It has already been said that the valley of the Bingöl Su, or Upper Araxes, offers an easy approach to the districts on the north. The river pierces a wintry region of the table surface, and traffic is carried along its bed. But some 2 1/2 miles below the village of Mejitli it enters a deep and impassable gorge. You mount to the summit of the lofty precipices which overtower its serpentine course. Again in the saddle at half-past one, we reached this commanding eminence at a quarter-past two. Nor did we descend afresh into the trough of the stream, which proceeded to thread a chaos of mountains in the east. The view from any point was one of savage beauty (Fig. 162). By slow degrees the flat surface of the elevated plateau was becoming riven and broken up. You could still discern the level snow-fields, burying the stream in the south, and coming towards you on either bank. But the cloak of winter had not yet hidden the yellow grass on the adjacent slopes; while in the east the scene was changing to a wild landscape of hill and mountain, upon which the snow had not yet effected a hold. A few miles further these features increased in definition. The layers of lava gave place to hard limestones, forming peaks which had weathered a soft white. Masses of rock, of a hue which was green as the rust of copper, or red like that of iron, were exposed on the sides of the hills. From a foreground of tufted herbage, sown with yellow immortelles, we looked across this troubled region in which the river wound its way--a ribbon of changing colours, skirting the foot of sweeping hillsides or confined in narrow clefts of stupendous depth. In the far east we caught a glimpse of the snowy dome of the Kuseh Dagh, which overlooks the plain of Alashkert. At four o'clock the track diverged, and led us over the undulating plateau which still continued, but with less regularity, in the west. A short turn towards north-west brought us almost to the threshold of the broad depression of Pasin. The ground fell away by a succession of convexities to a level surface, deeply seated at our feet (Fig. 163). But far in the north, on its opposite margin, again appeared the cliffs of a plateau, exalted thousands of feet above the plain. It represents the extreme extension of the tablelands of Armenia, to be succeeded by the peripheral ranges in the north. It was carried west and east, across the horizon. In this neighbourhood it is known as Kargabazar.