p.

2.
This is quite the oddest place. The one I am in now, and I
don't really expect to be in an odder. About 1200 feet below
sea level - it's a bit much, really. Can you imagine it?
You leave Jerusalem, which is very high, and keep on
going downhill for miles & miles - until you eventually come
to a notice board which says - "Sea Level." You then just
keep on going downhill - its the queerest sensation - mentally
because it seems all wrong, & not at all the kind of thing
one would expect to do. And so you arrive at this camp of
ours. It is just that, barren, dustry, strong, lumpy ground.
On one side is the Dead Sea, & on the other side, those
strange, rugged, and & bare Biblical sort of hills. They are the
most amazing shapes, and & strange in outline - &
they are just rock, with a thin covering of lose stoney
sand, no growth on them at all. And of course, those
eternal madis - if you know what I mean? A madi is,
in a hill or mountain, like a ghyll in Yorkshire,in other
words. You are walking peacefully along the side of
a hill, & you are suddenly confronted with a drop of
2-300 hundred feet, & only about 100 feet wide. And
the flat ground is an endless succession of tiny, small
large, & enormous, wadis. And from where you stand
it all looks quite flat, but to try & walk or march
to any particular point, turns out to be quite another
matter. The flat ground, so called, is of course nothing
to look at - but the hills can be & are, very beautiful