I found that in Julfa the cost of living was much higher than in Kermanshah, the Armenians never allowing anything to be sold to the English save at a high price; and in this manner a sort of special rate was paid by the Europeans. The remedy we adopted was to buy everything from the town, and this answered so well that, in about six months, our pay went twice as far as before. Mr. Walton, the superintendent, with some difficulty got a bazaar list with the real prices of the usual necessaries _as sold in the town of Ispahan_, and circulated it among the staff. These prices turned out to be nearly the same as those we had paid in Kermanshah. Julfa itself was, for an Armenian village, unusually pleasant in appearance. The Armenians are essentially gardeners, and each house had its vineyard or orchard; the water for irrigating these was led in open channels through the middle of the principal streets, and the edges of these channels were thickly planted with “zoban-i-gungishk,” or “sparrow-tongue,” a quick-growing kind of willow, so called from the pointed leaf. This tree makes the best firewood, giving a lasting ember; the trees are lopped each year, and the twigs and branches are used for making thatch, over poplar or plane poles, for roofing those rooms which are not arched. In Ispahan most rooms have an arched roof. The houses in Julfa are all built of mud bricks; some of them are very ancient, going back to four hundred years. The clay of Ispahan is very tenacious; and as the walls, particularly of the older houses, are built from four to five feet thick, very substantial dwellings are the result, warm in winter but cool in summer. The Armenians almost invariably at that time (1871) built their rooms with arched brick roofs; these were quite impervious to the weather and delightfully cool in summer. The cold in winter was very great, but as the Armenian does not use an open fire, but sits the greater part of his time, his feet under a “kūrsi,” or platform having a brazier under it, and is very warmly clad in wool and skins, he does not feel it.