Very soon after leaving Erzeroum, which I did shortly before mid-day this morning, I began to meet with unmistakable evidences that a big battle had either been fought or was in progress. First a knot of some twenty infantrymen, weary, haggard, and ragged, met me on the steep slope of the hill some five miles beyond the town. They were all jaded beyond expression—every one was wounded more or less grievously—several were using their rifles as crutches, and some who had lost or abandoned their rifles were helping themselves along either by the aid of their comrades’ shoulders, or by stakes, or waggon-boards, or rammers, or indeed any of the miscellaneous articles of wood or metal that are to be found strewn along the line of a straggling fight. I gave them a water-skin, and offered a bottle of brandy (as _ilitch_—medicine for their wounds). The water they took, but none would touch the spirit save one gaunt, white-moustached veteran, who mumbled incoherencies about Algeria, by way seemingly of excuse. While they drank I asked them what was doing. ‘A great battle was being fought,’ they said, but their opinions were divided as to the course of the action; several men (weak from loss of blood) opined that the enemy was too strong for them. But one broad-shouldered, bright-eyed little fellow, who had had all the flesh of one cheek torn from him by a shell splinter, and had bound the wound with a strip from his rough serge jacket, was loud in his derision of this view. ‘It was Eski Zagra again,’ he said. The Moskoffs were driven back, beaten hopelessly, and pursued by agile Bashi-bazouks through the slippery passes, the precipitous fastnesses, the treacherous paths of the rugged route, a pursuit without cess or quarter—where every enemy, whether wounded or not, was exultingly slaughtered as soon as caught. The little veteran illustrated with horribly realistic gestures his own views as to the treatment of Russian wounded. With a foul gusto that raised wild enthusiasm in his weary comrades, he demonstrated how he would hew off the noses and lips of his enemy; how he would gouge out their eyes with his bayonet before he plunged it into their throats and twisted it till the victims died suffocated with their own blood. He outlined other horrors, but I had had enough, and left him posing in anticipation as a hero among his fellows, while I rode on towards this place.