After regaling ourselves with delicious milk and eating an egg or two, we started at noon on our excursion up the ravine. We made our way along the eastern side of the chasm, sometimes picking our course as we might among the boulders, at others following a beaten path on higher ground. Not far beyond the hamlet we noticed a little spring, of which the water was trickling over. The next object to excite our interest was the peculiar formation of the floor of a side valley, in which we found ourselves at half-past twelve. Throughout an area of some 350 by 200 yards the ground was perfectly level, like a billiard table, with a smooth surface of sand and little pebbles. The length of this round ellipse followed the direction of the main ravine, which lay at some considerable depth beneath it, and from which the basin of this valley was separated by a low bulwark of rock and soil. We were impressed by the sharp distinction between the bottom of this flat area and the banks which, on the one side, were formed by this bulwark and, on the other, by towering cliffs, overgrown with grass. The basin has an entrance and an exit gully, through which the waters collect and escape. Not a single pool lingered within it at this season, and it was difficult to realise that this warm and sunny recess probably owes its most distinctive features to the erosive action of ice. We mounted ever higher up the slopes which flank the ravine. In the trough of the gulf we noticed another flat space, similar in character but less pronounced than that which I have described. Bushes of wild rose luxuriate on these cliff-sides, and from this foreground of rich tints and red berries we looked across to the dark and perpendicular precipices which encircle the head of the chasm. At every lift in the restless vapours we feasted our eyes on the snows of the summit, and we remarked the great length and horizontal profile of the summit-outline, seen between the opening arms of the abyss. Muffled women's figures, astride of their horses, came winding down the path. They were Armenian ladies, returning from a pilgrimage to St. Jacob's Well; foot-attendants held their bridles and picked their way.