the hollow slope bristles with pointed boulders, and the bold crags pierce the ruin around them in upstanding combs or saw-shaped ridges, holding slantwise to the mountain side. On the west side of this broad and uncovered depression, near the western extremity of the cone, a long strip of snow descends from the summit, caught by some trough, or sheltering fissure, in the rough face of the cliff. Beyond it, just upon the sky-line, the bare rocks reappear, and climb the slope, like a natural ladder, to a point where the roof of the dome is lowest and appears to offer the readiest access to the still invisible crown. [78] In the attenuated atmosphere surrounding the summit every foot that is gained tells. An approach which promises to ease the gradient at the time when it presses most seems to offer advantages which some future traveller may be encouraged to essay. We ourselves were influenced in the choice of a principle upon which to base our attack by the confident counsels of the Armenian, which the local knowledge of the Kurds confirmed. We were advised to keep to the eastern margin of the depression, by the edge of the great snow-field. You see the brown rocks still baffling the snow-drifts near the point where the deceitful slope appears to end, where on the verge of the roof it just dips a little, then stands up, like a low white wall, on the luminous ground of blue. The troubled sea of boulders flowing towards the Little Ararat, from which we had just emerged, still hemmed us in from any prospect over the tracts which lay below. The flush of dawn broke between the two mountains from a narrow vista of sky. The even surface of the snow slope loomed white and cold above our heads, while the night still lingered on the dark stone about us, shadowing the little laps of ice. Before six o'clock we were afoot and ready; it wanted a few minutes to the hour as we set out from our camp. To the Swiss was entrusted the post of leader; behind him followed in varying order my cousin and Wesson and myself. Slowly we passed from the shore of the snow-lake to the gathering of the higher seams, harbouring our strength for the steeper gradients as we made across the beach of boulders, stepping firmly from block to block.