We are buried in snow, and every road is a dug-out, with parapets of snow on either side.  All journeys have to be made by road, and generally over mountain passes, where you may or may not get through the snow.  One sees “breakdowns” all along the routes, and everywhere we go we have to take food and blankets in case of a camp out.  I have had to buy a motor-car, and I got a very good one in Tiflis, but they are so scarce one has to pay a ransom for them.  I am hoping it won’t be quite smashed up, and that I shall be able to sell it for something when I leave.

[Page Heading:  THE DIFFICULTY OF TRANSPORT]

Transport is the difficulty everywhere in these vast countries, with their persistent want of railways; so that the most necessary way of helping the wounded is to remove them as painlessly and expeditiously as possible, and this can only be done by motor-cars.  Only one of Mrs. Wynne’s ambulances has yet arrived, and in the end I came on here without her and Mr. Bevan.  I was wanted to give a member of the Legation at Tehran a lift; and, still more important, I had to bring a soldier of consequence here.  So long as one can offer a motor-car one is everybody’s friend.

Yesterday I was in request to go up to a pass and fetch two doctors, who had broken down in the snow.  The wind is often a hurricane, and I am told there will be no warm weather till May.  I look at a light silk dressing-gown and gauze underclothing, and wonder why it is that no one seems able to tell one what a climate will be like.  I have warm things too, I am glad to say, although our luggage is now of the lightest, and is only what we can take in a car.  The great thing is to be quite independent.  No one would dream of bringing on heavy luggage or anything of that sort, except, of course, Legation people, who have their own transport and servants.

On journeys one is kindly treated by the few Scottish people (they all seem to be Scots) scattered here and there.  Everywhere I go I find the usual Scottish couple trying to “have things nice,” and longing for mails from home.  One woman was newly married, and had only one wish in life, and that was for acid drops.  Poor soul, she wasn’t well, and I mean to make her the best imitation I can and send them to her.  They make their houses wonderfully comfortable; but the difficulty of getting things!  Another woman had written home for her child’s frock in August, and got it by post on February 15th.  Cases of things coming by boat or train take far longer, or never arrive at all.

I shall be working with the Russian hospital here till our next move.  There are 25 beds and 120 patients.  Of course we are only waiting to push on further.  The political situation is most interesting, but I must not write about it, of course.  It is rather wonderful to have seen the war from so many quarters.

The long wait for the cars was quite maddening, but I believe it did me good.  I was just about “through.”  Now I am in a bachelor’s little house, full of terrier dogs and tobacco smoke; and when I am not at the hospital I darn socks and play bridge.