_April_ 8.—This spot is like a thing in a fairy tale. Our pavilion contains several rooms on the ground-floor, grouped round a central piece where there is a fountain; and above this is a gallery with more empty rooms round it. We live on the ground-floor, and our windows open on to a narrow terrace with a low stone parapet, from which one can throw a stone down into the river. The Karkeria makes a sharp bend just above Shustar, round what looks like the most beautiful park, a level greensward with immense dark green shady trees, standing as if planted for ornament. Here we sit, and late in the evening and early in the morning I see a pair of pelicans swimming or flying below. The terrace communicates with the garden, which is gay with poppies, pink and lilac and white, in full bloom. There is a little tank, and a row of stunted palm-trees, where rollers, green and blue birds like jays, sit, while swifts dart about catching mosquitoes and flies, only a few hundred, alas, out of the millions that torment us. For there is no rose without a thorn, nor is this lovely kiosk and garden full of blooming poppies without its plague. The flies and mosquitoes are maddening, and to-day the heat of summer has burst upon us. After a hot night, the day dawned hotter still, and a sultry wind blew up dark clouds, till now the sky is black all round.
Towards evening we had thunder and lightning, but hardly a drop of rain; and to-night the air is heavy as lead. I am getting anxious now about the heat. I wish we could get away, either to the hills or the sea but I fear we shall be detained some days. The storm has prevented the Shahzade’s wakil from paying us the visit he announced this morning, and we cannot even prepare to go on without seeing him; we are, in fact, dependent on his assistance. We sent him our letter for the Shahzade early this morning, and Hajji Mohammed brought back word that he was coming immediately; but we have been waiting all day, and he has not come. What is still more tiresome is the unfortunate circumstance that no letter has come for us from the British Consul at Bussora. This puts us into an awkward position; we had given out that we expected the letter, and it is worse to say that one expects such a letter and not to get it, than never to have mentioned it.