There are several large villages in the plain of Pasin; but to what race or mixture of races do the Mohammedan inhabitants belong? I was impressed by the difference in the physiognomy of these people, which was quite unlike the type prevailing among settled Kurds. The question of the racial composition of the non-Kurdish element, inhabiting the districts on the north, remains a subject for further research. The Armenians are in a decided minority in Pasin. [174] A broad chaussée with flanking ditches is carried along the plain, almost in a straight line. But many of the culverts have fallen in, forcing vehicles off the road into the soft soil on either side. Still our horses liked the change, wearied by their long journey and much clambering over rocks. The ground was free of snow, even on this fifth day of December, and the air was comparatively mild. [175] The further we proceeded, the more the expanse narrowed and the perspective of the two long barriers closed. From afar we fixed our eyes on what appeared to be an artificial earthwork, thrown across the narrow head of the plain. At half-past one we were at the foot of this apparent fortification, with broken ground on either hand. The muzzles of cannon were turned towards us from the flat top of the colossal mound, and from two hills which rose on the south of the road. Indeed we seemed to face a completely impregnable position, impossible to circumvent. And from a distance one would think that the meeting walls of mountain were joined together by a transverse dam. Approaching closer, the road is seen to find a passage between the hills on the south and the adjacent flat-topped mass. The width of this passage may be about half-a-mile. Once within the answering horns you cross a spacious amphitheatre, in which the secret of the formation is revealed. The two hills belong to the southern wall of mountain, but so also does the mound. And a line of heights circle inwards from behind the two hills, to protract the circle outwards to the horn of the mound. Hills and mound are left behind before those heights are breasted; or, to continue the figure, you scale the tiers of the amphitheatre at the point most remote from the narrow opening on its eastern side. Such is the position which, due not to man, but to a freak of Nature, arrests the flow of traffic or the tide of battle. The linking heights--the opposite curve of the circle--are widely known through the literature of travel and of Asiatic warfare as the Deveh Boyun, or the camel's neck. The humps and head are represented, the first by the two hills, and the second by the mound. The pass, to which the road climbs, is situated on the neck of the camel; but a second ridge must be surmounted, which is a little higher, and has an elevation of about 6850 feet.