Digging this morning. After breakfast Badcock and I rode along the shore to the ruins of the Roman fort and on about a mile to where a gang of natives are cutting a channel through from the sea to try and flood the gypsum. It doesn’t look as if it will be a success. Found a big turtle on the shore, but he was dead; he was about two ft long and one and a half across. Bathed when we got back.
Intelligence report this evening reports a good deal of activity at Hassana where there are now about three thousand mixed Germans, Austrian, Turks and Syrians, also guns. Agents report that El Arish, El Anja, and Bir El Saba have about three to five thousand men at each place, and nine aeroplanes at the latter place. Up in the O.Pip tonight.