Dear George,

Your ship letter contained wise words: in fact it was an inspiration and exactly what I wanted to know. As you say, when I retrun, I ought to be prepared to start work along some special line.

At present, I'm a restful vacation in comparison to the work I had given me in Paris and Carthage. I'm at Utica, in charge of the excavations on the richest site in North Africa. As an assistant, I have a strange old artist Frenchman, whom I keep busy writing the journal of discoveries. If you have read Conan Doyle's "Lost World" and seen the illustrations, you will remember Lord Ruxton. This man is of his exact character, he even has the goatie, mustache and the chest of several dozen arms. We live together in four little rooms in the village of Sidi Bou Chteur and every night we take a long walk through the bedouin inhabited ruins, carrying our revolvers in hand to keep off the dogs and wild animals. I'm having a wonderfully interesting experience living with this curious person, and knowing him so well; I feel like the leading actor in a R. L. Stevenson tale.

Next time you find yourself in a mood to improvise a letter, let me know about yourself, and what has developed out the Hammond Laboratory scheme.

Dear Dad,
I've just returned for a rest from Utica where I toiled without relief for weeks. It has been a wonderful and a strange experience. I had gangs of workmen excavating in all parts of the ruins, Arabs, Sicilians, Maltese, Italians and French, that I had to keep separated so as not to have too many wars. Even with this arrangment there was always a revolt going on. On certain days I amused myself by paying my men, and on these occasions I felt like Gisco must have when he paid the mercenary armies out of a great chest of gold. My Italians didn't speak French or Arabic and couldn't understand the Maltese or Sicilian dialects. And each Maltese Arab and Sicilian understood nothing other than his own provincial tongue. I had a linguist foreman, but there was little he could do with this arm of illiterate workmen. I kept the accounts and dealt out the funds as I liked; when there were misunderstandings, and the men were discontent, there were strikes and feuds and wars. I fired whole gangs at a time, and sent for more in Biserte to come and take their places and live with the rest in the Roman cisterns. I've known such a complicated pay role. The wages range from five to eighteen francs per day, according to the nationality and the customary pay of the districts in which we found them. My controling the wgaes of this city of wanders alone was enough to put in an adventurously dangerous position.

For two weeks you clippings have kept us all well informed as to the progress of the in Carthage as, a matter of fact there has beena marvelus amount of red tape and the excavations have been remarkably slow in getting started. Tanit for one has been in full swing for three weeks, but the excavations of the Roman Forum, and the Punic Ports, haven't yet been started. Tanit in operation is like a great metropolis of ants. A network of narrow gauge lines has been laid and everywhere earth carts can be seen rushing down slopes covered with clinging Arabs, and dump into donkey carts waiting in line to haul the rich black earth off to the Sea. Your plan of coming to Europe this summer is great. It will be wonderful if something really comes of it.

Dear Mother,
Palais Hamilcar, that last year was so gay and so beautiful, has become a factory and a zoo with the invitation of professionals.

I could never be an archaeologist with these human freaks representing the fellows I would have in the trade. The bear of our zoo is Prof. Swain, the scientific photographer for Michigan. He's bearded, about fifty-five, and the great-out-door-boy-that-never-grew-up sort. He hasn't washed his hands since he's been in Africa, never changes his clothes and is filthier every time I see him. At the table I usually have a notebook to take down master phrases. Last night, after fifteen minutes of silence, he said, "The wind is blowing hard enough to tear the wind off a hairless dog." then his son, who acts as one of his chaufeurs and is Papa's miniature, piped up with "Where dg git thaat?"

All the Michigan representatives are alike, with the exception of Prof. Kelsey, who I'm sure isn't far removed. These are reknowned men, and some of them are considered greatest in their particular lines. Every night after dinner, the multitudes gather and a deadly detailed report of the previous day's work, including descriptions, locations, dimensions and elevations of each shard of pottery, and each meaningless scrap of bronze, is read. Then every man gives a report of the work of his division, and the meeting adjourns. You can easily imagine how God forsaken Sidi Bou Said is this year.

