Our horses and mules were hobbled and groomed. Hanna brought me an excellent cup of tea and at 6 a good dinner consisting of soup made of rice and olive oil (very good!) an Irish stew and raisins from Salt, an offering from Tarif. My camp lies just under Pisgah. Isn’t it a joke being able to talk Arabic!

March 25, 1900

I . . . came back to my tent where I was presently fetched by a little Turkish girl, the daughter of an Effendi, who told me her mother was sitting down in the shadow of the wall a little below my camp and invited me to come and drink coffee. We went down hand in hand and I found a lot of Turkish women sitting on the ground under a fig tree, so I sat down too and was given coffee and as they all but one talked Arabic, we had a cheerful conversation.

Of Her Druze Muleteers, April 2, 1900

They both talk with the pretty, soft, sing-song accent of the Lebanon. I have a good variety of accents with me, for Tarif has the Bedouin and Hanna the real cockney of Jerusalem. They appeal to me sometimes to know which is right.

Gertrude traveled to Malta and Italy with her family, then went on alone to several countries farther east.

Haifa, Palestine, April 7, 1902

This is my day: I get up at 7, at 8 Abu Nimrud comes and teaches me Arabic till 10. I go on working till 12, when I lunch. Then I write for my Persian till 1.30, or so, when I ride or walk out. Come in at 5, and work till 7, when I dine. At 7.30 my Persian comes and stays until 10, and at 10.30 I go to bed. You see I have not much leisure time! And the whole day long I talk Arabic.

Haifa, April 2, 1902

It’s perfectly delightful getting hold of Persian again, the delicious language! But as for Arabic I am soaked and saddened by it and how anyone can wish to have anything to do with a tongue so difficult when they might be living at ease, I can’t imagine. . . . The birds fly into my room and nest in the chandelier!

“My First Night in the Desert,” May 16, 1900

My soldiers are delighted that I can talk Arabic; they say it’s so dull when they can’t talk to the “gentry.” They talk Kurdish together, being of Kurdish parentage, but born in Damascus. Their Arabic is very good. Mine is really getting quite presentable. I think I talk Arabic as well as I talk German (which isn’t saying much perhaps!), but I don’t understand so well. It’s so confoundedly—in the Bible sense!—rich in words.

On Gertrude’s second around-the-world journey, she was accompanied by her half-brother, Hugo.

India, in the Train from Alwar to Delhi, January 18, 1903

My thrice blessed Hindustani, though it doesn’t reach to any flowers of speech, carries us through our travels admirably and here we were able to stop where no one has a word of English, without any inconvenience.

Burma, on the Irrawaddy River, March 2, 1903

We came to a very small steam boat. . . . A steep and slippery plank led out to the boat. I took my courage in both hands, crept along it, lifted the awning, and received a broadside of the hottest, oiliest, most machinery laden air, resonant with the snores of sleepers. I lit a match and found that I was on a tiny deck covered with the sheeted dead, who, however, presently sat up on their elbows and blinked at me. I announced firmly in Urdu that I would not move until I was shown somewhere to sleep. After much grumbling . . . one arose, and lit a lantern; together we sidled down the plank and he took us back to one of the mysterious hulks by the river bank. It was inhabited by an old Hindu and a bicycle and many cockroaches.

Tokyo, May 24, 1903

In one of the temples, a wonderful place all gold lacquer and carving set in a little peaceful garden, a priest came up to me and asked if I were an American. I said no, I was English. . . . I replied in Japanese, in which tongue the conversation was being conducted. . . .

During the years in Mesopotamia she came to speak many Arabic dialects so well that she once disguised herself and was able to tease King Faisal by convincing him that she was a talkative camel driver.

Baghdad, November 29, 1920

I love walking with the beaters (at a shoot) and hearing what they say to each other in the broadest Iraq dialect, which I’m proud to understand.

Baghdad, June 23, 1921

. . . I have been elected President of the Bagdad Public Library.