So far as we could judge from a hasty examination, the Murad may at one time have flowed quite near the walls; but the bridge of the mediæval city is at least two miles west of the town. The road is taken over low and marshy ground, and crosses a side torrent of considerable volume, when quite near the bridge. This torrent is said to be derived from springs in the plain; it eats its way through a lava stream. The gorge is spanned by the single pointed arch of an ancient bridge--a structure so massive that it has resisted destruction, and still rears intact its elegant facing of pink and black volcanic stone. Worse fortune has attended the noble structure which once joined the banks of the Murad. Of its thirteen or more piers only four are standing; some have rolled over and compose masses that defy the stream. On those that remain you admire the exquisite masonry, and the skilful variation of black with pink stone. The arches are much pointed, and are close together; the bridge describes a curve down stream. On the opposite margin we remarked the foundations of an ancient road, underlying the grass on the hillside. At the present day a road does not exist in the country, and the river is crossed by fords. Indeed the city presents a strangely pathetic spectacle of fallen greatness, of a culture which has disappeared--more touching by the contrast with the blank of the present, by the sufficiency and eloquence of the monuments that remain. We are by them enabled to reconstruct the splendour of the citadel, which was perhaps the palace; the stateliness of the double walls with their picturesque towers; the frescos of the churches, the magnificent bridge, the broad, paved road. An Armenian genius produced these works, and a Turk destroyed them. Now only some forty Armenian families grovel among the ruins of a past which they ignore. A few small shops, some kept by Armenians, a few by Kurds, dispense Manchester cottons and some of the necessaries of life. There is not a house that is not built out of the remains of the old town. The little windows are screened with paper or bits of calico. The Kaimakam cannot tell you the number of the inhabitants. His clerk is ill, and he himself has no idea of the number; yet they are not so very many to count. It is possible that he is dissembling; yet he is very ignorant; he laughs at our notion of climbing Sipan. He says that, years ago, during the course of an exceptional season, when the summit had become almost free of snow, one man was said to have reached the top. One can see that it is the snow which appeals to their doubts and raises their fears. What life you see around you is feeble and squalid--wicked, even, in a small way. And it seems as if the storks, which lend sanctity to the decaying towers, were the incarnation of the grave, sad thoughts that rise in the mind.