and effects its confluence at the head of this plain. [260] In the days when those cities flourished, the haughty Araxes was spanned by bridges of which, here and there, a pier or a buttress still survives. [261] Below the lofty rock of Takjaltu lie the famous salt mines of Kulpi, which have been exploited from immemorial times. After leaving the Armenian village we continued in the same direction over the barren highlands, in possession of the landscape which I have endeavoured to describe. We were riding at walking pace; our immediate surroundings were indifferent to us; nor for the space of three hours did we meet a single settlement, except here and there a group of Kurdish tents. When at midday the clouds cleared above the summit of Alagöz, we remarked that the fangs of its rocky core were invisible behind the bulging contours of the outer sheath. Above us, upon those slopes, we could discern some small green patches, which mark the site of hamlets, peopled by Tartars and Armenians who eke out a scanty subsistence on the mountain side. When we had reached a point some thirteen miles in direct distance from Edgmiatsin, we crossed a close succession of deep ravines. The first of these was the most considerable of the three, and contained the broad bed of a dry watercourse, which descends from the central mountain mass. On the further side of the last among them we came upon the remains of a large church, of great simplicity but of much beauty of form. It was built of hewn stone, in the style of the best Armenian architecture; and the ancient frescos still stained the walls of the apse. But the lofty dome had fallen in, leaving nothing but a yawning circle, with fragments of cloud crossing the blue above our heads. An inscription in the interior bears the date 876 (Armenian era), which corresponds to the year A.D. 1426. Just beyond this ruin is situated the little Armenian village of Talysh, on the southern confines of which we visited the remains of some towers which are probably of the same period as the church, and which overlook the ravine upon the west. Both the starshina and the priest of Talysh were absent from the settlement; the inhabitants professed complete ignorance of the history of their antiquities, which, since they could neither read nor write, was perhaps not feigned. The afternoon was well advanced when we left this pleasant site; a mist arose, and developed into rain. In less than two hours we were glad to find shelter in the Tartar village of Akhja Kala, a refreshing oasis of green willows on these sterile slopes.