Among our patients was the Catholic Armenian archbishop of the place, a dear old fellow, who was most grateful to Denniston and myself for attending him. When he recovered he wanted us to take a fee, but we declined; and then he insisted on presenting us with the only article of value which he possessed. This was a bracelet which had been excavated from a subterranean village of great antiquity at the foot of Mount Ararat, and consisted of a large ring of bronze, ornamented with two serpents' heads. It was supposed to be about two thousand three hundred years old or thereabouts. We accepted this strange old ornament, which might have been fashioned by some cunning artificer whose father saw the sunlight flashing on the Athenian helmets at Marathon or watched the beak of a Greek galley come crashing through the Persian ship in which he laboured at the oar at Salamis. The serpents on the old bronze bracelet had slumbered on in the subterranean village while centuries came and went and dynasties flitted past like shadows; but at last they were restored again to the light of day. Denniston and I regarded our new acquisition with curiosity not unmixed with awe. Then in our simple, unpoetical way we decided to toss up for it, and the spin of a Turkish piastre, minted so to speak but yesterday, gave Denniston possession of this souvenir of the times of mighty Xerxes. As soon as it leaked out that archæological objects were regarded with interest by the English doctors, an extraordinary variety of ancient curiosities were pressed upon our notice; and owing to the precarious situation in the town, the owners were all ready to sacrifice their treasures at an alarming reduction. There was something pathetic in the eagerness of a few of these collectors to realize upon their treasures. I was offered an iron signet ring supposed to have belonged to an exalted personage in the time of Alexander the Great for the price of a few doses of quinine; and half a bottle of brandy would have purchased me a curious black stone bearing an inscription that would puzzle the antiquity experts at the British Museum. One day an Armenian named Magack, who held an official position in the British Consulate, brought me a gold coin stamped with a bull's head. He explained to me that it was coined in the reign of the second Persian king, and that it was worth _£_70 in London; but the evidence on one point seemed to me as inconclusive as on the other, and I declined to purchase it at the price of _£_30. Although the snow had begun to melt in the streets, it was still bitterly cold, and we knew that the Russians were only waiting for a regular thaw in order to bring up their artillery. However, we were fortunately not called upon to undergo a bombardment; for with the fall of Kars and Plevna the war was virtually at an end both in Asia Minor and in Europe, and rumours of an armistice were already beginning to be put about.