with pleasure M. Ivanoff's friendly invitation to stay a day in his hospitable house. The last days' journeys as far as from Erzerum had been rather trying, and it was pleasant to sleep on for one morning and let the rattle and rumble of the road die out of my ears.
After the Mohammedan gentlemen had returned my call on the following day, we went out to have a look o at the singular little town, which stands at a height of 1' 6700 feet, 18 miles north-east of the still active volcano / Tandurek or " the little furnace." Bayazid is said to be inhabited by 800 families or 6000 persons, of which 350 families are Kurds, 250 Armenians, and the rest Turks, III Persians, Caucasians, and members of the garrison. A 1' road runs between Bayazid and Uch-kilisse to the north of Diadin which, it seems, is better and more level, but longer than the way I came, and from the soft ground it traverses t is called ifek yolli or " the silken road."
At the Russian Consulate visas are granted yearly for only two hundred passports, mostly for Tatar caravan leaders who are Russian subjects, and are engaged in transit transport. M. Ivanoff informed me that a third ï! of the men and camels which travel yearly to and from is Trebizond have their homes in the Russian provinces of j Erivan, Sharur-daralagöz, and Surmali. The other two- t thirds are from Persia. When the Russians, to encourage ~# their own trade and exclude foreign competition, closed Batum as a free port in the year 1890, the old caravan road through Trebizond and Erzerum received a great stimulus, though even now, as we have seen, only a fifth as much merchandise is transported along it as in the days before the Caucasian railway was opened. A severe blow = was also dealt to this route when the line was opened in I 1902 from Tiflis to Erivan, and trade found a convenient I road from the Black Sea to the country round Bayazid. The only difficulty that arose was that oxen and carts were I not allowed to pass from the Turkish side of the frontier to the Russian for fear of cattle plague, but in the year 1906 this prohibition was to be removed, and then communication would be unhindered. Already Russian caravans were passing with sugar, petroleum, and other goods to I
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