Thus our feeling of relief was great when we had happily crossed the Zigana Pass without further trouble than the anxious moments involved in dodging the camels, mules, and sheep we met; their tinkling bells warning us of their approach, whilst we in our turn warned them with our own bells hanging at our horses’ necks. There was only one critical moment, at least for me, when my horse became restive, for it looked as if intent on negotiating the abyss. I rose in my stirrup, ready to jump off on the inside, so as to allow of my mount taking the fatal leap alone. On the evening of November 21 we arrived at Baiburt, the largest town in the Armenian Highlands after Erzeroum, from which it is still 105 kilometres away. Baiburt is about 1638 metres above sea-level, and occupies an important commercial and strategic position. It is situated on the fringe of the Armenian Highlands and the Pontine mountain range, and forms a connecting link between the two. Previous to the Russo-Turkish war of 1877 it possessed 10,000 inhabitants, which have since diminished to about one-half. It had also been taken by the Russians under General Paskiewitsch in 1828, and had suffered severely. An observant German traveller,[7] visiting the place nearly seventy years ago, before the present German fashion of treating everything Turkish as _couleur de rose_, described Baiburt as giving one a foretaste of “those desolate, decayed, half-ruined, and nearly deserted towns which, from here right throughout the whole of Asiatic Turkey up to the Persian frontier, form a sequence of progressive misery.” These words require little variation to describe the appearance of the place when we came there. For instance, we were assured that there was not a single qualified doctor in the town. And yet, although a poverty-stricken place, it was still possible to meet with people bearing expensive weapons on their person, for, like the nomads of old, the Asiatic Turk usually carries all his portable property about with him. At least, so much might be inferred from the fact that I bought a beautiful damascene dagger with a solid silver sheath and handle from a servant for six Turkish pounds. Footnote 7: Reisen von Moritz Wagner. Leipzig, 1852.