unlucky Frank, having been exalted to the top of the tower and exhorted to repair the rickety old clock, which had lost half its works, was debased into the dungeon, there to remain till further notice. Having often heard this story of the good old times, I one day proceeded to the citadel to see the tower where the clock had been, and to examine the dungeon, where I should have been sent if I had arrived at Erzeroom fifty or sixty years ago. This dungeon really was a dungeon: anything so terrible as an abode for a human being I never saw before. The pozzi at Venice were rather pleasant and agreeable places of retirement, compared with the abode of many a poor Frank, in whose education the art and craft of clockology had been unfortunately omitted.

At the foot of that which had been the clocktower was a range of small low rooms, of which two were particularly belonging to the prison: the outer room of the two was larger than the other; this was appropriated to the guards, who kept watch and ward, and who fed, or did not feed, the wretched prisoners under their care. The inner room was small and low, and had one window, through which the light and air had to struggle with the opposition of heavy

crossed and re-crossed iron bars. The window looked into the castle-yard, but the room was so dark that I could hardly see my way.

"A horrible place for the poor prisoners," said I to my guides; "little chance of their escape from these thick walls and heavy bars, and low strong roof; they must have been safe enough here."

"O Effendim," said the kawasses,

"this is not the prison. Here is the prison, at your feet down below.'

"Where?" said I.

"Look down," they replied, " on the middle of the floor; there is the entrance; you cannot see the dungeon itself, for it is, perhaps, a little dark."

In the centre of the floor of this dismal cell was a heavy wrought-iron grating, square, made of great bars, about six inches apart, seemingly of enormous weight, lying on the ground, and fastened down with two or three huge rusty padlocks on one side and some lumbering old hinges on the other. This iron grate was opened and raised up for my special edification, and there appeared under it the mouth of a narrow well cut in the rock, perhaps two feet and a half in diameter, which sank down into the darkness far below. "Now," said my

informants, "if you stand on this side, and look steadily till your eye is accustomed to the gloom, you will be able to distinguish something white a good way down; that is a square stone, like a table, in the middle of the vault, upon which the gaolers let down the provisions for the prisoners, as they can see on that stone when the things arrive at the bottom." This was the old dungeon, the common prison not many years ago; but, I believe, since the reign of Hadji Kiamili Pasha, few or none had been consigned to this horrible abode. The shape of it below, I understood, was that of the inside of a bottle; it was between twenty and thirty feet deep; vermin, dirt and filth, and foul air, formed its only furniture; and into this awful hole many and many an innocent man had been let down: some to be brought up again to pay a ransom of all that they possessed, some to linger there for years, and some to die and rot unnoticed if no food was provided for them by Government, when their bones, if not their flesh, gave token to the next inhabitants of what they were to expect, unless their interest or their wealth was greater than that of the poor wretch whose remains lay there before them.

An ingenious and horrible species of torture was sometimes added to the discomforts of this

dread abode a large piece of raw flesh was thrown down into the dungeon; the vermin, and the effluvia which it produced, added to other miseries, made the existence of the wretched prisoner almost intolerable.

The modern prison is bad enough: it consists of a number of cells opening on to a small paved court-yard. The prisoners, being just shoved through the door, have to shift for themselves inside, where a kind of Pandemonium exists; the stronger Koords bullying and tyrannising over the weaker felons, who have neither fire nór candle during the intense cold of a great part of the year so I was told; but I was not there in the winter, and hope these unhappy wretches may be allowed a little tezek occasionally to keep their dirty bodies and souls together.

CHAPTER VII.

Spring in Erzeroom-Coffee-house diversions - Koordish Exploits Summer employment - Preparation of Tezek - Its varieties and uses.

WHEN the snows of winter have melted, and the air becomes more temperate, the population of Erzeroom begin to revive; the women and children, who, like the bears, lemmings, and marmottes, have hybernated all the winter, now peep with red eyes out of their subterranean habitations; those streets situated upon hills, as most of them are, become torrents of melted snow, which cut deep ravines through the frozen mass which is piled up many feet on each side; narrow paths are gradually dug out from the low doors of the Armenian man-burrows towards the central river of the street; the winking children creep out to blink their eyes at the sun, and enjoy the fresh air; fusty cows who have been buried for eight months come slowly staring out; every now and then a more adventurous infant is carried away by the stream, and its body quickly devoured by the ravenous dogs at the outskirts of the town; wolves it is said,