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In deference to the mixed nationality of his audience, the sagacious troubadour wears a Turkish fez, a Persian coat, and a Eussian metallic-faced belt; the burden of his songs are of Erzeroum, Erzingan, and Ispahan; the Russians, it would appear, are too few and unpopular to justify risking the displeasure of the Turks by singing any Eussian songs.
Soon I meet a boy riding on a donkey, and ask him the postaya distance to Erzingan; the youth looks frightened half out of his. senses, but manages to retain sufficient presence of mind to elevate one finger, by which I understand him to mean that it is one hour, or about four miles.
This left still the larger part of the entire road in possession of the Turks, and especially that part from which another road branched off to Erzingan. In the Mush and Bitlis region the Russians had made satisfactory progress in the meantime. On April 19, 1916, progress was reported to the south of Bitlis toward Sert, although the Turks fought hard to hold up this advance toward Diarbekr.
On May 16, 1916, the Russians announced officially that they had occupied Mama Khatun, a small town on the western Euphrates, about fifty miles west of Erzerum and approximately the same distance from Erzingan.
This important town is about 100 miles southwest of Bitlis, and apparently had become, after the fall of Trebizond, together with Erzingan, one of the immediate objectives of the Russian campaign.
The road eastward from Erzingan is level, but heavy with dust, leading through a low portion of the valley that earlier in the season is swampy, and gives the city an unenviable reputation for malarial fevers.
By July 14, 1916, the Russians were only ten miles from Baiburt, had again taken up their drive for Erzingan and had wrested from the Turks some strongly fortified positions southwest of Mush. Baiburt fell to the Russians on July 15, 1916. From then on the Russian advance continued steadily, although the Turks maintained a stiff resistance.
Here, too, however, the Turks began to offer a more determined resistance, and although the official Russian statement of the next day, March 17, 1916, reported a continuation of the Russian advance towards Erzingan, it also mentioned Turkish attempts at making a stand and spoke even of attempted counterattacks.
A certain Mahmoud Ali and his band of enterprising freebooters have been terrorizing the villagers and committing highway robberies of late around the country; but from the general appearance of these two, as they approach, I take them to be merely villagers returning home from Erzingan afoot.
Donning an Indian pith-helmet that is three sizes too large, and wellnigh conceals his features, Mr. Pronatti orders his horse, and accompanies me some distance out, to put me on the proper course to Erzingan.
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