From the high land, over which we were again making, and which is here covered with pumice sand, we obtained a view of Bilejan. But our attention was soon diverted by the picturesque situation of a large village on our left hand. A rapid if only momentary change in our surroundings had taken us by surprise. It is due to a bed of dark, glassy lava, perhaps an ancient flow from Nimrud, or from a fissure about its base. A deep stream, which is crossed by a bridge, eats its way through the hard rock, and descends by several waterfalls to a lagoon within the bay. The village is placed at some little distance from the shore of the lake, upon a platform of lava on the right bank of the stream. It possesses two small churches, which are evidently very old. On the outskirts, which we crossed, was a small field, planted with marrows, an unusual luxury in this neighbourhood. The inhabitants are all, I believe, Armenians. But Karmuch and its black valley, with the willows and the waterfalls, were but an incident--and the last incident--in the scene. An almost uniform plain, of very shallow gradient, stretched from all sides towards the crater in the west. Covered at first by pumice, a brown lava comes to the surface, and extends to the actual wall of the circular mass. Dry watercourses seam the entire region, which, however, is so even in its general character, that it would almost seem to have once been covered, up to the base of the crater, by the waters of the lake. At first the soil is barren, supporting only some burnt herbage; in such surroundings we sank to the trough of an extensive depression, in which is situated a deserted cemetery of some size. But when the lava is reached the vegetation commences, and continues to the foot of the higher seams. The spangled blossoms of atraphaxis, which I had not seen since my first journey, were conspicuous, but only here and there. The prevailing flower was a large forget-me-not, almost the size of a little bush; and, later on, a wild pea, pink and white. The higher we rose the more frequent became patches of standing corn, though by whom planted it was difficult to conceive. Our people said they belonged to a distant Armenian village at the foot of the crater, called Seghurt or Teghurt. The soil, where exposed by the plough, was a rich brown. Small blocks of obsidian, coal-black in hue, were scattered over the grass. Now and again a tortoise waddled over the sand. So we rode for a distance of many miles, until the wall of the crater rose like a rampart above our heads. We had reached an elevation of 6880 feet, or of over 1000 feet above the level of Lake Van.