We had crossed or skirted the volcanic circus, with the lake in the extinct crater, of which Dubois has furnished us with a learned account. [37] Before us lay the defile through the gigantic dam of volcanic mountain which has opened, as if by miracle, to the puny stream. Soon we are winding along that path, about at mid-height of the cliffs, the river brawling far beneath us, a tortuous thread of foam. It is a remarkable scene, a freak of Nature on a large scale, of which none of us, at least, has seen the like. The volcanic layers have been split by vertical fissures, and huge masses of conglomerate rock tower high above us, almost separated from the mountain side. Their masonry of cemented blocks gives them the appearance of castles, the work of a more than human hand; they threaten to tumble headlong into the valley, a fate to which some have already succumbed. They remind me of the Devil's city of Montpellier-le-Vieux, in the Cevennes country--a mere sprite's village by their side. The dark colour of the rocks, the gloom of the passage, the height of the cliffs, soaring from the twilight in the hollow to jagged summits some 500 to 600 feet above the gulf, all contribute to enhance the impression of mystery and to suggest the presence of a prince of fiends. Opposite us, on the left bank, the bold outline of the fish-backed ridge is crowned with the ruinous remains of masonry, barely distinguished from the rock. A long line of crumbling edifices marks the site of a considerable fortress; in the depths beneath, at the foot of the perpendicular mountain, a wall descends the last slope to the margin of the water and cuts off access to the valley from the river-bed. A few miserable huts are seen in the hollow: who could inhabit such a weird and lonely spot? Kurds, they say, as though they were no human beings--a lingering remnant of Turkish times. The ruins are the relics of Zeda Tmogvi, a stronghold famous in the history of these lands. [38] Beyond this gorge the valley opens and resumes the more normal character of a torrent bordered by lofty hillsides. The further you proceed, the floor of the hollow is covered by richer verdure, while a grove of fruit trees spreads shade. Are they wild or were they planted? The extreme loneliness of the scene was scarcely broken by a sign of human life. We forded the Kur, and, after winding through these orchards of the river margin, doubled a projecting spur of the valley wall. We were at the foot of a perpendicular cliff which displayed irregular rows of gaping caves at a considerable height above the river-bed. These grottoes have been cut in the face of a layer of volcanic rock of extraordinary smoothness and of flesh-coloured hue. The layer does not extend to the summit of the cliff, which is composed of a conglomerate with greyish tints (Fig. 18).