“We were staying at the government house in Van with Chakir Pasha at the end of September ’96, when we were unexpectedly informed that the hiding-place of the Armenian insurgents had been discovered. They had entrenched themselves in the gardens of the Armenian quarter of the town, and it would have been extremely difficult to get at them without artillery. Chakir, fearing that the Mussulman population might get beyond control if fighting was at once commenced, told off a large body of troops to cut off the Armenian quarter from the other part of the town. After this was done the Armenian revolutionists were driven out of the town, losing a number of killed and wounded. In the meantime the representative of the Armenian Bishop of Van called upon Chakir Pasha and showed him a telegram which he proposed to send at once to Monsignor Khrimyan, the Armenian _Catholikos_ of Etchmiadzin (in Russia), in which he said that, while the Armenians had for six hundred years been contented under the dominion of the Turks, people from abroad were now coming to trouble their tranquillity, and he begged Monsignor Khrimyan to use his influence to prevent such people from coming into the country, as they could only do the Armenians harm. To this Chakir Pasha replied that the telegram in itself was excellent, but it ought to have been sent long ago, and not at the very moment when the insurgents had been discovered by the authorities; that it was a matter of public notoriety that these people had been in Van for two months past, and that the Armenian community had been well aware of the fact, and ought to have apprised the authorities, so that they might distinguish between their friends and their enemies.” Of the members of the suite of Chakir Pasha with whom I had opportunities of talking the most interesting was Mavrocordato Effendi, an Orthodox Catholic, and related to the Greek princely family of the same name. He had previously been Turkish Consul-General at Liverpool and at Barcelona, Secretary of the Turkish Embassy at Paris, etc., and was a cultured European. He spoke English almost like an Englishman. Community of meals for several days following in stormy, depressing weather brought about mutual confidence and expansion of ideas. Mavrocordato had not been able to see his young wife and child for fifteen months, as he had accompanied Chakir Pasha in his mission right through Anatolia, or Kurdistan—a country many Europeans will persist in calling “Armenia.” He was a hard-working and zealous Turkish official, with the breadth of view of a cultured man of the world.