Native industries, such as the production of various kinds of textiles, as well as a number of small handicrafts, are necessarily confined within very humble limits, owing to the poverty of the country. Wages are low, and the price of bread is apt to become high under a system of commercial rings which involves the Government officials in the artificial production of a famine. At the time of my visit wheat stood at an almost prohibitive figure; yet large quantities of the cereal were reputed to be stored, and no additional supplies were encouraged to come in. Many of my readers will be familiar with the circular wafers, resembling pancakes, which take the place of our loaves of bread throughout the East. Never very palatable, as I think, they are really unwholesome, besides being nasty, in the paradise of Van. They appeared to be compounded of a gritty mud with an admixture of dough. We endeavoured in vain to procure some white bread; the bakeries were said to be forbidden to supply such a luxury to any but the Vali's table. The wretched bakers are a class subject to constant persecution; the officials have the right and even the duty of inspection; and this is tantamount to asserting that the bread is sure to be bad and its producers at their wits' end to squeeze from the staple the necessary bribes. Corruption has wormed its way into every department of the administration. I enquired of a prominent citizen, who impressed me as a man of parts, and to whose house I was obliged to wade through mud which lay ankle deep upon the central avenue of the garden town, whether a municipality were an institution unknown to Van. He replied that, on the contrary, they possessed an elaborate machinery for the regulation of municipal affairs. Were Christians excluded from the body?--By no manner of means.--Then what prevented him and those of equal calibre with him from attending to such important affairs? The answer came that those Armenians who served upon the Board were mere robbers or abettors of robbery. No honest man with a reputation to lose could consent to co-operate; should he make the endeavour he would rapidly be edged out. Such is the manner in which the paper reforms which tickle Europe are in practice transferred to the category of grave abuses.