Here Mr. Cooper joined us, and we were again on our way in the afternoon. Instead of striking for the mountains by the direct path across the plain of Navkur, we rode along the foot of a range of low hills, forming its western boundary, to the large Kurdish village of Bardaresh. Having rested for a few hours, we descended in the middle of the night into a plain receiving the drainage of the surrounding highlands, and during the rainy season almost impassable from mud. Artificial mounds, the remains of ancient civilisation, but of small size when compared with the great ruins of Assyria, rise amongst the hovels of the Kurdish peasants. After we had crossed the parched and burning plain we entered a valley in the Kurdish hills, watered by a stream called Melik or Gherasin. We had to climb over much broken ground--rocky ridge and ravine--before reaching the slope of the mountain covered with the gardens and orchards of Akra. We tarried for a moment at a cool spring rising in a natural grotto, and collected into two large basins. We had no difficulty in finding our European fellow-travellers. The first Kurd we met pointed towards a well-wooded garden; above its trees peered their white tents. As we rode into it, however, no one came out to welcome us. I entered the first tent, and there, stretched on their carpets, in a state of half-consciousness, the prey to countless flies, lay the Doctor and Mr. Walpole. It was with difficulty I could rouse them to learn the history of their fever. The whole party were in the same state; the servants prostrate like their masters. I lost no time in enforcing a system of diet, and placing my patients under a course of treatment for ague, with which long experience had given me some acquaintance. Some days elapsed before my companions were able to journey. I took advantage of the delay to visit some bas-reliefs near the neighbouring village of Gunduk. There are two sculptured tablets in the rocks above Gunduk. They have been carved at the mouth of a spacious natural cavern, whose roof is fretted with stalactites, and down whose sides trickles cool clear water, and hang dank ferns and creeping plants. It is called Guppa d'Mar Yohanna, or the cure of St. John, and near it is an ancient Nestorian church dedicated to Saint Audishio. The bas-reliefs are Assyrian. The upper represents a man slaying a wild goat with a spear. In the lower, as far as I could distinguish the sculpture, which is high on the rock and much injured, are two women facing each other, and seated on stools. Each holds a child above a kind of basin or circular vessel, as if in the act of baptizing it. Behind the seated female to the left, a figure bears a third child, and is followed by a woman. On the opposite side is a group of three persons, apparently sacrificing an animal. There are no traces of inscriptions on or near the tablets.