[Page Heading:  DIFFICULTIES]

We are all in the same boat.  Mrs. Wynne has waited for her ambulances for three months, and I hear that even the Anglo-Russian hospital, with every name from Queen Alexandra’s downwards on the list of its patrons, is in “one long difficulty.”  It is Russia, and nothing but Russia, that breaks us all.  Everything is promised, nothing is done.  The only hope of getting a move on is by bribery, and one may bribe the wrong people till one finds one’s way about.

13 January.—­The car took us up the Kajour road, and behaved well; but the chauffeur drove us into a bridge on the way down, and had to be dismissed.  Tried to go to Erivan, but the new chauffeur mistook the road, so we had to return to Tiflis.  N.B.—­Another holiday was coming on, and he wanted to be at home. I actually used to like difficulties!

15 January.—­Started again for Erivan.  All went well, and we had a lovely drive till about 6 p.m.  The dusk was gathering and we were up in the hills, when “bang!” went something, and nothing on earth would make the car move.  We unscrewed nuts, we lighted matches, we got out the “jack,” but we could not discover what was wrong.  So where were we to spend the night?

In a fold of the grey hills was a little grey village—­just a few huts belonging to Mahomedan shepherds, but there was nothing for it but to ask them for shelter.  Fortunately, Dr. Wilson knew the language, and he persuaded the “head man” to turn out for us.  His family consisted of about sixteen persons, all sleeping on the floor.  They gave us the clay-daubed little place, and fortunately it contained a stove, but nothing else.  The snow was all round us, but we made up the fire and got some tea, which we carried with us, and finally slept in the little place while the chauffeur guarded the car.

In the morning nothing would make the car budge an inch, and, seeing our difficulty, the Mahomedans made us pay a good deal for horses to tow the thing to the next village, where we heard there was a blacksmith.  We followed in a hay-cart.  We got to a Malokand settlement about 5 o’clock, and found ourselves in an extraordinarily pretty little village, and were given shelter in the very cleanest house I ever saw.  The woman was a perfect treasure, and made us soup and gave us clean beds, and honey for breakfast.  The chauffeur found that our shaft was broken, and the whole piece had to go back to Tiflis.

It was a real blow, our trip knocked on the head again, and now how were we to get on?  The railway was 48 versts away, and the railway had to be reached.  We hired one of those painful little carts, which are made of rough poles on wheels, and, clinging on by our eyelids, we drove as far as an Armenian village, where a snowstorm came on, and we took shelter with a “well-to-do” Armenian family, who gave us lunch and displayed their wool-work and were very friendly.  From there we got into another “deelyjahns”