382 JOURNEYS IN KURDISTAN LETTER xxxiv

immense size extending for miles, with dismounted guns
upon them looking very black in the snow; of a deep
ditch, and a lofty rampart pierced by a fine granite
tunnel; of more earthworks, and of forts crowning all
the heights directly above the city, and of many flags
drooping on their staffs. Between the fortifications and
the town there is a great deal of open ground sprinkled
with rifle *" pits, powder magazines, and artillery, cavalry,
and infantry barracks, very solidly built and neatly kept up.
After passing through cemeteries containing thousands of
gravestones, we abruptly entered the principal street, wide
and somewhat European-looking, in which are some of
the Consulates and the Protestant Armenian church and
schools. The houses in this street are very irregular,
and most of them have projecting upper fronts.

I was received with the utmost kindness at the
American Mission House, where it has seemed likely that
I might be detained for the winter! I understood that
when I reached Erzerum I should be able to drive to
Trebizond in a fourgon, so I sent Murphy to Van on Boy,
and thought with much satisfaction of the ease of the
coming journey. Then I was ill, and afterwards found
that the fourgons were long rough waggons without
springs, in which one must lie or sit on the top of the
baggage, and that I should never be able to bear the
jolting. There was another heavy snowstorm, and winter
set in so rigorously that it was decided that driving was
out of the question, and that I must hire a horse. After
the matter had been settled thus, Murphy and Boy, both
in very bad case, were found in a low part of the town,
and though Murphy asserts that he encountered Kurds
near Hassan-Kaleh who robbed him of everything, it is
not believed that he ever passed through the city gate.
He looks a pitiable object, and his much-frogged uniform,
and the blanket, revolver, and other things that I had