September 7.--By half-past eight we were following the course of the Arpa and taking leave of the green meadows and blue streams. We were soon involved among the hummock ridges which confine the amphitheatre of the Shishtapas, and through which the river winds in a stony valley, at some little distance to the west of the track. Progress was retarded by the steepness of the inclines as we crossed this elevated ground. Once again in possession of a prospect, we were skirting the bases of successive promontories, which projected, on our left hand, from the mountains of the meridional border into the broken surface of a volcanic plateau. This plateau extends for many miles to the westward, and is bounded by lofty mountains on that side. The Arpa was running off into the easier levels in the west, while the road hugged the rocky eastern shore. The waters of the river were not visible after leaving Shishtapa; they are buried in a cañon, of which you trace the sinuous edges through the bleak and boulder-strewn waste. Ala-Kilisa, a village of Armenian-speaking Greeks; Amasia, a Turkish settlement; Karachanta and Kara Mehemet, the first inhabited by Turks, the second by Armenians, were successively left behind. At half-past ten we arrived at the station of Jellap, a stage of twenty versts (thirteen miles). The post house is situated at some little distance from the village--an Armenian settlement which is exposed to view after you have left the station, high-seated among the rocks above the road. It is a gloomy habitation, standing in a stony valley by the banks of a stream which descends to the trough of the Arpa from the rocky hummocks to which the road adheres. Starting at a few minutes after eleven, we commenced by crossing a projecting promontory, mounting the slopes of the puny ridges by steep gradients, and never regaining the prospect which had been lost before reaching Jellap. At length, at half-past eleven, the valleys opened; and we overlooked the landscape of the plain of Alexandropol.