None of the copious springs which feed the Tigris on the southern side of the parapet of mountain, quite close to the flood washing its northern slopes, has yet been shown to possess any of the strongly marked qualities characteristic of the waters of Lake Van. One of the most remarkable of these springs is situated near the south-west corner of the lake, at Sach in the Güzel Dere or beauteous valley--a valley with a specially appropriate name. [31] It has been examined by Major Maunsell, who describes it as issuing from the base of a cliff and immediately constituting a stream 50 yards wide and 18 inches deep. It is quite possible that this source of the Tigris may have given colour to the belief of the ancients that the river flowed through the lake and found an exit at its further end by an underground channel. Another scarcely less interesting fountain in the neighbourhood is that of Norshen at the head of the plain of Mush. It rises in a circular pool with a diameter of 105 feet, from which it wells over into a stream which runs to the Euphrates. The natives hold that it is in connection with the lake in the crater of Nimrud, and relate how a shepherd, whose staff, weighted with a small parcel of coin, had sunk below the surface of that deep mere, had one day been astonished to see the lost object eddying in the current of the pool of Norshen. Careful scrutiny of the spring during my second journey established the conviction that it affords no outlet to Lake Van. Moreover, its position and the delicious flavour of its water point to its being derived from the limestones of the range on the south of the plain.