T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 404

To Hogarth I feel I am bothering you Carchemish, over these plates but you are June 8. (1911) the most eligible person Your letters to Thomson & myself just comes very many thanks on account of the photographic notes: though I packed 10 of my films undeveloped: they may have become lost somehow. Will you send a list of the half a plate negatives, so that I may know what to take again? Another matter. Thompson was calculating for another ten days here, and so I have taken 60 photos. these last two weeks: all the pottery & small objects: except fragments of inscription & some reliefs. There are only about a dozen plates left, and subjects for most of these were booked: I will have to revise most of these photographs now, for every day we find new things: I will use up the ones I have taken in everything (small thanks for the chemicals, they are admirable) and so will get at the right length of exposure. The results will thus be better: but I will want at least 3, and better 4, dozen of brick-squint-joints: a plate as late times the Binocular camera has plenty still, for there has been little to do with it of late, since I put in most of the day u. here at the house. getting pottery, and photographing things. I have plenty of my own films now, for the prolongation of the diggings will take from me all chance of much castle-hunting this season. Small objects I have to take indoors of course. These great winds blow every day & every night, and in the open air all a carefully arranged sheet of beads or whorls is sent rolling to the four airs. Even large pots tumble about. If you can secure those packets of plates to Pontana shortly they will arrive for the death, just when they are wanted. I don't think we are likely to have (another, deleted) enough with- out them. The heat is not bad, and cannot be, as long as the winds stay cool: the ices of digging on is glorious, for there is really ... hope of several parts of the digs. That is Thompson's department tho'; He is not quite at ease in all points: this bi-weekly letters depress him vastly: I expect that affair is not likely to survive this new shock of separation: and he is rather cut up about it. though very determined that ...e are ...ing: it gains more than ever swears that in hot weather one must constrain oneself to eat plenty of m-a: we were provident not to throw away the covering stone of the last champagne grave on the mound. By the ... of 60 pots in this year's grave (the best bag to date) a sort painted in red, & one incised: there were two axes and a ... chisel, four spears, a big dagger ... and a metre & a half (about 750) beads. Took me all day to dig. We have nearly