Anatolia, the most western part of the table-land of Iran, 3000 feet above the sea, is traversed by short chains and broken groups of mountains, separated by fertile valleys, which sink rapidly towards the Archipelago, and end in promontories and islands along the shores of Asia Minor, which is a country abounding in vast, luxuriant, but solitary plains, watered by broad rivers—in Alpine platforms and mountain-ridges broken up by great valleys, opening seawards, with meandering streams. Single mountains of volcanic formation are conspicuous objects on the table-land of Anatolia, which is rich in pasture, though much of the soil is saline and covered with lakes and marshes. A triple range of limestone mountains, 6000 or 7000 feet high, divided by narrow but beautiful valleys, is the limit of the Anatolian table-land along the shores of the Black Sea. Two-thirds of their height are covered with forests, and broken by wooded glens, leaving a narrow coast, except near Trebizond, where it is broad and picturesque. The high land is bounded on the south by the serrated snowy range of the Taurus, which, beginning in Rhodes, Cos, and other islands in the Mediterranean, fills the south-western parts of Asia Minor with ramifications, and, after following the sinuosities of the iron-bound coast of Karamania in a single lofty range, extends at Samisat, where the Euphrates has pierced a way through this stony girdle. About the 50th meridian the table-land is compressed to nearly half its width, and there the lofty mountainous regions of Armenia, Kourdistan, and Azerbijan tower higher and higher between the Black Sea, the Caspian, and the Gulf of Scanderoon in the Mediterranean. Here the cold treeless plains of Armenia, the earliest abode of man, 7000 feet above the sea, bear no traces of the Garden of Eden; Mount Ararat, on which the Ark is said to have rested, stands a solitary majestic volcanic cone, 17,260 feet above the sea, shrouded in perpetual snow. Though high and cold, the soil of Armenia is richer than that of Anatolia, and is better cultivated. It shelves on the north in luxuriant and beautiful declivities to the low and undulating valley of Kara, south of the Caucasus; and, on the other hand, the broad and lofty belt of the Kourdistan mountains, rising abruptly in many parallel ranges from the plains of Mesopotamia, form its southern limit, and spread their ramifications wide over its surface. They are rent by deep ravines, and in many places are so rugged that communication between the villages is always difficult, and in winter impracticable from the depth of snow. The line of perpetual congelation is decided and even along their summit; their flanks are wooded, and the valleys populous and fertile. A thousand square miles of Kourdistan is occupied by the brackish lake Van, which is seldom frozen, though 5467 feet above the sea, and surrounded by lofty mountains.