On the second day we were able to push on a good deal faster as the road was more level, and in the evening we came to the small township of Ghumish Khané, which was chiefly known to fame owing to the existence of some very old silver mines in the neighbourhood. To an Australian like myself it did not look at all like a mining township. Where were the familiar poppet heads, the heaps of mullock, and the diligently fossicked alluvial? There was no roar of stampers, no monotonous gurgle of pumps, and there was not one decent bush shanty in the place. We had seen enough of the comforts of a khan on the previous night, so like wise men we went straight to the _hammam_, or Turkish bath, with which even the smallest Turkish township is always provided. Here we enjoyed the refreshing luxury of being well steamed; and backsheesh, in the shape of a few piastres to the man in charge, procured for us permission to sleep on the divans provided for patrons of the establishment. We had supper and spent the night in the hammam. Leaving Ghumish Khané next morning, we rode on through a narrow valley between two ranges of hills covered with hazel trees and other light scrub. In this valley, which was about seven miles long by half a mile wide, we found magnificent groves of pear trees fringing the road on either side. When we passed through in the middle of autumn, the fruit was just ripe, and the great juicy pears almost knocked against our faces as we rode on under the trees with the branches interlacing overhead. We telegraphed to the kaimakan at Baiburt, our next stopping-place, before leaving Ghumish Khané, in order that accommodation might be prepared for us; and when we reached Baiburt in the evening, we were agreeably surprised to find it an extremely beautiful town. Baiburt, like all the towns in that country, is a place of grey antiquity. It sleeps on in the present, dreaming of the past and of all the wars that have raged about it since the first men of Baiburt built themselves defences against the robbers of the hills hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. It was taken by the Russians in 1828, after the massacres in the Ægean Sea had roused England, France, and Russia to take joint action against the Turks, and had whetted the thirst for blood once more by precipitating Navarino. Looking at the majestic ruins of this town of Baiburt and at the traces of their presence, left there by the Russian cannoneers, one thought of the causes that had brought about these ruins; one thought of the Greek struggle for independence, and of the massacres at Chios and the adjacent islands; one thought of Byron singing of "The Isles of Greece," with his passionate appeal against "Turkish force and Latin fraud," and of Béranger stirring all Europe with the lament of the heroic Ipsariotes, "Les rois chrétiens ne nous vengeront pas."