Sat. March 6. Circesium. Dearest Mother. The road along this part of the Euphrates is, as Xenophon says, exceedingly boring. He does not put it quite that way but we mean the same thing. We rode for 6 hours along an eternal flat, with absolutely nothing to look at except at intervals the water wheels by the river bank, for there was a little cultivated ground from time to time; and so we came to Al Buseira [Busayrah] which is Circesium, and camped by the banks of the Khabur, a river that joins the Euphrates a mile or so lower down. I am following in the steps of the two invaders, Cyrus and Julian, and what with Xenophon and Ammianus Marcellinus I have the way before me pretty well described. It is fortunate, for there is nothing in the map. Tomorrow I'm going to try and fix the position of a town that Julian passed, called in his time Zeitha; I think I have found out where it must be. All the ruins here are Arab; it was a big town under the early Khalifs and I've bought a good piece of pottery from a man for 1/. There is a wonderful full moon tonight shining on the Khabur and on the other side of the stream the peasants are still working at their creaking water wheel, and singing the while to keep themselves in good heart. I forgot to tell you yesterday that at Der [Dayr az Zawr] I saw the Arabs swimming across the Euphrates on inflated skins just exactly like the Assyrian soldiers on the bas reliefs in the British Museum.
Sun. March 7. [7 March 1909] It took us exactly an hour to get ourselves over the Khabur (which by the way is Ezekiel's river Chebar) for the boat was so small and inconvenient that the animals could not get across loaded, so we had to carry down all the loads on our own backs. I pitied Cyrus from the bottom of my heart; as for Julian, he was wise enough to wait till he had built a bridge. While some of this was going on, I took advantage of the opportunity of looking at the ruins again and subsequently confided to my soldier, a charming man, my impression that some of the foundations were Roman, but that the building they call a church is Arab. "Effendim" said he "what you have honoured us by observing is quite correct. The origin of that church is Arab. It was doubtless built by Nimrod who lived some years before Harun er Rashid." "That is true" said I. We rode for 4 hours through a desolate plain that had once been irrigated by a canal from the Khabur. It was scattered over with the remains of villages - you could tell them from the fragments of pottery and tiles that covered the sites. All were Arab; Nimrod must have been very busy here. Finally we struck east to the edge of the canal (it is dry now) and fixed, I rather hope, the site of a town called Zeitha mentioned by A. Marcellinus; at any rate we found a very big site with a wall round it (the wall is of course only a mound now) just at the place where Keipert tentatively puts Zeitha. It was not Arab; there was no Arab pottery nor had the buildings been of brick and in one place where the peasants had dug a little, they had laid bare a solid asphalt pavement. So we rode down to the Euphrates and got into camp by 3 o'clock very contentedly. It's perfect weather.

Monday March 8. [8 March 1909] We rode for 7 hours through country of an unparalleled dulness. The Euphrates rises about once every 20 or 30 years and floods it; hence it's no good looking for ruins or sites or anything else. My soldier tells me anecdotes of Soloman the Prophet of God to enliven the way and we talked today a long time about the Constitution. It is most extraordinary how openly even the soldiers criticise the Sultan. "He keeps 300 women in his palace" said Hmeidy "they have eaten our money." He wronged the poor ladies however; the proportion they eat was comparatively innocuous. We saw some Arabs ploughing up a desolate spot in order to destroy locusts. "Are there many locusts here?" said I. "No" said they "there are none here, but as God is exalted there are thousands further down." "They why do you plough here?" said I. "The Government ordered it" said they and resumed their occupation. We have a most beautiful camp by the river bank and I have spent half an hour watching an enormous pelican who has been swimming about and casting backward glances from time to time, to see what we were doing in his wilderness. Yesterday we met an eagle as large as a Turkey.

