A faint light was already diffused over the cheerless apartment as I passed down the row of heavy sleepers and gained the door and the open air. Day had broken--a morning of perfect stillness, the vapours lingering on the saturated grass. A cold, grey world of bleak uplands and mist-veiled mountains, a chill atmosphere which sent one pacing to and fro. But when the sun rose above the haze into the clear vault of heaven, the colours started, the chill softened into delicious freshness, and the peculiar beauty of the scene was revealed. One looked in vain for the snowy fangs of Alagöz; they had been lost to view behind the amphitheatre of nearer outlines which composed the closing phases of our stage of yesterday. But within the limits of those gentler shapes was outspread an ideal landscape, typical of the most elevated areas of the tableland (Fig. 22). The plainer levels were invested with the character of swelling downs, and down and hillside were carpeted with turf. Over the green and fibrous surface flowed the Arpa and its tributary, flashes of white and luminous blue. Here and there brief patches of cultivation checkered the soil, especially towards north-west and west. In the middle distance one could discern two villages of moderate size--the two Shishtapas, barely distinguished from the waste. Beyond the Turkish Shishtapa, obscuring all but the first line of the settlement, lay a captive cloud, an opaque opaline mass. The illustration shows the rivers descending towards you and uniting at your feet. The hills which line the distance circle round and mass behind you, closing the prospect towards the south. In that direction the united waters bid farewell to the grassy uplands, and enter the stony tracts which slope to the plain of Alexandropol between the outworks of the Chaldir system and those of the meridional border range.