After Ernesto took Gilbert to see the Roman aqueducts at the suburb of Paradiso east of Smyrna the next morning, Gilbert returned to the Lambs at noon. 

Sir Harry Lamb (1857-1948), formerly the Assistant High Commissioner in Constantinople, was the British Consul-General in Smyrna. He had married Sabina, daughter of Commendatore Felice Maissa, a career diplomat whose family was known to Gilbert Bagnani and his mother; he had been the Italian Ambassador in Constantinople before becoming Governor at Rhodes, just before de Bosdari. The Lamb’s younger daughter Dorina, was in eastern Anatolia seriously ill, and died there a few days later. Lamb’s son (later Sir) Lionel was then beginning his own diplomatic career in China.  

Then Sabina Lamb took Gilbert to meet the wife of the manager of the British railway company, perhaps because she had been acquiring (illicitly excavated) antiquities from shops in Smyrna. Googling revealed that the British railway company was the Smyrna-Aydin railway whose General Manager was Hon. Major-General Raymond de Candolle (1864-1935). De Candolle was a member of a Swiss family of prominent botanists but he himself was an engineer, developing railway lines for British interests around the world. His services to the Allies during the war were invaluable, particularly in Romania. In January 1921 de Candolle went to Smyrna in Turkey to manage the Ottoman Railway Company whose rail line ran south to Aydin and then eastward up the Meander River Valley. Aydin was in ruins since 1919 and the British objected to the Greek administration’s use of the British-owned railway for their military as it had resulted in destructions along the line and moreover would compromise their delicate standing with Turkish General Kemal: it was still unclear whether Kemal considered his new Republic of Turkey to be at war with Britain. A recent book about de Candolle, Great War Special Agent, written by his great nephew, Philippe Bieler, using family papers, was published in 2020, after the text for Lost Worlds was sent to my publisher Archaeopress.