When approached from this side Bitlis comes upon us as a surprise, for until you are within it, there is nothing but a few trees to suggest that an inhabited place is near. It lies completely below the level of the upper valley which here suddenly makes a sheer descent so that the river which has now been swelled into a fair sized torrent, breaks into rapids and cataracts in its passage through the town. In the middle of the place it is joined by another stream from the mountains towards the northwest: and the buildings climb up the hillsides at the meeting of these valleys, rising one above another with a striking effect. Thus the Tigris breaks its way through deep chasms below, and for several days' journey descends with great rapidity to the lower country. We will be struck with the massiveness of the stone built houses with large courts and gardens and abundance of trees surrounded with strong walls, the coping stones of which are constructed so as to rise to a sharp angle at the top. In the middle of the town between the two streams rises the castle, occupying a platform of rock, the sides of which fall away precipitously and like all the cliffs around have vertical cleavings. The space which it covers is large, and it forms a very conspicuous object with its square and circular towers following the broken surface of the ground. There is a dull tone however, about the town, because of the brown sandstone which is used in its construction, being of the same hue as the bare mountains about it. Remember that now we are on the southern slope of the mountains facing Arabia, and the climate is milder than in the Valley of Moush. The elevation is four thousand seven hundred feet and the thermometer rarely falls below zero in winter. At Bitlis is a missionary station in charge of Rev. Mr. Knapp. The Kurdish mountains rise about the city in bare, cold grandeur. These summits are the conclusion of the Taurus Chain. They are the Niphates of antiquity, on the highest peak of which Milton makes his Satan to alight. [Par. Lost III. 741, "Nor stayed, till on Niphates' top he lights."] The Castle is said to have been built by Alexander the Great. Bitlis was the site of an ancient Armenian city and was strongly fortified in the days of the Saracens. It recently contained thirty thousand inhabitants, ten thousand being Armenians. This city was the scene of a terrible slaughter and being determined that the Armenians who were left should perish by starvation, the Porte placed Mr. Knapp under arrest for treason and ordered him taken to Constantinople for trial before United States Minister Terrell. Returning up to the head waters of the Tigris we next see a level plain extending eastward, hemmed in on either side by lofty mountains. Here in August are wheatfields extending up the hillsides to quite an elevation, showing what the harvests of that region might become under safe and careful husbandry.