427 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 
IN 
TURKEY. 
BY 
COLONEL E. CLAYTON, C.R.A., S.E. District. 
{A Lecture delivered at the Loyal Artillery Institution, Woolivich, Thursday, 21st January, 1897 ). * 
Major-G-eneral Sir Charles Wilson, K.C.B., D.M.E,, in the Chair, 
The Chairman —Colonel Clayton is so well known in this room that I 
will ask him to commence his lecture at once. 
Colonel Clayton —It may perhaps be as well to begin by a brief Description 
description of the main features of the country, as these have con- country 
siderable bearing upon the political and social conditions of the Map< 
inhabitants. 
The first important point to notice is that in the immediate neigh¬ 
bourhood of the shores of the Black Sea there stretches a lofty and 
rugged chain of mountains, the communications across which are 
scanty and bad, so that the interior is practically cut off from the sea 
except by a few difficult tracks. The principal of these, within the region 
of which I propose to treat, is the trunk road from Trebizond to Erzeroum 
over the Zighana and Kop Passes. An alternative route to this was 
suggested by a more direct pass reaching the Black Sea at Rizeh, but 
certainly when I was there no steps had been taken to make this route 
practicable, and I do not think it at all likely anything has been done 
since. The next route is up the Chorok Valley, but that is also very 
difficult. The Trebizond-Erzeroum road is a carriage road, but its state 
of repair was execrable when I passed over it and I was very glad I was 
not in a wheeled vehicle. 
Behind this coast range of mountains stretches a vast elevated 
plateau averaging from 4000 to 6000 feet above the sea and forming the 
regions known as Armenia and Kurdistan. Though I have called it a 
plateau, only a very small portion of its area is level, bub its face con¬ 
sists generally of certain more or less level undulating stretches 
alternating with hills and mountain ridges and extensive mountainous 
regions. 
8. YOIii XXIV. 
