When I fell ill and Denniston was left alone, he managed to get a letter away to Constantinople through the Russian lines announcing the precarious position in Erzeroum, and Dr. Stoker and Dr. Stiven at once volunteered to come up as a rescue party. Reaching Trebizond on January 27, they pushed forward at once, preparations for the journey having been expedited by Mr. Biliotti; but they had to stop most of the first night at Jevislik to rest the post-horses, and here the hazardous nature of their undertaking was brought home to them. An early start was made next morning, and all that day these two heroic men pushed on with tired horses, a reluctant guide, and one hundred and fifty miles of snow and ice in front of them. The road was excessively difficult, for the little pathway, about two feet wide, was frozen and slippery, and wound along the edge of a cliff about nine hundred feet high, while snowdrifts, which in some places were twenty feet deep, threatened to engulf them. Several times the baggage-horses fell, and the whole party had to halt and unpack and reload the animals; so that the march was much delayed, and it was two hours after dark before they reached the summit of the Zegana Pass, where they camped for the night. The next day they reached Ghumish Khané, and there for the first time since leaving Trebizond they got a relay of post-horses. A long struggle of eighteen hours brought the relief party from Ghumish Khané to Baiburt; and after procuring fresh horses with some difficulty, they pushed on to the Kop village at the foot of the worst pass on the whole road. Here another misfortune befell them; for the guide, who had been showing an inclination to give in for several stages past, refused when they were half-way up the mountain to go a step farther, declaring that it was madness to attempt the pass in such weather, and that they were courting certain death from the avalanches that they could hear at intervals thundering down into the valley below.