We left the cloister--which is generally known under the name of Changalli, from its bells, heard in the plains from afar [162]--on the morning of the first day of December, a little before noon. Snow lay thickly upon the ground; but the thermometer at eleven o'clock stood at four degrees (Fahrenheit) above freezing point. The atmosphere was free of vapour, and a kind sun shone. We made our way to the heights behind the monastery, and kept zigzagging up and along them for over two hours. When the process had been completed after a tedious ride to the pass, during which the horses would often flounder in the snow, we had not ascended to a difference of level of more than 1500 feet, nor had we progressed more than 3 1/2 miles. The better course, I feel sure, would have been to proceed in an easterly direction along the level terrace or open valley in which the cloister stands, leaving the neighbouring hamlet of Pazu just on our right hand. We could then have climbed the parapet which shelters these lofty uplands; or we might have scaled it in the immediate vicinity of Changalli. The black chaoush and his three myrmidons were indifferent guides. [163] Because the pass is no pass in the ordinary sense; it is merely the edge of a tableland. Mile after mile towards the north stretched the undulating snow-field, swept by the winds, pierced by spinous blades of grass. We stood at an elevation of nearly 8000 feet. Below us, infinitely deep, lay the magnificent plain of Mush, bounded on the further side by the barrier of the Kurdish mountains, crossing the landscape from the invisible waters of Lake Van. In one continuous wall they swept across the horizon, serrated, sharply chiselled above the deep valleys opening transverse to the line of the wall. Taurus they call the range, adopting a nomenclature which the West must have borrowed from the East. Taurus was very high where the Murad dives into the mountains; nor did the peaks appear less lofty on its right bank. We saw them circling towards the river from behind the plateau upon which we stood; but I was unable to trace the origin of this northern chain. It formed a marked exception to the outlines north of Taurus, which were vaulted or horizontal. Nimrud was seen to join the two contrasting landscapes, placed across the head of the plain. The neighbouring Kerkür looked more rounded than when we had first observed it, while, north of the Nimrud caldron, the swelling contours of the Sipan fabric were doubly soft in a robe of recent snow.