We stood on the threshold of the Armenian tableland, beneath a new climate and in face of a new scene. The contrast impressed Oswald, who saw it for the first time, and who at once seized the special features of this new world. We had crossed the zone of sparse fir trees; the summit is completely barren; the plain before us, as well as the rounded outlines of the opposite hills, devoid of vegetation of any kind. Only by the margin of a slowly-flowing river beneath us beds of buttercups marked out in patches its idle course. Limestones and shales are the material of this and the further eminences; it is a country of soft, swelling downs on a large scale. The clouds stand arrested on the higher summits of this barrier; the sky beyond is pellucid, the air bracing, the tints warm. As we made our way beneath the night to our distant goal beyond Baiburt the evening star was shining with the brilliance of a beacon, and my friend mistook the milky way for a luminous cloud. When we arrived in Erzerum (6168 feet) on the 14th of June the lilac filled the gardens with its heavy scent. It was commencing to blossom in our native country before we left its shores behind. CHAPTER XII ACROSS THE CENTRAL TABLELAND TO KHINIS The site of Erzerum is already familiar to my reader; he sees her towers and minarets on the southern margin of a lake-like plain, and raised on the daïs of a fan of detritus from the southern line of heights. He knows the large surroundings of that city of inspiring prospects: the long and regular line of the block of mountains in the north, with their Sheikhjik, their Akhbaba, Jejen and Kop; the vague and gloomy passage of the Gurgi Boghaz through those mountains; and in the east the transverse parapet which interrupts the issue eastwards, that freak of Nature, the Deveh Boyun. The southern barrier, which rises in the peak of Palandöken to a height of 4500 feet above the town, would appear to constitute an impassable obstacle to traffic; and in fact precludes it during the winter months. Yet there are several natural openings in the steep slopes of that barrier, leading to the uplands of Tekman on its further side. Of these the principal passage is that of Palandöken, crossing the so-called crater of the Palandöken--Eyerli Dagh.