[Page 552]
C/o D. M. S.
Cairo
Egypt
18.9.15
My dear Girls:
How the time speeds by! More than half of the September month has gone, and I am still in Egypt, and at this same barrack hospital, with my ever flowing in and out of a stream of patients, to night there are 600 sleeping in the wards or the tents, far too many of course. I have been daily expecting orders to move on and still do so, they may come at any moment then Jerom and I shall be on the move again.
He has been keeping very well of late, growing too fat, and appearing to be as happy as a youngster. He has not yet ceased to speak of the letter which you Carrie dear were so good as to write to him, he sent reply by the last mail, which was probably the one to be carried by the Orsova Southwards. The Orient coy advertises daily in a paper named the Egyptian Gazette, but the sailing dates are not now advertised near to the day of passing any one spot, because it is said that the German submarines might sink her, and of these if reports be correct there are some in the Mediterranean Sea, there was announcment during the week that two French ships had been sunk by them.
I gave into the charge of T. Cook and sons [Thomas Cook and Sons] a box with your address upon it. The contents are of no commercial value being simply stones of various kinds from the country around Abbassia. Keep the Alabaster and the petrified wood for yourselves, and to distribute mongst your friends and mine as you may select, with my compliments and yours. The alabaster to my mind is best in the rough state serving to remind one of the historic land from whence it is sent; the stone wood speaks to one of by gone age when it was as are the ordinary trees are now, there is much of it scattered through the dessert, in some places being aggregated into so called forrests. One large specimen looks like a piece of wood which had been cut with some instrument, a not too well sharpened axe, this and the other stones that you do not require are for Prof David as are also the other specimens with the ringed and other markings, look at them for a few minutes and you will note how strange they look. Father Vrigille, the Jesuit told me this afternoon that the larger specimen was representative of the palm trees of long ago. Ask the Prof. if he thinks like wise? The sand is for the Prof. too. I may send another small box during the week to the Minister for mines for the Government museum. Prof David in his letter to me asked for the sand and intimated that he had no stone