To that gallery, which is nearly as elevated as the pass, we proceeded to follow a much shorter track. In half-an-hour we had gained the position after a valiant escalade, and the camera was at once brought to bear. But our enemy was, alas! the sun, an inexpugnable adversary, shedding his rays from just the quarter which we wished to embrace. Regretting the absence of the resourceful Wesson, I was obliged to turn the instrument towards the east-south-east. In that direction we commanded the upper valley of the Euphrates (Fig. 171); but we were robbed of a picture of the important landscape in the south. It was a little after noon; the mountains streamed with light, and only above the deeply-seated river valley a heavy mass of vapour hung. All the summits which are seen on this side of that vapour belong to the block of mountain on the north. The conical peak on the left of the illustration is the beautiful Jejen Dagh. Beyond the mist, the distant heights are those of the southern border in the neighbourhood of Erzerum. In another half-hour we had reached about the highest point upon the undulating snow-fields of the summit region. The Kop itself, the mountain which gives its name to the pass, is a flat-topped mass, rising with steep slopes on the right of the road. The pass has an elevation of 8048 feet. So brilliant was the sun that we were enabled to linger, and to attempt to realise the panorama of the south. The traveller who should approach Armenia by this well-beaten avenue might fail to discover the characteristics of a great tableland in the configuration of that extensive portion of her area which is outspread from this pass. It is true that the range he crosses resembles a large block of hard material rather than a chain of mountains in the more usual sense. But the outline of this mass is broken into peaks of every shape; and the opposite ranges display the same features, the whole combining to produce the impression of a troubled sea. How different was this landscape from that which I had overlooked from the pass of Zikar on the north! Yet the explanation of this diversity does not, I think, belie the conception which a wide experience had inculcated in my mind--the conception, namely, of a vast mass of elevated country of which a prevailing characteristic is the flatness of its surface. For in this landscape the levelling influence of the lavas are almost absent, while, on the other hand, the operation of the various processes of denudation have been conducted on a colossal scale and with conspicuous results. The ancient sedimentary deposits have been worn by their action into peaks of considerable relative height, while the plains with their lake-like beds have, as it were, usurped the character of the mountains by which they are overhung. Reserving for further study the country between Frat and Murad on the west of Erzerum and Mush, I need only remark that its present aspect from