I feel that I shall exhaust the patience of my reader if I follow in detail the remainder of our journey to Tutakh. I have brought him along the outskirts of the important plain of Khinis to the region about Lake Van. In case he may be a traveller, desirous of guidance over the wild country which separates Gopal from Tutakh, I would offer the suggestion that he should shape a direct course by his compass; I doubt that he would be obliged to deviate often or for very far. Such advice would have saved ourselves from getting lost in the intricate districts to the north of such a direct line. Nobody knew the way; there are few villages; and, although the inhabitants appeared to belong exclusively to the Hasananli, each village was at feud with its immediate neighbours, and it was impossible to obtain guides. Moreover the division of the day into tedious units of hours is a process which in that region is unfamiliar and scarcely known. During the summer the few inhabitants are scattered in the yailas; the remnant in the village is largely composed of old men and women, besides the children, male and female, whose naked stomachs are distended by the quantities of gritty bread they are obliged to consume. Such scenes of abject poverty are rarely tempered by a brighter vision--the vision of youth, mature and unimpaired. The few young women and girls, who have not followed the flocks and herds, will be busy at their weaving of material for the black tents, stretching the long strands of goat-hair twine, and adding the woof to the web. Their loose cotton trousers display the slimness of their limbs; and it is a pleasure to watch the rhythm of their bodies, seated by the side of their task with knees apart.