Alice has arrived but Angela and the rest of the Kennys have decided not to come this year. There will be no gaeity but I will be able to do some writing, and the work this year is many times more interesting and Carthage is just as beautiful.

Dear Dad,
Plans have changed constantly since the day we left New York. At present, instead of being on the road to the Hougarth with the expedition which has been postponed until the fall, or in Utica, where I was until Prof. Kelsey decided he needed me in Carthage, I'm sitting in the shade of a Roman wall on the highest point of the hill of Juno, overlooking the groups of Arabs excavating in the various areas of my domain.

This morning four of our cars left Sidi Bou Said for Tozeur, passing through the same country I saw last year. I decided I'd rather stay in Carthage and help continue the work, as the crowd that was going was wonderfully dull, besides that fact that I'd been over the ground.

For the last three weeks, ever since Kelsey left for Egypt, I've been running Juno. I chose it because, although it is by no means the most interesting of the three present excavations, it is the nicest. I have my lunch every day in a little study I'm creating in a small cistern back of the museum, and from eight in the morning until six at night I never have to cross the borders of my ground. There are just twenty odd workmen to keep an eye on, which is a great relief after the Utica gangs; and still enough is found to keep me busy all day. On the iste of the forum, eighty shaggy laborers, mostly Berbers and black central Africans, are digging through Byzantine streets and villas to reachthe Roman and Punic levels. At Tanit, forty Arabs under Abbe Chabot have, unearthed the whole stele level, and three hundred odd discovered this week are standing in place. Our director, Mr. Stoever, has contributed wonderful system to the expedition. Every man has his work and responsibilities, and the whole operates like a great machine. For example, every night at a certain hour, each man has to have scrupulously cataloged every object found in his division during the day., and have written a report for the journal which is typed and read at the evening meeting. My expenses in Africa I'm sure are going to come to a good deal less than last year's; for at Utica and at Sidi Bou Said, I have been paying thirty francs a day, and in less than two weeks the expedition will be paying my share of the living expenses for me.

I hope that by the time this letter reaches you, you will be feeling up to the mark again, and that the plans for a trip to England will have progressed.

Dear Mother.
My old Abbe Moulard is just sprinting out of sight arounf one of the earth mounds, with all of his flowing black robes flapping, and his pockets bulging with heavy gold bracelets, opaz cameos, and ruby scarabs set in intricately worked priceless metals. He has come in from Utica for a couple of hours to show his last treasures to Pere Delattre, and has just been in to see me at the excavations for a few minutes on his way up to the monastery. I have lots of company at Juno. Pere Delattre came in for an hour this morning, and looked over my recent finds. And I always have some french archaeologist or a White Father on my hands, to keep me constantly speaking French. Everyday I find myself carrying ona more fluent conversation.

The other day at noon time, while the scurvy arabs were sprauled out asleep every where in the excavations blocking all the entrances to the cataloging rooms, and I was typing away in my little study, I heard Arab groans that were louder than usual, and Mr. Benoist, Elizabeth and Agnes appeared in the doorway at the end of the hall. It took me almost a whole minute to believe my eyes and greet them. I spent the rest of the day with them, visiting Palais Hamilcar, and every possible corner of Carthage. And that night, Jerry and I met them in Tunis with one of the Michigan cars, and spent the evening intil two o'clock driving inthe Arab quarters and wandering in the "Souks". Because of Ramidan the minarets were hung with lanterns and the shops were open, and the streets gay with celebrating Arabs.

I've had the portrait I had made in Paris for some time, and have been afraid to send it to you. There are copies of two poses, six of each. I'm sending you two samples of each, and should you want the rest, I'll send them on later.

Very soon, my letters will be full of the photographs I'm taking with my new camera.

Dear Dad,
Great changes seem to have taken place in mthe plans I had for my writing. I learned on the boat that Byron's book is coming out in September, and that he isn't very anxious for me to consider having one published before next year. In fact he really doesn't want me to do any writing, but this is another problem: I'm begining to know Byron.

