Founded by Alexander the Great, Alexandretta is picturesquely situated, but otherwise a poor place, bearing all the signs of Oriental neglect; even the harbour, at which various steamers call, looked deserted and dilapidated. The town itself is surrounded on the land side by swamps, to the fever-breeding character of which the many white gravestones in the large cemetery seemed to offer eloquent testimony, inasmuch as the place has only about 1500 inhabitants. Thus the European colony gives it a wide berth, for its members reside ten miles away in the pleasantly situated town of Beilan. The vegetation, however, is very rich, almost tropical in character: beautiful palms and giant cactus plants flourish in abundance. In summarizing the incidents of our journey, which had now come to an end, our Hungarian doctor turned to Dr. Hepworth and myself and said: “_Now_ that we are well out of it I think we can congratulate each other all round. For I do not mind telling you that there was hardly a day, or rather a night, on this terrible journey in which we were not exposed to the risk of catching smallpox or typhus.” At Erzeroum several of us had been vaccinated, by the advice of the British Consul, though it was only with the greatest difficulty that lymph above suspicion was procured in the town. Another, and by no means a trifling, danger which we luckily escaped was one which had been foretold us in Constantinople as the most serious possibility of our journey, namely, snowstorms and heavy rains producing floods. Had we encountered either of them in an awkward place it might have delayed us for days, even for weeks, in a country without roads or bridges. Fortunately, we met with neither the one nor the other. During the whole eight weeks we were on the road it never rained, and only snowed now and then for short periods. Shortly after leaving Erzeroum our leader, Sirry Bey, was taken seriously ill with an internal inflammation, which only yielded to the application of ice. On this account we were obliged to remain several days in a village on the road to Bitlis until he got better. But even then he had to be borne between two poles fastened to two horses. But for our Hungarian doctor he would probably have succumbed. We were obliged to leave our Roumanian interpreter behind us in a hospital at Alexandretta, as he had contracted erysipelas in a Turkish bath at Erzeroum. This complaint developed into an infectious disease of a tuberculous character termed sycosis, which necessitated shaving off all the hair on his body. Thus afflicted he had accompanied us all the way, and we often had to put up with his sleeping on the ground close to us.