T. E. Lawrence to

Carchemish

 Nov. 4, 1912

Again I am writing to you out of season and without cause: there is no post going today, and none tomorrow I suppose, and it is days since one came: but as I have not written to you for a week I am going to, simply as a pious demonstration. I got a letter from Will asking about Arsenic treatment. In chronic malaria quinine has merely an encouraging effect: - as a preventative or palliative it is ridiculous. I gave Dahoum doses of quinine up to 20 grains a day for a fortnight, and his fever attacks came on all the same. then started the arsenic (in August) and he has had no trouble since: before that he was never long without trouble in the shape of high fevers and headaches. Chronic Malaria comes irregularly: the three day variety dies by quinine: you don't give arsenic for that though you may strychnine. In any case your man should ask a doctor (preferably continental) before starting to poison himself; and should guard carefully against diarrhoea the first few days. Dahoum is still taking about a gramme of arsenic a day: and quinine gentian carbon sacch. and Loadacum mixed with it: His was a specially desperate case.

Our news here is nothing: our stores are between Port Said and Alexandretta: our light railway also at Tripoli, Beyrout and Alexandria: an oven at Trieste, and sheer-legs and block in Marseilles. If we had photographic stuffs we would be quite content.

Yesterday, wolves came into our farm-yard at the back of the dining room and went off with our two sheep: so we have hired two noted hunters to go and kill them: they have dug a deep pit, and sit in it with a carcase before them; but only jackals have come so far to sniff about, for there has been a great deal of shooting tonight all round, and no doubt the wolf is scared easily by reports. I wonder what one would say in England if one had bullets singing over one's courtyard? Or it one's cook put his revolver on to cook an omelette? Our house is getting formidable in size: a new stores-house, a stable, a magazine, a harem, and a wash-house are now added, and a w.c. is building. We are very amused with the latter - the pit has a 49 foot drop! And it is vaulted in a hipped dome with pendentives: all in mud brick. Our roofs leak furiously, because we will not put mud over in Arab style, till we get waterproof paper from Aleppo to go under it: and to get things from Aleppo takes about a fortnight. However there are only three of our 16 rooms in this state: the others are mudded and are water-tight. We have been making quince, pear, and apple jam this week - all quite successfully: also finding some very good pottery (nothing large but mud-brick walls) in the digs, four cylinder seals, and some bronze-work. And besides we have bought some pottery and a sculpture from outside the digs: the sculpture seems to be a roman descendant of a Hittite goddess (seated on two lions) and is rather an interesting piece therefore. On the other hand we are only buying from a photo which Dahoum went and took of it and it may be Hittite: very unlikely the latter.

No other information that I can give you would in the least interest you. They say a war has broken out with Bulgaria and is finished already. Which may be true or not. I think Bulgaria has every possibility of finishing off Turkey (if the powers let her) because the Turks are such helpless stupids: however you will know better than us what has come to pass. I hope books are on the way for winter evenings: Salaamat.

N.

If the Museum does not send more money shortly we shut down works at the end of the month! Bankrupt!