A Woman in Arabia by Gertrude Bell Page B

1907
    The habit of building everything on the extreme top of hills is to be deprecated. It entails so much labour for subsequent generations. . . . I had found . . . a ruined site with a very perfect church on the top of a hill near my camp, and in the church was a half-buried stone which I thought was probably the altar. So I took up some of my men with picks and crowbars and had it out and it was the altar. . . . My Cast! oh my Cast! it’s more professional than words can say.
    Maden Sheher, May 25, 1907
    The Ramsays arrived yesterday. I was in the middle of digging up a church when suddenly 2 carts hove into sight and there they were. . . . They instantly got out, . . . Lady R. made tea (for they were starving) in the open and R. oblivious of all other considerations was at once lost in the problems the church presented. . . .
    Now I must tell you something very very striking. The church on the extreme point of the Kara D., at which I worked for 2days before R. came, has near it some great rocks and on the rocks I found a very queer inscription. The more I looked at it the queerer it became and the less I thought it could be Christian . . . I took it down with great care, curious rabbit-headed things and winged sort of crosses and arms and circles, and with some trembling I showed it to R. The moment he looked at it he said, “It’s a Hittite inscription. This is the very thing I hoped most to find here.” I think I’ve never been so elated. We now think of nothing but Hittites all the time. . . .
    I haven’t told you half enough what gorgeous fun it’s being! You should see me directing the labours of 20 Turks and 4 Kurds!
    May 29, 1907
    I get up at 5 and breakfast before the Ramsay family have appeared and go off before 6 to wherever we are digging, and stay there till 12 superintending and measuring as we uncover. . . . After lunch I go back to the diggings and stay there till 5 or later. R. generally appears on the scene about 7 or 8 in the morning and about 3 in the afternoon . . . he can’t physically do more. I shall have all the measuring and planning to do and I’m at it some 12 hours a day on and off. Nor can it be otherwise for that’s the part that I have undertaken.
    Daile, June 14, 1907
    You would be surprised to see the scene in the middle of which I am writing. Thirty-one Turks are busy with picks and spades clearing out a church and monastery. At intervals they call out to me “Effendim, effendim! is this enough?”
    July 5, 1907
    We spent the whole morning going from village to village along the side of the Karajadagh looking for ruins and inscriptions. Themanner of proceeding is this: you arrive in a village and ask for inscriptions. They reply that there are absolutely none. You say very firmly that there are certainly inscriptions and then you stand about in the hot sun for 10 minutes or so while the villagers gather round. At last someone says there is a written stone in his house. You go off, find it, copy it, and give the owner two piastres, the result of which is that everybody has a written stone somewhere. . . .
    Early in 1909, Gertrude made one of her most important desert expeditions, discovering the immense castle of Ukhaidir, crossing the desert between hostile tribes to get there.
    Ukhaidir, March 23, 1909
    We are through! without mishap and without adventure and I am exceedingly glad I took the desert road since all has turned out so well. . . . It’s extraordinarily peaceful and beautiful and all of us have a sense of relief as of people who have come safely out of perilous ways.
    March 26, 1909
    It is an enormous castle, fortress, palace—what you will—155 metres by 170 metres, the immense outer walls set all along with round towers, and about a third of the inside filled with court after court of beautiful rooms, vaulted