The weather was delightful--a climate mild as spring, made fresh by the expanse of sea. The rays of a hot sun flashed through a crystal-clear atmosphere, which disclosed wide prospects over lake and land. Fragments of white cloud floated above the outline of the Kurdish mountains, less gloomy beneath the newly-fallen snows (Fig. 139). In the west, Nimrud was faithful to its appearance of an island, separated by a strait from the train of Sipan. But to-day we could see the walls of the vast crater--a caldron of which the rim appeared commensurate with the area of the island, rising in a robe of white from the waves. We were pointing towards the high land in the direction of Artemid, the southern limit of the spacious plain of Van. When near the village, we struck a road which the Pasha was building, with the avowed intention of extending it to Bitlis. Workmen were busy upon it, and there was quite a stream of little bullock carts, conveying stones and soil. It follows the margin of the lake, and the drive along it to Artemid will be a treat such as few cities can bestow. The castled rock, backed by the fabric of the great volcano beyond the distant headland of the bay; the noble lake, intensely blue, expanding to the distant Nimrud, yet plashing tamely with tiny wavelets on the sand--these are answered in the opposite direction, across the poplars which hide the village, by the precipitous walls, sharp edges and deep shadows, characteristic of the stupendous barrier in the south. Although the distance between Van and Artemid does not exceed eight miles, it was after two before we arrived. We mounted the side of the hill ridge which meets the lake at this point in a bold and high cliff. Gardens decline along the easier levels towards the invisible margin of the shore. You look across the foliage to the fabric of Sipan, no longer covered by the horn of the bay (Frontispiece).