down with us by the hearth and we drank bitter Bedouin coffee and talked for an hour. Sallal is in reduced circumstances by reason of some difference of opinion between him and the Govt. I think the cause of it was that his brother was taken for a soldier and subsequently deserted, whereupon the Govt. siezed Sallal's flocks and clapped him into gaol for a great number of months in Aleppo [Halab]; and finally he sold his last good mare for ú37 and got himself out. He says he has now got no sheep, no camels and but one mare, "wallahi! the Government, oh lady, has eaten all." He desired, none the less, to make a feast for me and had set apart for that purpose a very old goat which was just going to be killed, when I, with many protestations of gratitude, saved its life. The talk then turned on the new government and Sallal questioned Hajj Muhammad about it and received no very enlightening answer. "Freedom?" said Hajj Muhammad "what is freedom? There cannot be any freedom in these countries. They talk of freedom and there is no difference yet in the world. In Aleppo many men are murdered every week and what do they do, those envoys that we sent to Constantinople [Istanbul]?" But to explain the whole duty of a member of Parliament was more than I could undertake, so we changed the subject. There has been a town here too at some time or other - probably Byzantine, for I have seen one or two Byz. coins in the possession of the Arabs. Muhammad, Sallal's son, walked round with me after we had finished drinking coffee, and showed me foundations and curious stone circles, which I do not understand, and told me the names of the hills round about. I was thinking of all these things and impressing them on my memory when Muhammad said regretfully "Oh lady, you haven't laughed once, not when I showed you the ruins nor when I told you the name of the mountain." I made haste to amend my ways. This morning as we were riding past some miserable tents, a man came out to beg tobacco from us; he was clothed in cotton rags and mounted on a mare that must have been worth at least ú200. But nothing in the world wd have induced him to sell her. Fattuh wished me to tell you that eggs are worth 2d apiece here and that even at that price we have not been able to buy more than 2!

Tuesday Feb 23. [23 February 1909] This bank of the Euphrates is in many parts untravelled and I am therefore obliged to take a great deal of trouble about it. I took a great deal today but without any very remarkable result. The Arabs were full of tales of ruins on the surrounding hills so I rode off early with Abbas Chowwish (one of my 2 soldiers) and Muhammad ibn Sallal. At the first site we came to there were cut stones and some fragments of a very elaborate cornice with dentils and an acanthus frieze. Thus encouraged we rode on to the next hill where there was nothing, but from it Muhammad pointed out such a number of sites that I felt I should never get through them unless I gave the day to them. So I sent Abbas down to tell Fattuh to camp by the river and rode off with Muhammad on a 6 miles' expediton inland across the grass plains. There was a violent wind and Muhammad went faster and faster and the wind blew harder and harder and I felt exactly like Alice when she ran with the Red Queen into the next square. Suddenly we stopped and I found that the object of our haste had been some pedlars whom Muhammad had spied from afar off and from whom he wished to buy soap - of which I may add he stood in great need. The pedlars were charming people, Turks; they greeted me with effusion and gave me a large handful of raisins with their blessing when we parted. So we went on again, Muhammad riding like the devil and the wind blowing harder than ever, till after about an hour we reached the hill which was our destination. And then I was glad I had come for the place had been a big town with watchtowers, or tower tombs, on the hill above and a fortified mound Bellow and a great stretch of ruined foundations in which you could see occasionally the plan of house or court lying in the grass. Abbas came up with the lunch while we were looking about, and having eaten we set off back at a more reasonable pace. On our way lay another hill up which we climbed. There must have been a fort on it and from the pottery we found, I should guess it was early Arab. And so we came down to our tents which are pitched in a most curious place that must have been a great fort by the river, but whether it is Assyrian, Greek or Roman I do not know. We are camped in the heart of it with the huge grass grown walls sheltering us on every side. Where the river or the rain has washed away the earth, you can see the masonry, immense cut blocks of stone. I spent the rest of the afternoon in making a plan of it, very carefully with a compass; it has probably been planned before but I always find that if you have sites of this kind in the assurance that someone else has done them, you will discover that everybody else has done the same thing. Kiepert marks the site with a query Bersiba, but that leaves me where I was, for I never heard of Bersiba before. The wind has dropped and it looks like rain tonight.

