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There were said to be twenty thousand Persians, from the provinces of Azerbaijan and Hamadan, working last summer on the new railway from Tiflis to Alexandropol and Kars, now being built, and doubtless many of them will permanently settle on the line. It is said that there are half a million thus located and working out of Persia, but I think that this is an exaggerated estimate.

During the war in 1853, when the Turks were 35,000 strong at Baiandoor, six miles from Alexandropol, and the Russians had only two battalions in the fortress, the latter demolished all the houses which were on this ground. The soil is not unfavourable on these hills. The hill on which the cemetery of the officers killed at Kars and Kuyukdere is situated is also favourable for batteries.

The railway now being made from Tiflis to Alexandropol and Kars will probably send out a line down the fertile valley of the Aras to Julfa, ready for extension across the Persian frontier to Tabriz, and a branch may be pushed forward from Doshakh, or Keribent, on the Trans-Caspian railway, to Sarakhs, where Russia, Persia, and Afghanistan meet, to facilitate trade with Herat as well as Meshed.

As illustrating his professional zeal and powers of scientific examination, the following description of the fortress of Alexandropol or Gumri is a striking production from so young an officer: It is distant thirty-five miles from Kars and eighty-four miles from Tiflis. The plain on which it is situated is perfectly level and very peculiar.

Other still more important towns in Armenia, available by carriage-road, are Alexandropol and Kars, the former being the largest and most powerful fortress and the principal arsenal in Transcaucasia; the latter, long a Turkish fortress town, was gallantly defended in 1855 by Sir Fenwick Williams and a few British officers, until the garrison was starved into surrender by General Mouravieff.