Tuesday March 9. [9 March 1909] We had a pleasant march of 4 hours through Tamarisk thickets full of birds, ducks, pigeons and jays, to a ferry over the river opposite a god forsaken little hole called Abu Kemal [Abu Kamal]. Here Fattuh went across to buy corn and get an escort for the next 3 days, while I rode off to examine some towers about an hour away on the hills. They turned out to be tower tombs and I think I have the explanation of a passage in A. Marcellinus in which he describes "a deserted city called Dura." I fancy he saw only these great towers on the hills - there are any number of them - and took them for a city, whereas the town to which they had belonged was probably mud built and had lain in the low ground Bellow. The Euphrates occasionally floods all this district and had destroyed the town and left only the tombs upon the hills as they stand until this day. I should be quite satisfied with this explanation if it were not for the fact that Xenophon also mentions a ruined city which I make out to have been about here. The tower tombs certainly did not exist in 400 BC, for they are not as old as that. Unless I find another site to account for his ruined town, I shall have to suppose that the Euphrates twice destroyed a city here, which indeed is not in itself unlikely, as it is constantly changing its bed in the low land. It is Elsa's birthday - I wonder how she is. I often think of her when I look at my thermometre [sic].

Wed March 10. [10 March 1909] I have stolen two soldiers, one from Der [Dayr az Zawr] and one from Abu Kemal [Abu Kamal]. The fact is there are no soldiers to be got, and when I sent to Abu Kemal there was only one to be had. So I persuaded one of them that I took from Der to come with me today to opposite a place called El Gaim [Qaim, Al], where there is a boat and he might have crossed the river and gone home. The soldier from Abu Kemal was also to have returned from there. Neither of them knew the way in the Jezireh [Jazirah, Al], since no one travels this side of the river and the soldiers are afraid of coming here, so I took an obliging ragged person called 'Isa from my camping place to show me the way. He came on foot for 7 hours and though the temp. was 83° in the shade when we got into camp today, he smiled all the way. Well, presently I found (as I had suspected) that we should reach the river bank opposite Al Gaim in 5 hours, which was much too short for a day's journey and also that we should have to go a long way out of the direct road because the river makes a great bend there, so I cut across country and we never went near Al Gaim or the ferry and behold my two soldiers embarked on the road to 'Ana ['Anah]. They don't really mind at all and I shall write to their commanding officers to explain their absence. The country, in spite of its bad reputation, is now perfectly peaceful. We are camped near the tents of the {Delaim} Jerifeh who pasture here; they have made us very welcome and most of them are at present sitting in admiration round Fattuh's cooking pots. They have fortunately (last year) made friends with the Bu Kemal after a long feud, so 'Isa is also hospitably received. I had a lucky morning; I was able to clear up some knotty points about old irrigation canals. A good many mistakes have been made in the topography of these parts since no one apparently has ridden over the ground and information gained from travelling on the river or on the opposite bank is worthless.