As soon as I arrived in France I wrote Breck that we would have to forget about the book for awhile and that I would merely write articles that later could be revised. Ever since I've been in Africa, I've been so busy and have had such responsibilities, that I haven't found time to do any finished writing. While I was in Utica, I outlined an article, and wrote the history of the site, with the help of Abbe Moulard, the only student of the unwritten city's history. And at present I'm outlining a chapter of Dougga. Outside of this, and the books and books of notes I've made since the very first day, I've done nothing in the way of writing.

Although every word I read on archaeology and Carthage, either popular or scientific, and every one I've had to tell my plans, as not to break any of the numerous rules written out in the contracts, for selfish reasons, has been discouraging to me, I'm still enthusiastic abotu oir book and want to spend all next year's spare time over it.

On the sixteenth of May, the GREAT AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPEDITION TO GLORIOUS CARTHAGE, AND THE GOLDEN CITIES OF THE SAHARA, will come to an end for 1925! I'm afraid I feel, and have felt as George did when he wrote his last violent and Flauberian letter. For me these months in Carthage have been by no means a failure. The simple fact that each day of living with these people has been strenuous, and so nearly unbearable, has made this a very great and even too great experience. Please don't gather that I feel this way because I haven't made friends, for really I've succeeded in controlling myself to such an extent that I find myself everyone's friend, which is an extremely rare curiosity chez nous.

I hope it is not true, that I'm impressing you as was expressed in the last letter from home, for it is not true.

Dear Mother and Dad,
Carthage this year has really been a far greater experience for me than last, perhaps not as much archaeologically as in every way. I've gotten the greatest amount of good out of learning to know so many people and seeing life. Washington has been good fun and a wonderful man to know, and Hayes and Wells have been great fellows, while old Jerry who is just as changed as he can be this year has become a friend for ever more. All the others, to me, are interesting, each in some way a curiosity. I know Byron and Alice and Kelsey now, and I find that just a few months ago I hadn't begun to really know any of them. My report on this subject will have to be a verbal one, I'm afraid.

Some time ago the celebrated expedition broke up suddenly in some very remote spot in the Sahara, and for the last two weeks, the cars have been drifting in form every direction, one by one. Every one of the crowd came back thoroughly bored, with the expected energy and enthusiasm to work the last two weeks, and with all the intentions of announcing to us, "Now, let's all get down to work." Washington considers the whole expedition a farce, including Kelsey and Byron.

A week ago the work at Juno stopped so that I could get to work on the estampi, papier-mache prints of the hundreds of inscriptions. One day after the staff meeting, Kelsey addressed me in his usual formal way, opening with a long preface and introduction , and said that after much thought he had come to the conclusion that with all my architectural training and experience, I was the only member of the staff capable of making these impressions properly. And what a great service I would be rendering to Science, etc. etc. etc. With these flowery words he burdened me with the most tedious and deadly task in archaeology, making estampi. In the last few days I've made seven hundred odd and I can't leave until I finish three hundred more. It's a hard race for the Thursday boat of the seventh, but I'm going to make it I know. Ordinarily, thirty impressions is considered a good days work, so you can imagine what a thousand in six days must be, with my reputation as Kelsey's master as to their quality, to keep.

Tell me in a letter to Athens what you mant me to do, and what has happened to your plans, and what wrecked them. I hope you are still going to Carmel. I know you need Carmel after so long in New York. I feel that I am being unfair seeing so much that is beautiful, while you are not.

Dear Mother,
Leaving Carthage was like being launched out into the great unknown.

I spent my last night in Tunis, and early next morning, before the customs opened found, a douanier and persauded him with a five franc note to stamp my baggage, and send it on board the little steamer without inspection. It was a very nessesary act as my trunk was bulging with antiques that I hadn't been able to get permits for with the Poinsot troubles. Until now there hasn't really been any use in telling you of the wonderful junk I'm collecting for, just as easily as not, it might all have been confiscated leaving Tunisia.

