We were scarcely beneath the walls when the figure of a horseman springs forward from some recess into the road. Throwing his white Arab on to his haunches at a few yards before our carriage, he challenges and constrains us to pull up dead. This proceeding on his part, no less than his forbidding countenance, throws me completely off my guard. On Russian soil one is obliged to smother the irritation which is always threatening to burst forth from a British breast. I shout to him to move aside, or we will whip the horses and drive through him; to this he answers by drawing his revolver and threatening to shoot. I ask him by what right he dared to obstruct the roadway; he replies by enquiring by what credentials we presume to pass. It flashes through me that the game is in the hands of this ruffian--we had been spoilt by the attentions of the high officials, and to such an extent that we had forgotten to bring even our passports, which had gone in our despatch box to Erivan. It was useless to urge that one could not be obliged to show a passport in order to be allowed to visit a church. He paid no heed to any of our arguments, and compelled us to return with him to Kamarlu. He even added the insult of requiring us to suit our pace to his, and to follow at a walk or amble by his side. This we flatly refused to do, and, taking the reins from the trembling coachman, proceeded at a brisk trot. Simon Ter-Harutiunoff--such was the name of this ferocious person--is linked in our memory with the companion picture of Ivan the Terrible, our stern custodian during the Akhaltsykh days. Both are Armenians, and either might be taken as a model for the embodiment of the fighting instincts in man. Tartars and Cossacks are amenable creatures besides them; and of the two, we were inclined to bestow the palm upon Simon. His face was black with exposure to the sun; the eyes were yellow round the dark iris and shot with red veins. His features were large and pronounced, but of singular deformity; the massive head was placed upon broad shoulders above a frame of great bulk and iron strength. He wore two medals, won during the war with Turkey through personal bravery. His function in time of peace was to police the Persian frontier in the district of Khor Virap. These particulars we learnt in the office of the Pristav, upon our return under such escort to Kamarlu. We claimed and were permitted to proceed to Erivan; but the chapars were instructed to prevent us from diverging, and to hand us over to the Nachalnik at the provincial capital. In this manner we were foiled in our antiquarian researches among these ancient sites. At Khor Virap we saw nothing but some slight convexities in the surface of the ground, which may be caused by buried remains. Beyond the mound we observed a natural wall of rock, rising like a gigantic ruin above the plain.