of the painful variety, and jolted off for about 25 miles, till, as night fell, we struck the railway, and were given two wooden benches to sleep on in a small waiting-room.  People came and went all night, and we slept with one eye open till 2 a.m., when the chauffeur took a train to Tiflis.  We sat up till 6 a.m., when the train, two hours late, started for Erivan, where we arrived pretty well “cooked” at 11 p.m.

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Erivan. 20 January.—­Last night’s experiences were certainly very “Russian.”  We had wired for rooms, but although the message had been received nothing was prepared.  The miserable rooms were an inch thick in dust, there were no fires, and no sheets on the beds!  We went to a restaurant—­fortunately no Russian goes to bed early—­and found the queerest place, empty save for a band and a lady.  The lady and the band were having supper.  She, poor soul, was painted and dyed, but she offered her services to translate my French for me when the waiters could understand nothing but Russian.  I was thankful to eat something and go to bed under my fur coat.

To-day we have been busy seeing the Armenian refugees.  There are 17,000 of them in this city of 30,000 inhabitants.  We went from one place to another, and always one saw the same things and heard the same tales.

Since the war broke out I think I have seen the actual breaking of the wave of anguish which has swept over the world (I often wonder if I can “feel” much more!).  There was Dunkirk and its shambles, there was ruined Belgium, and there was, above all, the field hospital at Furnes, with its horrible courtyard, the burning heap of bandages, and the mattresses set on edge to drip the blood off them and then laid on some bed again.  I can never forget it.  I was helping a nurse once, and all the time I was sitting on a dead man and never knew it!

And now I am hearing of one million Armenians slaughtered in cold blood.  The pitiful women in the shelters were saying, “We are safe because we are old and ugly; all the young ones went to the harems.”  Nearly all the men were massacred.  The surplus children and unwanted women were put into houses and burned alive.  Everywhere one heard, “We were 4,000 in one village, and only 143 escaped;” “There were 30 of us, and now only a few children remain;” “All the men are killed.”  These were things one saw for oneself, heard for oneself.  There was nothing sensational in the way the women told their stories.

Russia does what she can in the way of “relief.”  She gives 4-1/2 Rs. per month to each person.  This gives them bread, and there might be fires, for stoves are there, but no one seems to have the gumption to put them up.  Here and there men and women are sleeping on valuable rugs, which look strange in the bare shelters.  Most of the women knitted, and some wove on little “fegir” looms.  The dullness of their existence matches the tragedy of it.  The food is so plain that it doesn’t want cooking—­being mostly bread and water; but sometimes a few rags are washed, and there is an attempt to try and keep warm.  Yet I have heard an English officer say that nothing pleases a Russian more than to ask, “When is there to be another Armenian massacre?”