This was Lawrence's first letter from Ceylon, written on March 25th, 1922. Already he was beginning to realise that the tropics, in spite of their interest and loveliness, were ‘not really his line’—‘not active enough,’ a realisation that was sharpened by an attack of malaria—his first. The carelessness of Italy was one thing, but the immense not-caring of the Orient was another. Though beautiful to look at, the East was ‘queer—how it seems to bleed one's courage and make one indifferent to everything.’ This was an indifference which the Englishman in Lawrence rejected. It belonged to an order with which he had neither blood contact nor other affinity, so he must get away from it. It was not what he sought—though he had to see it. Nauseous to him were the tropical scents and sounds, and the ‘boneless suavity of the East’ did not offer that ‘last dark strand from the previous pre-white era’ which by joining with ‘our own thin end’ would, Lawrence believed, establish a new flow of life.