a half years of foreign service without a
break, did not relish this task, and even went to the expense of
telegraphing for permission to exchange; but this effort was in vain,
for the laconic reply of the Commander-in-Chief was: "Lieutenant
Gordon must go." If Gordon had under-estimated the time required for
the Bessarabian delimitation, he slightly over-estimated that for the
Armenian, as his anticipated two years was diminished in the result to
twenty-one months.

He left Constantinople on 1st May 1857 on board a Turkish steamer,
_Kars_, bound for Trebizonde. The ship was overcrowded with dirty
passengers, and the voyage was disagreeable, and might have been
dangerous if the weather had not proved exceptionally favourable. On
arriving at Trebizonde horses had to be engaged for the ten days'
journey across the 180 miles of difficult country separating that port
from Erzeroum, the Armenian capital. The total caravan of the English
and French Commissioners--the latter being Colonel Pelissier, a
relative of the Marshal--numbered ninety-nine horses; and the Turkish
Commissioner, being unable to obtain any money from his Government,
seized the horses necessary for his journey in a manner that first
opened Gordon's eyes to the ways of Pashas. He stopped on the road
every caravan he met, threw off their goods, put on his own, and
impounded the animals for his journey. After a brief stay at
Erzeroum--which Gordon describes as a very pretty place at a distance,
but horribly dirty when entered, and where there are eight or nine
months of very hard winter--the Commission passed on to Kars, which
became its headquarters. The heroic defence of that fortress was then
recent, and it is still of sufficient interest as a military episode
to justify the quotation of the evidence Gordon, with his
characteristic desire to be well informed, collected on the spot while
the events themselves were fresh. For convenience' sake, his remarks
on Kars and the whole campaign are strung together here, although they
appeared in several letters:--

"Kars is, as you can easily imagine, a ruined city, and may
perhaps never recover its former strength and importance. As far
as the works of defence are concerned, they are excessively badly
traced. A little pamphlet published by Kmety, a Hungarian, gives
a graphic description of the siege. One thing difficult if not
impossible to realise without seeing it, is the large exte