While descending into the plain, we passed through a Kurdish village of some size, called Randuli. We now opened out the whole extent of the even surface--a floor at the foot of towering cliffs. The plain may have a length, from west to east, of about three miles and a breadth of two miles or less. Water serpents through it in all directions, to collect in a little river which our people knew under the name of Dodan Chai, but which is apparently more generally known as the Bingöl Su. [166] Four villages of some importance are situated in the plain--Baskan, Gundemir, Diyadin and Dodan. The last-mentioned is placed at its eastern extremity and close to the river which bears its name. All four are inhabited by Armenians. Having gained the level, we forded the stream above the village, and at six o'clock rode through Dodan. Night was falling; we followed a track which had been made by the bullock-carts, at some little distance from the left bank of the river. We were skirting on an easterly course the base of the northern heights, along the trough of irregular surface which we had overlooked. The soil was deep and black, covered in places by a crop of stones. It seemed as if the valley were choked by the shapes of hills. We were over two hours in reaching Gumgum. The village or little town--for it is the capital of a caza, the caza of Varto, belonging to the sanjak of Mush--is situated in the long valley of which I have been speaking, between the Bingöl and the block of mountain on the north of Mush. A small river flows below it at some little distance, which joins the Bingöl Su some two or three miles south of the town. The united waters issue into the Murad or Eastern Euphrates about eight miles south-east of Gumgum. The direct road to Mush is taken along the Murad, which, after the confluence, finds a passage through the hills. It reaches the plain at the village of Sikava.