The large feature, the leading motive of the immense landscape is the likeness, and yet the contrast, between the two great depressions on the west and east of the lofty stage upon which you stand. Both are bounded on the south by the long barrier of the Kurdish mountains; both oppose to that deep belt of serried ridges expanses of perfectly even surface. But, while the one dazzles the eye with its splendour of outline and brilliance of colouring, the other is always dim, grey, vague, and unseizable. Neither view is ever lost for very long. Even while you are in possession of the long perspective of the plain of Mush, stretching to the horizon with a wealth of subdued detail, like the nave of some great cathedral in the West, between the crags in the opposite quarter, through some fork in the outline, the blue lake, the point of a promontory, a glimpse of Sipan may still be seen. Let us start from the point at which we entered the crater, from a level of 8150 feet (c on plan). It will be early in the morning, when the sky is flaked with cloud--beds of vapour, grey and white, scarcely concealing the field of blue, and unmoved by a breath of wind. Proceeding northwards along the wall of the crater, we rapidly ascend. Our horses' hoofs sink in the powdery pumice sand, which is held together in places by bushes of flowering spiræa, and by tufts of grass, among which a small species of campanula hangs its pretty little violet bells. The pumice tells the story of the violent explosions to which the present aspect of the crater is due. They have enlarged the circumference of the walls of the basin; and their effect is clearly visible from the interior as one looks to the side of the wall up the edge of which we now ride. Whereas the beds of lava on the north and south walls, which are the most lofty, are seen in section as perfectly horizontal sheets, on this north-eastern wall, as well as upon the face of the corresponding cliff on the west, they have a downward slope. It is obvious that all the layers at the time of emission must have been horizontal around the original crater rim; and the pronounced obliquity of the beds on the western and eastern sides is due to their being exposed by explosive agency at a point where they had commenced to descend to the surrounding plains. The underlying lava is of the usual description, a rhyolitic andesite with a thin selvage, or upper surface, of obsidian, which shines like jet in the sun. The basaltic lavas, with their cloak of pumice, ease the gradient of the slope towards the plain in the direction of Akhlat; but the explosion has produced a steepness up which the horses are obliged to zigzag, in making north, along the edge of the cliff. A turn outwards discloses the harmony of the landscape of Lake Van; a turn inwards the mystery of the scene within the crater. The higher we rise, the more abruptly the outer slope of the wall sinks to the plains about its base.