will hate war when it can pause to think
about it.

I had quite a cheerful letter from Foss this mail. I wonder he wasn't
more damaged, as the bullet seems to have passed through some very
important parts of him. I am rather dreading the lists which are
bound to follow on our much-vaunted advance of three weeks ago. As for
the Dardanelles, it is an awful tragedy. And now with Bulgaria against
us and Greece obstructed by her King, success is farther off than
ever.

No, Luly is not with me: I was the only officer with the draft. As for
impressions of our surroundings they are definite but not always
communicable.

If this neighbourhood could certainly be identified with Eden, one
could supply an entirely new theory of the Fall of Adam. Here at
Amarah we are 200 miles by river from the sea and 28ft. above sea
level. Within reach of the water anything will grow: but as the Turks
levied a tax on trees the date is the only one which has survived.
There are little patches of corn and fodder-stuff along the banks, and
a few vegetable gardens round the town. Otherwise the whole place is a
desert and as flat as this paper: except that we can see the bare
brown Persian mountains about forty miles off to the N.N.E.

The desert grows little tufts of prickly scrub here and there,
otherwise it is like a brick floor. In the spring it is flooded, and
as the flood recedes the mud cakes into a hard crust on which a
horse's hoof makes no impression; but naturally the surface is very
rough in detail, like a muddy lane after a frost. So it is vile for
either walking or riding.

The atmosphere can find no mean between absolute stillness--which till
lately meant stifling heat--and violent commotion in the form of N.W.
gales which blow periodically, fogging the air with dust and making
life almost intolerable while they last. These gales have ceased to be
baking hot, and in another month or two they will be piercingly cold.

The inhabitants are divided into Bedouins and town-Arabs. The former
are nomadic and naked, and live in hut-tents of reed matting. The
latter are just like the illustrations in family Bibles.

What I _should_ be grateful for in the way of literature is if you
could find a portable and readable book on the history of these parts.
I know it's rather extensive, but if there are any such books on the
more interesting periods you might tell Blackwell to send them to me:
I've got an account there. My Gibbon sketches the