At Sofia I met Lady Strangford, who had a well equipped hospital, worked by three or four English doctors and several English nurses. There were fifty or sixty beds in it, and the contrast between this hospital and the dreadful place that I had left behind at Plevna was as startling as the difference between an "Inferno" and a "Paradiso." Lady Strangford gave me a letter to the Baroness von Rosen, who had another hospital at Adrianople, and I spent a couple of pleasant days with that enthusiastic lady. Going on to Ichtiman, I met there Fano Bey, who was the second military officer in charge of the hospitals at Widdin; and as he arrived late at night, I was glad of the opportunity of repaying some of his past kindnesses by giving up my room to him. Next day we went on to Tatar Bazardjik, which was the terminus of the railway from Constantinople; and there, in the company of half a dozen jolly war correspondents, I shook off the last traces of the depression engendered by the horrors of my hospital work in Plevna. CHAPTER XII. FROM CONSTANTINOPLE TO ERZEROUM. Life in Constantinople--Sir Collingwood Dickson--Visit to the Seraskierat--Roving Englishmen--A Typical Adventurer--War Correspondents--General Berdan--Colonel Valentine Baker--A Picnic on the Gulf of Ismet--On Board H.M.S. _Achilles_--The Turks as Paymasters--A Heavy Fee--Round the _Cafés Chantants_--An Invitation to Erzeroum--Road to Plevna closed--I join the Stafford House Ambulance--A Farewell Banquet--A Voyage in the Black Sea--Trebizond--In the Cradle of Humanity--The Road of Xenophon's Ten Thousand--Lazistan--Dog and Wolf--An Ancient Mining Town--The Valley of Pear Trees--Baiburt--Cross and Crescent in Former Days--A Mountain Road--Genoese Ruins--A Hasty Descent--On the Kopdagh--The Garden of Eden--First Glimpse of the Euphrates--Sir Arnold Kemball--Erzeroum at Last--English Doctors--Mr. Zohrab--Mukhtar Pasha--Organizing our Hospitals--Sunlight and Shadow--A Presage of Trouble. In Constantinople I put up again at Misserie's Hotel. During the fifteen months that had elapsed since I last saw that comfortable hostelry I had lived a whole lifetime, and coming back to it again, a war-worn veteran of twenty-three, the French cooking and the soft beds after many a dinner of raw maize cobs and many a sleep on the bare earth appealed to my feelings in the most convincing manner possible.