the upper floor is divided into small rooms for the accommodation of travellers and caravan men arriving with goods from Trebizond.  Sallying forth in search of supper, I am taken in tow by a couple of Armenians, who volunteer the welcome information that there is an “Americanish hakim” in the city; this intelligence is an agreeable surprise, for Erzeroum is the nearest place in which I have been expecting to find an English-speaking person.  While searching about for the hakim, we pass near the zaptieh headquarters; the officers are enjoying their nargileh in the cool evening air outside the building, and seeing an Englishman, beckon us over.  They desire to examine my teskeri, the first occasion on which it has been officially demanded since landing at Ismidt, although I have voluntarily produced it on previous occasions, and at Sivas requested the Vali to attach his seal and signature; this is owing to the proximity of Erzingan to the Russian frontier, and the suspicions that any stranger may be a, subject of the Czar, visiting the military centres for sinister reasons.  They send an officer with me to hunt up the resident pasha; that worthy and enlightened personage is found busily engaged in playing a game of chess with a military officer, and barely takes the trouble to glance at the proffered passport:  “It is vised by the Sivas Vali,” he says, and lackadaisically waves us adieu.  Upon returning to the zaptieh station, a quiet, unassuming American comes forward and introduces himself as Dr. Van Nordan, a physician formerly connected with the Persian mission.  The doctor is a spare-built and not over-robust man, and would perhaps be considered by most people as a trifle eccentric; instead of being connected with any missionary organization, he nowadays wanders hither and thither, acquiring knowledge and seeking whom he can persuade from the error of their ways, meanwhile supporting himself by the practice of his profession.  Among other interesting things spoken of, he tells me something of his recent journey to Khiva (the doctor pronounces it “Heevah"); he was surprised, he says, at finding the Khivans a mild-mannered and harmless sort of people, among whom the carrying of weapons is as much the exception as it is the rule in Asiatic Turkey.  Doubtless the fact of Khiva being under the Russian Government has something to do with the latter otherwise unaccountable fact.  After supper we sit down on a newly arrived bale of Manchester calico in the caravanserai court, cross one knee and whittle chips like Michigan grangers at a cross-roads post-office, and spend two hours conversing on different topics.  The good doctor’s mind wanders as naturally into serious channels as water gravitates to its level; when I inquire if he has heard anything of the whereabout of Mahmoud Ali and his gang lately, the pious doctor replies chiefly by hinting what a glorious thing it is to feel prepared to yield up the ghost at any moment; and when I recount something