I once played Jeríd at the foot of this mountain, when I fell from the horse, and in falling said to myself, “Where art thou now, saddle-mountain (Egerlítág)?” Having recovered my senses I mounted another horse, and galloping full speed towards the mountain, I ascended it. I saw on the top a large tomb, on which I first said a fátihah, and having measured it by my steps, I found it eighty paces in length, with two columns, which marked the situation of the head and the feet. I was looking on the tomb, when a bad smell arose, very disagreeable both to me and my servants, who held the horses; I looked on the grave, and saw that the earth within it, being black and greasy, was boiling like gruel in a pan. I then returned, and having related my adventure in the Páshá’s company in the evening, Ja’afer Efendi of Erzerúm, a learned and elegant writer, warned me not to visit this place any more, because it was the grave of Balaam, the son of Baúr, who had died an Infidel by the curse of Moses, and whose grave was now boiling, both in winter and summer, by subterraneous fire. At the foot of the same mountain, Abd-ur-rahman Ghází, the standard-bearer of the prophet, lies buried. One day I ascended from the south side of the convent about two thousand paces, when I saw on the second top of this bifurcate mountain a tremendous dragon turned into black stone. It measured seven hundred and seventy paces from the head to the tail, the head looks to the field of Erzerúm, the tail to the castle of Meláz Kerd. If snow falls on the mountains, the figure of this black dragon is easily distinguished from the windows of the Páshá’s palace; the circumference of its body is two hundred paces, each of its four feet is as large as ten men put together, and its tail is raised like a minareh. It remained whole until the reign of Selím I. when it was broken by an earthquake, so that its fragments now lay scattered about. The head was then split asunder, and one of the eye-balls rolled down on the south side towards Melázguerd, where it lies on the plain like a cupola; the left eye-ball of the same size, yet remains in the petrified head, and is seen very distinctly with its ears, tongue, nose, and mouth every time it snows, because no snow will remain on this black stone, but melts away, and renders more prominent the black colour of it. In winter the stone becomes hot, and emits vapour; in summer it is cold, and exhales a pleasant odour. The legend reports that this most tremendous dragon was changed into stone by the Prophet’s standard-bearer, when it came to swallow up the inhabitants of Erzerúm as food for its young, who were shut up in a cave of Mount Siján, on the borders of the lake Ván. _Pilgrimages; Tomb of Sheikh Kárzúní._