All my heavy and fairly unbreakable antiques I sent to Paris in seven big cases. And all the rest, except for a box of urns I sent you two weeks ago, is safely in Palermo. Among the ponderous junk of the seven cases were seventy Greek and Punic pottery inscriptions, fifty of which were published as a collection in the Bulletin Archaeologue of the Academy a year ago, and a very complete collection of sixty prehistoric impliments I bought from a officer who had just brought them back with him from his army post down in the Sahara. Besides endless miscelaneous Punic and Roman pottery, bowls, glazed plates and cups, bronze and terracotta statuettes, fragments of statuary, lamps from all the periods from the earliest Phoenicians and Greek, to the Moors and Medieval Arabs, twenty off pottery tear bottles, etc. But the finest peices I have are in Palermo.

The gems of the collection are two rare sixth century Punic vases from the necropolis of Douimes, a Roman bronze sacrificial frying pan like vessel, and a Punic fourth century glass bottle, beutifully painted and designed in light blues and greens. Washington enthuses over them. The other day he suggested that if I ever am in need of money, I can sell them to any American museum for a great deal. In my library I have dozens and dozens of brochures I got from Poinset, the Pere Dellattre and Icard, may of which are out of print and priceless. Besides these I have the only collection of Tanit estampi outside of the sets I made for the Academy and Michigan.I'm reading a wonderful play, "The Carthaginians" by Frank Taylor. A story of the last chapter of Hannibal's life, in which he is made the greatest man of all ages, and a true God. It's a story you must read sometime.

Vol. 8.
...
Relating to the cost and difficulties connected with the acquistion of land in Carthage, Byron, who had hoped to start a new dig on the presumed site of the Agora, had recently struck a snag in his negotiations and got himself into an embarrassing situation.

Perhaps because of commitments he had made through advance publicity he felt the duty-bound to make some sort of gesture. At any rate and by way of a character study of my friend and benefactor I quote from the dispatch he sent tot he N.Y. Times describing an incident he created out of whole cloth.
"Excavation of forum to start tomorrow - first large scale thoroughly scientific attempt to uncover glory that was Carthage - deal closed for three acres at foot of Byrsa - Grand Duchess Marie Pavlova wields gilded pick axe shaped like sign of Tanit - Tricolors of Franco-American Expedition flutter over the scene."

Additional personnel and props assembled on the site included the Baron Rodolphe d'Erlanger with a black Rolls Cabriolet beyond, the Governor of Tunisia, Saladin Baccouche, ourselves with a group of Americans off a boat and a broken column stuck in the ground.

At the height of the proceedings, with Pathé camera grinding and Byron lacking only a megaphone in his rle as director, Alice de Prorok cracked a bottle of Champagne on the phony column and cut her wrist.
Despite streams of blood Byron went on with the scene while I took it upon myself to get Alice to the White Father's clinic on the hill. With transportation provided by the Baron's car the victim and I soon found ourselves in a room lined with shelves of brown nottles. The injury was looked after by a monk, the bleeding stopped and the superficial damage repaired.

When we got back to the "agora" the performance was over and the party was breaking up -- and I for one met with a rather cool reception from the director
...
Apr 21 - May 10
...
The work Stoever assigned to me for the next three weeks was to be at Juno where a general clean-up and re-ordering both inside and out was the first requirement. The vaulted basements that provided the tool room, warehouse, museum, laboratory, office and living quarters for the caretaker needed reorganizing to provide space where I would then make squeezes of the Tanit inscriptions.
The outside clean-up consisting mostly of the removal of an accumulation of rubble would come first and this seemingly harmless task landed me in considerable hot water. Stoever's instructions had been to hire a horse and cart and supervise the loading so that no dressed fragment of the slightest significance left the site. I would then accompany the material to the shore where it would be dumped at the water's edge.

The cart-operator I engaged just happened to be a carriage-driver friend who was adding a room to his house and here was my undoing for he somehow presuaded me to let him have the rubble he carted away. When this criminal act was discovered I tried to explain my behavior on the basis of the humanitarian motivation - my second mistake which surely taught me the lesson "never explain." Of course I turned over to Stoever the four francs per hard payments that had collected in the office instead of a charge for hiring the cart.

