These cross-roads, Khach-poghan, are situated almost in the centre of the most thickly-populated districts of the garden town. On the whole it is a painful impression which one receives from daily intercourse with one's fellow-creatures at Van. The salient feature of the situation is the war between two opposite elements--the one of restless energy, measured almost by a European standard; the other passive, suspicious, fitfully aflame. Neither is endowed with the capacity of government; and the least numerous and least capable rule. The Armenian subject majority spend lives which are certainly laborious and create whatever wealth the city possesses. The Mussulman dominant minority grow fat in the mostly highly-paid sinecures, or employ the most keen-witted among the Christians to devise ingenious schemes for robbing the public or the public funds. Over all presides an imported official of little ability and no education; and a few troops, under the orders of an independent commander, who is a centre for intrigue, redress the balance in favour of the least enlightened and most corrupt. Things are in the habit of going on in this haphazard manner, jolting and creaking along. But within the last decade or two a new spirit has been born, which my reader knows under the name of the Armenian movement. Here at Van, no less than elsewhere, it has been a clumsy birth, as might be expected from its parentage. It springs from the two elements above indicated, and flourishes most in the circumstances described. In its ultimate origin it is at once a product of economical conditions and a reflection of the spirit of the times. It causes the old elements to ferment beyond recognition and to assume the most incongruous shapes.