The day was fine, with a warm sun and a blue sky; the air was fresh and strong. Before us, and on every side, stretched the undulating surface, of rich and friable brown loam. It is subjected to primitive methods of cultivation; but at this season it was difficult to trace the hand of man. We saw no villages; what there are must be hidden in laps of the ground; and Nature, a kind and bountiful Nature, is allowed to revolve her seasons almost in vain. Bright streams come bubbling down from the distant framework of mountains, and wind on a south-easterly course to the far Murad. We passed no less than three of these tributaries to the river of Khinis. The first was flowing between high banks of volcanic rock, and sheltered a beautiful church in the old Armenian style, called Kilisa Deresi, or the church in the valley. Around this monument were grouped the tall headstones of a disused cemetery, some engraved with the elaborate crosses which were so dear to the ancestors of the unhappy people, now the bondsmen of parasite Kurds. Even as we stood in admiration of this charming building, an active Kurd in a showy dress stepped into the path. He vaulted upon the back of a graceful chestnut Arab, which was being led to and fro. We saw him cantering off to the neighbouring Armenian village, and we wondered upon what errand he was bent. At a quarter-past one we commenced to ascend to a passage of the hills which confine the plain upon the north. In the space of half-an-hour we had reached an elevation of over 6000 feet. We stopped for some little time to fully realise the scene which we were now about to leave behind. The terraces of the Bingöl plateau had been following our steps at some distance on our left hand. We had come in a northerly direction from Khinis; and the heights we were preparing to cross were an immediate spur from that table surface, linking it to the long range on the north of the plain. Both that spur, or connecting ridge, and the range which it joined, tended to incline south-west from a latitudinal course. The plateau itself was now close up; indeed it rose immediately above us, on the west of our winding track. It is therefore plain that it must have pursued a north-north-easterly direction, since it had formed a distant background to the town. I turned the camera upon the flanking ridge (Fig. 160), and then mounted to an adjacent eminence, almost on a level with the surface of the plateau. My illustration shows a formation characteristic of the edge of the terraces, great blocks of stone welded together as if by a human hand. The surface is flat and is covered with rough grass, of which the higher stalks pierced the covering of recent snow.