April 29 1907

Dear Prof. Osborn:

Your telegram came as we were about to leave for Cairo, so I came on in to town to bring the fossils and get them safely stored in the museum and also to get a warm weather outfit of clothing etc. We shall get into camp again tomorrow night and are prepared to remain now as long as there are any prospects of securing bones. We shall lose some time from hot winds but shall be able to prospect on the majority of day, I think.

Our collection is in the museum and the entire lot will be shipped after we leave for good. Capt. Lyons has offered to attend to all of the shipping and will have a man on the dock at Alexandria to see that the boxes are loaded carefully. The bill for transportation from Paris to Alexandria will be sent us later on.

Capt. Lyons leaves for England on May 4th. He was most accomodating in filling me out again with what I needed.

Mr. Ferrar has just returned from the Eastern Desert and remains in Cairo until about June 1st when he too goes to England. There seems to be a pretty general exodus of Englishmen during June and July.

The weather has been splendid the first few days with cool northerly winds. Our next (?) is due on May 6th - there winds last for one to two days and then there is a spell of fair weather in between.

Dr. (?) has unpacked all of the duplicate bones of the Survey Dept. Collection and I had an opportunity to see them. It seems that the dept. has promised several of the leading museums such as Washington, Paris, St. Petersburg, (?), Berlin, a small series of bones of Arsinoitherium and Palaeomastodon. There will be three or four limb bones and a fragmentary jaw or two and perhaps a few foot bones and a vertebrae or two in each lot. These were promised some time ago to various museums but Dr. (?) kindly allowed me to lay out such bones as I thought might be of use to us in making a possible restoration. He may allow me to bring these back to NY with the rest of our collection. The seem not to care about keeping much of the material here, as they are crowded for room.

The prospect for a mount is not so remote as it seemed at first. I have asked Markgraf to keep all good vertebrae and other skeleton bones and we can probably obtain them from him at a very reasonable price. If we are not to use much plaster in the restoration it will require a great number of bones, of course, but we have a large number ourselves and with what the Cairo museum can furnish and Markgraf can find we shall have a big collection to choose from.

Diradour failed completely. After a month of delay he finally sent the negatives with both sets of prints to Tamia, in spite of my having asked in two letters, at least, to have the better set sent directly to you. I haven't seen the prints yet but he tells me they are good. I'm very sorry about this, but it seems to be the Cairo way of doing business. The (?) people are still laboring over the order for 25 box labels, which Mr. Ferrar gave them while you were out here.

I now have in the Anglo-Egyptian Bank about $600 - and all bills to date are paid. There will also be about $100 to be returned to the Museum by Olsen and myself, being money which we have drawn from the museum fund for our personal use.

My daily expenses in the Fayum this coming (?) will be in the neighborhood of $6.50 for camels, men and food, or about $200 for the month. We shall take three natives and five camels which will make a light outfit - easily moved, and plenty large enough for this time of the year.

The prospect of being in the East during the summer once more is a very pleasant one and I'm sure that Mrs. Granger will be delighted. I thank you very much for writing to her as you did.

I shall remain in the desert now, at least, until I receive a letter from you written subsequent to your telegram. I had intended to remain until your first New York letter reached camp but discovered, when too late, that there was not sufficient food to last over until the camels could come out again. So we were forced to go into Tamia where your letter was awaiting me. We have lost a few days by it but perhaps the little respite from the desert has done us good, and it is better to have the bones at the Museum, too, instead of at Tamia where they were stored before.

I thought it would not be wise to try and send them to Giza by camel and did not want to make separate shipments by rail to I stored them with a native who has performed the same service for Mr. Beadnell before. We took the boxes all in on our train, a bit expensive, but perfectly safe. David held a cudgel over the transfer men and the cases were handled as if they held dynamite in them. It costs about $0.75 a case to ship to Cairo this way, besides a little backsheesh to the men.

Olsen and I have helmets now with flynets and sun shields, we are taking plenty of St. Galmier and shall take the precaution and have an Arab with us on all hot days. There will be some discomfort but if Markgraf can stand it we can.

With regard respect