After a visit to Jassy (modern Iași), Gordon wrote: "The "boyers" live most of their lives in Paris and society is quite French... The prince keeps a great state and I was introduced to him with much ceremony. The English uniform produces an immediate sensation". Gordon did not speak Romanian, but his fluency in French allowed him to socialise with the Francophile Romanian elite, who were all fluent in French. As the maps that delineated the Russian-Ottoman frontier were all old and inaccurate, Gordon spent much time clashing with his Russian counterparts about where precisely the frontier was and soon discovered that Russians were very keen to have the frontier on the Danube, which Gordon had orders from London to prevent. Gordon called the Romanians the "most fickle and intriguing people on the earth. They ape the French in everything and are full of ceremony, dress, etc... The employees sent by the Moldovan government to take over the ceded territory have been receiving bribes and trafficking in the most disgraceful manner."