Crossing the Oramar by the ferry, and keeping up the left bank of the river, we entered almost immediately a magnificent rocky ravine. On either hand rose gaunt and tawny precipices fully two thousand feet in altitude, scored all over their upper faces with the lines of the contorted strata, and thinly clothed near the bases with gnarled and stunted oak scrub. A deep, green, rapid river filled the whole of the narrow invert, and this channel was thickly cumbered by a selection of some of the very largest boulders that we have ever seen. Apparently there are many deep pockets just behind the faces of the precipices; and the water collecting in these, splits away the outer wall when it freezes, and sheds the gigantic fragments into the chasm. Not a few of these fallen masses must have been as big as the Marble Arch. The pathway did not belie the report we had heard of it at Suryi. It scrambled along the steep bank above the river; narrow, broken, and half strangled among blocks of fallen stone. Three times that morning we had to unload the mules, hand the packs across the obstructions, and load again on the further side. Our red-turbanned cateran, who still led us, would pause now and then in the pathway, indicating the landscape at large with a flourish of his arm like a showman, and regarding us with a triumphant grin. But whether he wished to express his admiration of the romantic scenery, or his appreciation of its defensive capabilities, or merely to apprise us that Erdil lay absolutely on the summit of everything--as in fact it did--we were not quite able to decide. This gorge was a few months later the scene of a notable exploit, achieved by the Sheikh of Barzan at the expense of those _hostes humani generis_ the Heriki Kurds. This horde of wandering robbers, the bane of all settled communities, are wont (as already related) to migrate each spring and autumn to and fro between Mosul and Urmi. They can travel by several routes; but all routes converge upon one point--the "Bridge of Rocks" over the Zab a little above Suryi. Here the Zab, as it issues from the mountains, is throttled (like the Wharfe at Bolton) into a narrow crack between shelving slabs of rock. The slabs are deeply undercut, and the depth of the crack must be considerable; for at one point, where a big rock table rises in mid current, the great river can be crossed in two strides! Here the Heriki always pass over, at a point where the width of the river is about twenty-five feet. They build a bridge for themselves every spring, and it lasts till the next winter floods. This is the sole piece of honest and useful work which is ever achieved by those incorrigible plunderers; and out of it accordingly a remorseless Nemesis has fashioned "a whip to scourge them." Here the Government posts its troops when it wishes to collect their taxes; and if they have injured any of the Sheikh of Barzan's villages, he exacts compensation here.