It was the 29th of November, just after half-past nine in the morning, when our party of four Europeans and four Turkish soldiers defiled into the plain from the hill of Mush. The iron-grey colt was being led by one of our new companions, the more docile that he anticipated release. Were we prisoners and these our jailers? I asked the question of the principal man, who was a sergeant with the name of Mevlud Chaoush. A black shawl, reaching to the shoulders, was wound about his head as a protection from the weather. His irregular and forbidding features never broke into a smile, nor did his lips move except to utter a command. We passed several deserted burying fields, with fallen headstones, and forded the Garni Chai, a mere torrent in a wide bed. More than half-an-hour had passed before we doubled the western promontory, and struck our true course across the plain. We skirted or could see several hamlets--dots in the expanse, which had the appearance, usual in this country, of a sea. No hedges or artificial boundaries parcel the ground; no leafy trees blend in the distance to a soft, grey mass. The harvest had been gathered, and you could scarcely tell the difference between the cultivated and the unreclaimed soil. Marshes, instead of a network of irrigation channels, received the waters babbling down from the southern range. After several halts, rendered necessary by the freaks and misfortunes of the baggage horse, we reached at half-past twelve the considerable Armenian village of Sheikh Alan, near the ford of the Murad. About a mile beyond the village we approached the margin of the noble river which we had followed from Karakilisa to Tutakh. It appeared to be flowing in two channels through a bed having a width of 200 yards or more. After fording the first of these branches, which was about 30 yards across, we made our way over a beach to the second branch. It was some 100 yards in breadth, the water reaching to the horses' knees. When we had gained the opposite bank, which was firm and well-defined, we prepared to say good-bye to the Murad. What was our surprise to meet a third and magnificent river, sweeping towards us in an independent bed! It was buffeting its high left bank, at the extremity of a beautiful curve, and the flood was much too deep to venture in. So we followed the current until the bluff sent it swirling to the opposite margin, diffused over a wider space. Even at this point the passage was not without risk; but an experienced villager piloted us safely to the further side. From bank to bank was a distance of about 80 yards, and the wavelets wetted our horses' flanks. The confluence of the Kara Su, the stream which collects the drainage of the plain of Mush, is situated some little distance above the ford. [156]