Thurs. March 11. [11 March 1909] These 2 days into 'Ana ['Anah] we are on the only part of the road in which there is any risk. The fact is we are now in country where the Bedouin are left entirely to their own devices and according to their custom they are occupied exclusively in raiding one another. They ride for days across the desert and fall upon one another's flocks and when I asked for a guide last night, I found that no single man would venture to come with me fearing lest he should be attacked on his solitary way back by blood enemies from half the world away. So I took two young men with their respective rifles and we discussed the incidence of blood feud the whole day long. Early in the morning we were joined by a great Sheikh mounted on a riding camel with his servant seated behind him. He rode with us for an hour and told me I was free of his tents, on the other side of the river in the Syrian desert, whenever I chose to come. He was of the ruling family of the 'Amarat, an offshoot of the 'Anazeh, very big people. His business here was as follows: one of the Jerifeh had murdered a man of the 'Amarat and the two tribes being friends, Sheikh Jid'an had crossed the river to demand the summary execution of the murderer or the payment of blood money. Today he was hunting him down through the tents. We had a ten hours' march through baking heat. There were only 3 sites marked in Kiepert and one of these I missed through Kiepert having placed it wrong. When I found it was Û of an hour behind me I had not the heart to turn back - one's hunger and thirst after archaeology is considerably abated when one is marching a ten hours' stage with the temperature over 80°. But we went at least an hour out of our way to see a fortress over the river which turned out to be nothing but a modern Turkish guard house fallen into ruin. But the site was magnificent and I do not doubt that the mud walls of the guard house were the last degenerate heirs of more honourable defences of which I saw traces upon the ground. Then we caught up the baggage animals, with great labour, and rode on and on over more stony ridges until at last we came down onto a wide loop of the river set with huge water wheels - Na'oura. Wherever you camp the long reaches of the river make your lodging place beautiful. We are far from all settled population and from any tents. The river turns the Na'oura, which, with a pleasant grumbling, lifts the water and spreads it over a little patch of corn and all happens as though it were part of the very processes of nature, as much a part as the springing of the corn from the ground. Two men and a little boy watch over the growing crop - tonight they are feasting on rice in my tents together with my soldiers and my Arab guides - an old man who is travelling to Baghdad and has joined himself to our company. He has carried the post over the desert road to Damascus [Dimashq (Esh Sham, Damas)] and has been to Nejd [Najd] and brought back a bullet in his cheek, so he can tell me tales in return for my entertainment. Tomorrow we cross the river and the Mesopotamian journey is over for the present - I have another game on hand. It is not very easy to come down this side of the stream. I am not thinking of any dangers - they are inconsiderable - but an untravelled road is always difficult. No one with you knows the way and the country is not mapped; you can buy no provisions; even fodder for your horses can only be obtained at long intervals. We have always carried 4 days' provision of corn and chopped straw and often enough we have had to scour the country when we ran short. Everything else we brought with us from Aleppo [Halab], and though I am no friend of tinned meats, I was prudent enough to lay in a stock in London for this part of the road. And we should have done ill without them, for sometimes we have ridden for days without being able to buy so much as an egg. All has gone well, thanks mostly to the foresight of Fattuh, to whom I explained before we started, the conditions we were likely to meet; everyone is well and happy and half the population of the river bank has dined with us as we passed!

Friday March 12. [12 March 1909] 'Ana ['Anah]. We had all kinds of adventure this morning. First we met an angry party of landowners from Rawa [Rawah] who were out with their rifles Arab-hunting - the Bedouins had come down to the river and eaten their growing crops. So we stopped by their irrigation streams and watered our horses and fell into talk and when we had been gone near an hour from the place, we found that our donkey had been left behind! So Fattuh and a soldier rode back and found him straying among some herds of other donkeys, but the Arab shepherds hard by had taken the opportunity of carrying off from his back the coat of one of the muleteers, a horse cloth and a few other stray things. Thereupon Fattuh took the law into his own hands, raided the Arab donkeys and carried off one, promising its owner to return it when he brought us our belongings. So you see the only raiders we met in the Jezireh [Jazirah, Al] were our own selves. It's a miserable little donkey; Fattuh wishes it had been a mare worth ú100. So we rode on to Rawa with the landowners who on the way cursed all and sundry Arabs, lock stock and barrel and threatened to take vengeance by laying hands on my guide (one of the two went back to his own place this morning, having met some acquaintances - the very same I expect who had eaten the corn). But Murawwah was not much alarmed, knowing he was under my protection, without which he would not have dared to enter Rawa. At Rawa we forded the river, to the surprise and joy of all the inhabitants who had never seen a caravan pass through their town before; and when we got to the other side we looked back and saw Tom howling upon the hills. It was more than I could bear and Fattuh and I went back and fetched him. But no sooner did we get into the long street of 'Ana than he took fright at the people and ran away. I don't suppose we shall see him again. As for Murawwah, we have sent him back to look after our stolen goods and probably we shan't see him again either. Only I haven't yet tipped him and he was very pleasant and obliging - it would go to my heart to have sent him empty away. 'Ana is like Maurice's wall; it's 3 hours long and one street broad. It has a very Babylonish look, its gardens full of palms, its single street full of the murmur of water wheels and the River washing its feet. Opposite my tents there is an island covered with palm trees. I feel we have crossed over an invisible frontier and got into another empire. Ever your affectionate daughter Gertrude