Soon I was able to start on the inside re-arrangements and made my first squeezes under Abbé Chabot's direction. WHen the work at Utica closed down Wells gave me a hand and as time went on the weather outside got very [hot] and the weather inside sweltering.

There were nearly a hundred inscriptions and four complete sets were required - a set each for for the Academie, McGill, Michigan and de Prorok. First we cleaned the incised lettering and laid out the stelae we could handle in a day, then cut the paper as economically as possible and spent the rest of our time beating the wet paper with brushes. When the papier maché impressions were ready they were left to dry over night.

At the end of April, Byron and his crowd returned after nearly two-thousand miles on the road and the scene at Sidi Bou Said took on new life. With them they brought more than a thousand stone implements picked up around Matmata and crossing the divide into Algeria. All of these had been identified by Regasse whim they had seen in Tebessa as neolithic of the Stahran period.

Regasse had added to this collection as many more as a gift, two hundred of this were paleolithic - Aurignacian, Mousterian, and Tardenoise, Gsell was also in Tebessa at the time and Byron took the opportunity to discuss with the his Hoggar expedition projected for th Fall.

The photographs the Swains brought back were magnificent, unequalled as record of the places they had been - the panoramic views were outstanding - and all of this had been processed and printed en route in their traveling dark room.

By May 3rd more than half the squeezes were finished and Shorey left with his McGill set complete. He also took with him several cases of Punic and Roman antiquities and my co-worker C. C. Wells. On May 6th I completed the set for the Academie and Chabot sailed for Marseilles with them the next day.
On the 8th I finished my work at Juno and that night after dinner Prof. Perterson read his final account of the Tanit Excavations for the 1925 season. 1200 odd urns, 500 odd stelae and altars and 170 other objects had been catalogued. Because of moisture the contents of urns generally had not been studied. Most of the altars and blank stelae had been left in place. Except examples of urns sent to McGill an Michigan Universities for study all other material was in storage.

The day before I sailed for Palermo I visited Icard in his cramped little office where he performs his duties as Chief of Police in the midst of burgeoning accumulation of antiquities. We had planned this meeting sometime earlier and he had meanwhile put together a collection of objects which I had offered to buy from him as follows:
Tomb objects from Carthage 6th to 4th Century
-Hand-modeled glass alabastron of Egyptian origin or derivation.
(Modeled over a core - the pattern is believed to have been produced with threads of colored glass pressed into the surface while semi-molten. Blown glass doesn't appear until the 1st century BC.)
-Typical funerary vases which might be classified as a Lekythos with disk-like lip, and a narrow-necked olpe?
- A baby's milk-bottle originally painted like a toy and two folded-type lamps found in a child's grave.
Other misc material
-An assortment of amphora handles from Carthage with potter's marks indicating their origin and telling of the commerce of the period.
-Roman bronze spear head and collection of bronze arrow heads.
-Collection of lead pottery projectiles.
-Collection of diminutive flint arrow heads and a sampling of stone implements from various periods as well as hand modeled clay bowl found in the tomb chamber of a neolithic tumulus.
-Roman pottery including lamps of various periods and examples of ordinary kitchen ware.
-Roman bronze fry pan.
-Byzantine carved ivory panel from reliquary.

May 10
There had been so many send-offs lately that my departure drew little attention - with Icard my only friend on the pier, he was there to make sure there was no hitch in taking my antiquities through customs. I had said my goodbyes and thanks to Byron and Alice the night before and had a rather formal exchange with the Stoevers at an early breakfast. Most of the others I would see in Palermo a few days hence and Henry Washington would put me up in Rome.
...

Bibliography

Kelsey1926: Kelsey, Francis W. Excavations at Carthage, 1925. A Preliminary Report. The MacMillan Company, New York (1926).

 O'Neil1992a: O'Neil, Horton. My Parents and Their Children. Unpublished manuscript (1992).

 O'Neil1992b: O'Neil, Horton. Life with My Wife. Unpublished manuscript (1992).

 Prorok1923: de Prorok, Byron Kuhn. Fouilles à Carthage. Imprimerie Nationale, Paris (1923).