By half-past three we had left the gentle water-course, and were winding inwards, up the slope of Great Ararat, to cross the black and barren region, the girdle of sharp crags and slippery boulders which is drawn round the upper seams of the mountain, like a succession of chevaux de frise. We thought it must have been on some other side of Ararat that the animals descended from the Ark. For a space of more than three hours we laboured on over a chaos of rocks, through a labyrinth of troughs and ridges, picking a path and as often retracing it, or scrambling up the polished sides of the larger blocks which arrest the most crafty approach. The Kurds, although sorely taxed by their burdens, were at an advantage compared to ourselves; they could slip, like cats, from ledge to ledge in their laced slippers of hide. In one place we passed a gigantic heap of boulders, towering several hundred feet above our heads. The rock is throughout of the same character and colour--an andesitic lava of a dark slaty hue. A little later we threaded up a ravine or gully, and, after keeping for awhile to the bottom of the depression, climbed slowly along the back of the ridge. I noticed that the grain or direction of the formation lay towards east-south-east. From the head of this ravine we turned into a second, by a natural gap or pass; loose rocks were piled along the sides of the hollow, which bristled with fantastic, but unreal, shapes. Here a seated group of camels seemed to munch in silence on the line of fading sky, or the knotty forms of lifeless willows stretched a menace of uplifted arms. In the sheltered laps of this higher region, as we approached our journey's end, the snow still lay in ragged patches, which increased in volume and depth.... The surface cleared, the view opened; we emerged from the troubled sea of stone. Beyond a lake of snow and a stretch of rubble rose the ghostly sheet of the summit region, holding the last glimmer of day.