I would now invite my reader to accompany me in a ride through the town. Our starting-point will be a fine house on the heights of Bash Mahalla, immediately adjoining the road from Van. A stone bridge crosses the road from the precincts of the mansion to the dwelling of the ladies of the family, surrounded by a pleasant garden. The best rooms of the salamlik or larger residence had been placed at our disposal by one of the notables of Bitlis, by name Shemseddin Bey. Adjoining this quarter are the open spaces of the Gök Meidan, where you may admire an old medresseh, now used as a military store--a fine square building in hewn stone with four turrets at the corners, and a rich façade in the Arab style on the south side. The place is overgrown with weeds. Ancient elm trees spread their shade over the ruins of a mosque not many feet away. Adjacent is a cemetery with numerous headstones and two considerable mausolea. In this same district, not far from the residence of the Pasha, is situated the small mosque called Meidan Jamisi. A mollah dispenses instruction to some twenty little boys in a small den of a room close by. Descending the cliff-side to the main valley by a paved way, we pass the little mosque of Dort Sanduk, and the Armenian church of Karmirak. The latter, although presided over by the bishop of Bitlis, is an unpretentious building of four plain stone walls, with two rows of three stone pillars in the interior and crowned by a small dome. The bishop--poor fellow--will probably be in prison; that was his residence on the occasion of our sojourn. Attached to the church is a school with four teachers and over a hundred pupils, who certainly impressed us as better-to-do than at Van. Quite a number were wearing cloth clothes. The prison, full of Armenians, frowns out from the edge of the cliff. We make our way down the trough of the valley and past the castle. It is nothing better than a shell, the inner structures having fallen in or yielded their masonry to serve as material for other buildings. On an eminence, overlooking the pile, is placed the Turkish High School or Rushdiyeh, with seventy scholars and four instructors. Our visit was expected, but no preparations could conceal the squalor and general decrepitude of the institution. Most of the pupils were quite small boys. Where was the Mudir or Director of Public Instruction? It transpired that he too, although a Mussulman, was in prison. He had been complaining to Constantinople that the military authorities had turned him out of the building destined to serve as a High School, and had converted it into a store. The officers retaliated by locking him up. [142]