have perished in the attempt. The remnant may be destined, like the son of Anak, to redress the wrongs inflicted by their ancestors upon the common Christian weal. On the other hand, the lesson which is taught by history is that no nation and no Christianity will succeed with the Armenians which endeavours to deflect them from their own opinions and to preclude them from working out their own salvation in their own way. [254] CHAPTER XVII TO ANI AND TO KARS October 14.--We left the cloister at half-past eight, our little party of five persons including the Armenian cook. We had hired in the district ten miserable ponies, of which five carried our effects. The most direct way to Ani crosses the basal slopes of Alagöz, from the southern to the most westerly extremities of the shield-shaped mass. You proceed from Edgmiatsin in a north-westerly direction, the ground rising at every step of your advance. On the point of course, beyond oases of verdure in the foreground, lie the stony and arid declivities of the mountain--contours of immense length and low vaulting, joining the plain to the horizontal outline in the sky. The belt of verdure consists of fields of the cotton and the castor-oil plants, of patches of orchard and vineyard, and sparse groves of poplar, rising from the dusty and boulder-strewn waste. It is sustained by runnels which exhaust the waters of the Kasagh or Abaran Su, the stream which collects the scanty drainage of the volcano upon its eastern flank. The boulders are worn by water and have been dispersed by the swollen river, during the season of spring floods. Where we crossed the Kasagh itself, or principal channel, it was a languid and soil-charged body of water, threading these stony tracts. We passed several villages within the irrigated area, some inhabited by Armenians, others by Tartars, and a few by both races alike. Hiznavuz, or Kiznaus, an Armenian settlement, containing the State-school of the district, was the last of these hamlets of the fertile zone. We stayed a few minutes before the open windows of the schoolhouse, listening to a lesson given in Russian to Armenian boys. Behind the village, a sterile eminence leads over into the barren highlands which compose the pedestal of Alagöz.