From this height, a thousand feet above the lower ground, there is a superb prospect over the rich plain studded with villages and bounded on the south by the Taurus range, which contains the sources of the Tigris and separates this country from the lowlands of Mesopotamia. To the east and west lie an expanse of undulating ground, stretching on the one hand towards the Murad, into which this district drains, on the other in the direction of the Euphrates. The length of this plain to the foot of the Taurus is about fifteen miles, while the Murad is about the same distance eastward. This plain is a most beautiful sight in the spring time, when the whole is one vast carpet of green. According to the natives, the number of the villages it contains is three hundred and sixty-five, and they also claim this place was the site of Eden--they even point out the place where Adam first saw the light. The houses of the missionaries of the American Board and the college buildings, all of which were laid in ruins, were built not far from the edge of the high precipitous cliff and commanded this beautiful prospect. The elevation of Kharput, or Harpoot, is about four thousand five hundred feet above sea level. From its strategic position it has been occupied by a city from very early times. It is now the leading city in the province and has about five thousand houses--five hundred Armenian, the rest Turkish, while the villages in the plains are occupied almost entirely by the Armenians. These villages were almost swept off the earth during the Harpoot massacres. The Armenian College was the finest in Eastern Turkey and the value of mission property destroyed was upwards of $80,000. A day's journey up the eastern branch of the Euphrates brings us to the Castle-rock of Palu. This rock is nine hundred feet above the river and on its summit is the town of about one thousand five hundred houses. Palu has the honor of being the dwelling place of St. Mesrob, the saint who invented the Armenian alphabet about 406 A. D., and translated the Scriptures into that tongue. His name is still in great repute in his native country. If we should leave the valley of the Euphrates to the northward, five hours of steep climbing would bring us to the top of the mountain ridge that overlooks the great plain of Moush, which stretches forty miles away to the eastward towards Lake Van. From the top of this ridge to the Monastery of St. John the Baptist the road is one of the most beautiful in all Armenia, as it follows a terrace path along the mountain side through low forests, commanding a succession of beautiful views into the valley of the Euphrates. On rounding a shoulder of the mountain we have the first sight of the towers of the monastery, which occupies a small table of ground with very steep slopes both above and below it, at an elevation of six thousand feet above the sea and about two thousand above the plain.