A double pontoon, staged across with planks, received our carriage, and was swiftly impelled along the hawser by the force of the stream. From the opposite margin a dreary tract of baked alluvial soil extends to the zone of gardens and orchards which commences at Kamarlu. I have already alluded to the excellence of the road within that zone; but by day you will be loth to hasten along it, such is the charm and so great the interest of the scene. The traffic from the lower Araxes, from Persia and distant Mesopotamia, finds its way along this chaussée to Erivan. The district is inhabited by well-to-do people, who can afford the richness of their national dress. Beneath the foliage of the needle poplars, between the well-maintained mud walls--over which you look to the vineyards and to the vegetable gardens, where the tomato and the chili abound--a stream of wayfarers, some on horseback, fill the pleasant avenue, chatting and smiling under the expansive influence of ease and shade. At intervals you pass a house or cluster of houses, where groups of Armenian women in their holiday attire are gathered before the open doors. They are clad in their gayest cottons, and wear their picturesque head-dress and veils of white gauze. Some among them nurse their babes at the open bosom, the little infant cleaving to the full breasts. Tartars, with their black lambskin hats and dark blue or black garments, compose an element which a cynic would be loth to dispense with in such a scene of piping peace; yet it would be difficult to detect a trace on their clean-shaven faces of passions which have, perhaps, been blunted by time. Laden waggons pass, and numerous bullock-carts, with their heavy, creaking wheels. We were amused by the appearance of a curious pair of riders who, to judge from the deference which was bestowed upon them, were evidently of exalted rank. The man wore a flowing beard and was dressed in Oriental apparel; but he held in his hand a parasol of European pattern, and his locks were surmounted by an English billycock hat. His wife was by his side, astride of her Arab; but the graceful animal was almost invisible beneath her, his withers overtowered by the huge bulk of her stomach, and his back enveloped in the folds of her robes. It was an Assyrian bishop, journeying from Mosul.