Those brown slopes indeed belonged to the barrier which the Murad pierces upon its egress from the plain of Alashkert. No trace of stratified rock could be detected upon them; nor was Oswald, on the following day, when he examined a section of the bank of the river, successful in finding among the pebbles, embedded in the side of the cliff, any examples which were not derived from an eruptive origin. The face of the plain itself, through which the river wanders towards the basin of Melazkert, has been flooded with sheets of lava, which have probably flowed in a southerly direction, and which extend at least as far as the right bank. Along the opposite margin rise grassy heights, volcanic in character, and placed like an outer buttress in front of the ridges of the Ala Dagh. These are succeeded by the lavas of the Kartevin. Just below Tutakh the Murad enters a low gorge; but the remainder of its course is spent in a wide, alluvial bed, at the foot of rounded eminences on either shore. Almost exactly at the point where the troubled ridges of the Kartevin Dagh commence to sink into the plain of Melazkert, the heights on the right bank roll away. And, a little lower down, the river reaches the trough of the basin, which is about 450 feet lower than the level of Lake Van. [227] There it changes direction with almost startling abruptness, and flows off westwards through an expanse of even ground. The country upon the right bank of the Murad, over an area which is roughly limited by the town of Tutakh on the north, and by the villages of Dignuk and Murian (on the Gopal Su) upon the south and west, would appear to present features which do not widely differ from those of the higher region we had just crossed. As we overlooked a portion of that area from some of the loftier eminences which border the left bank, we were confronted by the familiar shapes of grassy, treeless downs; of terraces of lava or tuff sloping towards the river, of valleys deeply cut in the barren soil. The single river which effects a confluence through that region is the Kersik; it enters the Murad at the foot of lofty cliffs. But the flowering yellow fennel was either absent or less conspicuous; and its place was taken by a purple vetch, of restful hue and delicate petals, climbing the hillsides, like a heather, yet more intense.