ERZEROUM, or ERZUM, an important town of Turkish Armenia, and capital of an extensive pashalic of the same name. It is situated in an extensive plain, 6200 feet above the sea, about a mile from the Karasoo or western branch of the Euphrates, and 140 miles S.E. of Trebizond. The town is large but irregularly built, and the streets, like those of all Turkish towns, unpaved, filthy, and infested with dogs. The houses are mostly built of a dark gray volcanic stone, cemented with mud, and strengthened with wood inserted horizontally at certain distances in the walls, which, being rarely plastered, give the town a dull and sombre appearance. Some of the apartments in the larger houses are handsome, and the ceilings of carved wood, gilt, and painted. The roofs are flat, and covered with several feet of earth, which renders them warm in winter and cool in summer, but not impervious to rain and melting snows in the spring. The only exception to this is the custom-house, which has a slanting tiled roof. The town contains twenty-eight khans, thirteen public baths, seventy mosques and mejsids (small mosques or chapels), a Roman Catholic, a Greek, and a large and handsome Armenian church. It is well supplied with excellent water, conducted through wooden pipes from springs issuing from the Palan Duken mountain, to the numerous fountains which are to be found in every part of the town. Towards the south the town is protected by a citadel, surrounded by a double wall flanked with towers and a ditch. The walls, however, are in a state of decay, and could offer but a feeble resistance to an invading force. It is besides commanded by the high hill or mountain called Palan Duken. The principal imports are British and Swiss manufactures, colonial produce, iron, tin, madder root, indigo, and galls. The exports consist of furs, goat and sheep skins, and wool, buffalo hides, wax, tallow, pipe-sticks, copper, and lead. The principal trades carried on are tanning, dyeing morocco (red and yellow), preparing sheepskins for pelisses, making horse shoes and nails, and iron and copper utensils. British manufactures (chiefly cottons) to the value of two millions sterling annually pass through Erzeroum from Trebizond to Persia. The population was estimated in 1854 at 50,000, as follows: Turks 30,000, Orthodox Armenians 5000, Catholic Armenians 2300, Persians 1200, Greeks 300, Russian subjects, consisting principally of Armenians, with a few Georgians and Jews, 1200, and the garrison force then stationed there, 10,000. At the time of the Russian invasion in 1828 it was estimated to contain about 80,000 inhabitants.