For awhile we slowly rode through the camelthorn, the deep sand sinking beneath our horses' feet. It was nearly one o'clock, and the expanse around us streamed in the full glare of noon. A spell seems to rest upon the landscape of the mountain, sealing all the springs of life. Only, among the evergreen shrubs about us, a scattered group of camels cropped the spinous foliage, little lizards darted, a flock of sand-grouse took wing. Our course lay slantwise across the base of Ararat, towards the hill of Takjaltu, a table-topped mass, overgrown with yellow herbage, which rises in advance of the saddle between the mountains, and lies just below you as you overlook the landscape from the valley of Sardar Bulakh. Gullies of chalk and ground strewn with stones succeed the even surface of the belt of sand, and in turn give way to the covering of burnt grass which clothes the deep slope of the great sweeping base, and encircles the fabric with a continuous stretch of ochre, extending up the higher seams. Mile after mile we rode at easy paces over the parched turf and the cracking soil. When we had accomplished a space of about 10 miles, and attained a height of nearly 6000 feet, the land broke about us into miniature ravines, deep gullies, strewn with stones and boulders, searing the slope about the line of the limit where the base may be said to determine and the higher seams begin. Winding down the sides of these rocky hollows, one might turn in the saddle at a bend of the track, and observe the long line of horsemen defiling into the ravine (Fig. 31). I noticed that by far the greater number among them--if, indeed, one might not say all--were men in the opening years of manhood--lithe, well-knit figures, and fair complexions, set round with fair hair. At a nearer view the feature which most impressed me was the smallness of their eyes. They wear the long, skirted coat of Circassia, a thin and worn khaki; the faded pink on the cloth of their shoulder-straps relieves the dull drab. Their little caps of Circassian pattern fit closely round their heads. Their horses are clumsy, long-backed creatures, wanting in all the characteristics of quality; and, as each man maintains his own animal, few among them are shod. Yet I am assured that the breed is workmanlike and enduring, and I have known it to yield most satisfactory progeny when crossed with English racing blood. As we rounded the heap of grass-grown soil which is known as Takjaltu, we were joined by a second detachment of Cossacks, coming from Akhury. Together we climbed up the troughs of the ridges which sweep fanwise down the mountain side, and emerged on the floor of the upland valley which leads between the greater and the lesser Ararat, and crosses the back of the Ararat fabric in a direction from south-west to north-east. We were here at an elevation of 7500 feet above the sea, or nearly 5000 feet above the plain. Both the stony troughs and ridges, up which we had just marched, as well