Wed Feb 24. [24 February 1909] It is difficult to exaggerate the exasperation which the wind causes when you are living out of doors. It siezes you by the hand when you are trying to hold your compass steady, it dances jigs with your camera and elopes with your measuring tape - your spirits go down and down with the needle of the aneroid. But this morning it was wonderfully still and we had a delicious ride along the river, where I marked several ruined sites and enjoyed myself immensely. We passed through many encampments of the Weldi, to which tribe all the Arabs here Bellong, and about 2 o'clock came to the tents of a sheikh called Mabruk. It had clouded over and by this time was beginning to rain hard, so we camped here, the next possible place being a long way off. I drank coffee with the Sheikh's sons, the Sheikh being away, while my tents were being pitched, and though it looks as if it would be a wet night we are supremely indifferent, for we have housed all our 13 animals in the end of the sheikh's big tent and we ourselves are warm and dry in our own. In fact I had a great deal rather that it rained than that it blew. We are opposite Thapsacum where Darius crossed the river after Issus with Alexander on his heels.

Thurs Feb 25. [25 February 1909] The sun rises about 6.30 and finds me breakfasting outside my tent. This morning the programme was strictly observed by all parties. It was a wonderful clear dawn with last night's rain folded neatly away on the very edge of the horizon and I set off soon after 7 with a soldier and Jusef and a charming young man from the Sheikh's tent as a guide. His name was Ibrahim. We had a long and hot but very interesting day. Ibrahim took me to a very fine rock cut underground tomb, Christian I shd think, but no inscription alas. This I planned and we rode back to the river to see a great tell with a dyke round it. And then we rode to the top of a hill to a tower, not very exciting and finally at 1 o'clock we arrived at a most splendid castle of the best Arab time, if I have read the inscription on the minaret aright. Here I spent a couple of hours, lunched, looked about, and decyphered [sic] the inscription through my invaluable glasses (tell Father). It was on the top of a very high tower and without glasses I should never have been able to find out that the castle was built by the successor of Harun er Rashid. Then we rode on for another Û of an hour and about 4 got into camp. We are pitched by the tents of Sheikh Hamri, a very cheerful and talkative old man, with whom I have just been drinking coffee. He discussed the new regime summarily: "Liberty" he said "how can there be Liberty under Islam? Shall I take a wife contrary to the law of Islam and call it Liberty?" That was his view of the situation.

Fri. Feb 26. [26 February 1909] We rode off this morning in a dense fog which lasted for over 2 hours, and then suddenly it all cleared away and behold, there was a bright sunny world with camels wandering over it. That was about the only incident of the day, except a delightful lunch by the edge of the river near a thicket of thorns which were just coming into leaf. Just above us on a high bank were a few ruins of a temple. The river came down towards it through many beds like a great fan, gathered itself up into a single stream, wide and deep and so swept past the temple site. It was a very beautiful place. We are camped in the wilderness, far from black tents and it is the most perfect still night with a growing moon. We have been lucky as to weather.

Sat. Feb 27. [27 February 1909] Rakka [Ar Raqqah]. We had a short ride of 3 hours today and arrived by 10 o'clock at this place which is no less than the summer capital of Harun er Rashid. There are the remains of a great mosque and several other very interesting ruins which will keep me busy all tomorrow. Moreover the people dig up the most beautiful pots which they sell to the dealers in Aleppo [Halab]. I saw a good many there but the price was far beyond my purse. Here however I rather hope to be able to buy something. The patterns on them are quite exceptionally important for the history of the early art of Islam. My two soldiers go back to Aleppo from here and I send this letter with them. I've engaged an Arab called Khalaf, highly recommended by Mark Sykes, to come with me on the next stretch down to Der [Dayr az Zawr] and I shall take one soldier from Rakka. It's wonderful weather. The temperature was 70° in my tent today at noon.
You have a great deal of news of me, but I shall not have any from you for a desperately long time. Ever your affectionate daughter Gertrude