The little town of Ardasa on the banks of the Kharshut affords shelter for the night. It is placed at a distance of about 2 miles above the bridge, and of about 24 1/2 miles from the Upper Hamsi Keui. The straggling settlement is overtowered by a cliff some thousand feet in height, perhaps a limestone and coloured a rusty brown. On the summit are seen the fragments of a mediæval castle. Between Ardasa and the pass of Vavuk we followed next day the winding river, tracking it up almost to its source. The valley is fairly open, with a number of side valleys; but the scene is desolate and bare. Not a remnant of the azalea enlivens the landscape; the vegetation adheres to the margin of the water--fruit trees and willows, the large mauve flowers of the field-iris, hawthorn in bloom, the yellow blossoms of the barberry. There is a certain air of comfort in the pretty wooden houses with their gables and wooden roofs, shining white. But this note is often and quickly lost in the sounding discords of a chaotic Nature--the shales and limestones compressed into almost impossible contortions and baked and uplifted by huge bosses of igneous rock. Beyond such a devil's gorge, which is overhung by a robber's eyrie, is situated the considerable town of Gümüshkhaneh, famous for its silver mines, now no longer worked. You leave it on your right and pass through a lower suburb, at a distance from Ardasa of about 16 1/2 miles. Another 10 miles brings you to the large village of Tekke; and about 2 miles further a bridge crosses the Kharshut. It takes a road which here diverges to follow a tributary to the left bank, and which leads across the Giaour Dagh to Erzinjan. We slept at Murad Khan, a comfortable shelter, having made a stage of about 33 miles (alt. 4430 feet). On the morning of the 10th of June we again pursued the river, now become shallow, and were soon passing beneath the castled crag of Kalajik, one of the wonders of the journey to Erzerum (Ch. X., Fig. 174, taken in winter). The size of the ruin and the scale of the outworks, which defend each ledge of the limestone precipice, far surpass the similar fastnesses in this wild valley. At 7 miles we left the stream to ascend by easy gradients the gentle slopes of the Vavuk Pass (6468 feet). At the saddle we had covered a distance of rather over 10 miles.