Soon after we bore to the right and entered a tributary valley; a narrower gorge, dark and chilly, where the pools still lay hard frozen all along the shadier side. The path rose more steeply now with a spiral twist to the right like the final turn of a corkscrew. We were rising on to the top of the precipice which had overshadowed our morning's march. The last pitch was the steepest of any; but here the ground was less rugged, and a few sketchy outlines of terraces tried to pose as cultivated fields. At last we emerged on a tiny plateau, a sprocket on the slope of the mountain, and beheld the dozen rough stone cabins which compose the village of Erdil. Erdil is not the remotest spot on earth; for beyond it we could descry another and yet remoter Kurdish village some five hours further up the vale. But it is at least the remotest spot we are ever likely to get to. A site for an eagle's eyrie rather than for an abode of man. Thrust out on a little green tongue between two abysmal valleys it commands a superb panorama of the mountains which lie to the northward; range succeeding to range in seven successive _sierras_ till they culminate in the snowy crests of Sat and Jilu, no less than fourteen thousand feet high. And in all that craggy wilderness there was scarcely a vestige of habitation. No wonder the villagers were excited by the advent of visitors from the world beyond. The populace poured out to greet us. They conducted us to the house of the village _rais_ or head man. They installed us in his one room in the seat of honour by the fireplace; and thronged in eagerly after us, men, women, and children to kiss our hands. They were by no means an ill-looking crowd, and many of the girls were quite well favoured; dark haired, but fair complexioned; sturdy and deeply bronzed. The men wore the usual mountain dress;[91] and the women were clad in figured blue smocks and turbans, girt at the waist with blue sashes, and wearing their long open sleeves knotted together behind them in order to keep the ends out of the way. The usual full dress of the mountain women consists of a smock reaching from the neck to about midway between knee and ankle; and a jacket of the same length worn over it, folded across in front, and slit up as high as the waist on either side. The whole is girt round with a sash; and on their heads they wear kerchiefs, or (in the Tkhuma district) little round caps edged with silver coins. Their hair is worn down their backs, plaited in three, four, or five long pigtails, with a six-inch horse-hair tassel worked in at the end of each plait. The smocks are usually of some figured material, but striped stuff is commoner for the jackets; and the colours which they chiefly favour are Indian red or indigo blue. Usually they go barefoot in their villages, but when they are on a journey they wear a sort of brogue like the men.[92]