rticularly appreciated a foreign officer giving them the customary
greeting.

The size of the garrison of this outlying fort afforded evidence of
the Russian wealth in man-power. There were a good many guns mounted,
of no great value, and some machine-guns flanked the ditches; but the
amount of personnel seemed out of all proportion to the importance of
the work or the nature of its armament. The men were packed pretty
tight in the casemates, arranged in a double tier, the sojourners on
the upper tier only having the bare boards to lie on. Afterwards we
went out to an entirely new fort which was not yet quite completed,
situated on the plain some six miles from the town. The Russians were
making Kars into a great place of arms on modern lines, and one rather
wondered why.

Continuing the journey in the afternoon, we were met at Sarikamish
station by General Savitzky, commanding the Sixty-sixth Division and
the garrison, with his staff and a swarm of officers. The place had
been the frontier station before the war and was well laid out as an
up-to-date cantonment, although owing to the thaw the mud was
indescribable. The environs constituted almost an oasis in the bleak
Armenian uplands owing to the hills being clothed in pine-woods, and
Sarikamish had the reputation of making a pleasant summer resort,
people coming out from Tiflis to spend a few weeks so as to escape the
heat. We were treated with almost effusive cordiality, dined at the
staff mess that night, and Cossacks gave an exhibition of their
spirited dancing afterwards and sang songs. Of the large number of
officers acting as hosts, only one, unfortunately, could speak French,
so that Meyendorff was kept busy acting as an intermediary.

The idea prevalent in this country that Russians in general are good
linguists, it may here be observed, is a delusion. The aristocracy, no
doubt, all speak French perfectly. In the Yacht Club in Petrograd most
of the members appeared to be quite at home in either French or
English, and no doubt could have chattered away in German if put to
it; but away from the capital and Moscow it was not easy to get on
without a knowledge of Russian. The staff at Sarikamish were anxious
that I should meet the Turkish officer prisoners interned there, as
they believed that a couple of them were Boches and nobody able to
speak German had come along for months; but as it turned out, there
was no time for a meeting.

Next morning we started