Just before we started, and when the pack-horses upon which we were to ride to Erzeroum were at the door, M. Jardin brought up his beautiful Spaniard and introduced her to us. I hope I shall not be considered impolite when I confess that our jaws all dropped simultaneously. No doubt the lady had been beautiful in her youth; but her particular style of beauty had not been proof against the devastating power of years, and I doubt whether any man in Erzeroum, except that very polite French consul, would have seen extraordinary loveliness in the lady who was handed over to our care at the very last moment. However, there was nothing for it but to hoist her upon a pack-saddle, to mount ourselves upon similar uncomfortable seats, and to start the melancholy procession. We said good-bye with real regret to Pizareff, who had been a capital friend and a most charming and genial companion. Fully thirty or forty other Russian officers came to see us off, and we parted on the very best of terms. They told us laughingly that they intended to drop in upon the British army in India some day, and we assured them that we would be there to meet them when they came. Then we waved our last adieux, and turned the heads of those long-suffering pack-horses towards Trebizond. Our party consisted of Denniston, Stoker, Morisot, myself, and Williams our trusty dragoman, while last, but not least, came the lady. We had hired twelve horses to carry ourselves and our baggage, contracting to pay the headman of the caravan four pounds per horse for the journey to Trebizond; and accordingly when we started we formed an important section of the whole caravan of about fifty horses which set out from Erzeroum. Besides the headman, who was a most forbidding-looking Persian, there were fifteen drivers who accompanied us; each, I think, dirtier, hungrier, and more truculent-looking than the other. We guessed when we started that the journey would not be exactly a pleasure excursion; but the reality far exceeded our anticipations, and the next time that any one asks me to make an overland journey with a widow, a still small voice within will whisper, "Beware! Remember Erzeroum and the Spanish doña." Riding on a pack-saddle, which consists of two plates of hard wood joined by hinges at the apex where it fits over the horse's spine, is not the most agreeable way of taking horse exercise; and the doña, who was necessarily riding _en cavalier_, began to give tongue before she had gone a hundred yards. We made a cushion out of an old sack filled with hay, and our incubus heaved a sigh of relief when we placed it between her ill used anatomy and the bare boards which she bestrode. Then the procession went forward again, the horses stepping out in single file on the first stage of the long journey of one hundred and eighty miles that lay between us and the sea.