The great rivers of western Asia take their origin from the highlands of Armenia. The river Acampsis of the ancients, identified by some with the Pison of the Bible, has its source southwest of Erzerum, it receives several other streams and with beautiful windings, flows into the Black Sea. About the Araxes, according to some the Gihon of the Bible, I find an interesting statement in an Armenian history: “Aramais (King of Armenia) built a city of hewn stone on a small eminence in the plain of Aragay, and near the bank of a river before mentioned, which had received the name of Gihon. The new city which afterwards became the capital of his kingdom, he called Armavir, after his name, and the name of the river he changed to Arax after his son Arast.” The river Araxes is fed and swollen by many streams, rivulets and brooks, which run from the sides of numerous glens, through picturesque ravines, and mingle with it. Its tortuous course irrigates the lands adjacent carrying great fertility, and finally joins the famous river Kur (Cyrus) and pours itself into the bosom of the Caspian Sea. The other two great rivers of Armenia Major are the Euphrates and Tigris, whose identity with those mentioned in connection with the Garden of Eden is beyond doubt. Both of these rivers also take their origin in the highlands of Armenia. The Euphrates, whose springs are not very far from Mount Ararat (Masis of the Armenians) takes a westward course along the Taurus mountain chain on the northern side of the mountain, runs north of Kharput, then turns westward, and about forty miles west of Kharput unites with the western branch of the Euphrates; near Malateah the river turns towards the southeast and nearly approaches the sources of the Tigris. From this point onward with a southeasterly course, these rivers flow and finally they unite and pour into the Persian Gulf. The students of the ancient Babylonian and Assyrian history and civilization need not to be told what fertility these rivers carried along their course through the Mesopotamian plain, and how, with numerous canals and channels, they irrigated the land of these great empires, and became the means of commercial intercourse with the neighboring nations.