This word, presumably Kurdish, appears to mean a level plain surrounded by mountains; and it is used, singly and in combination, more than once in the neighbourhood. But our new camping-place is "_the_ Gawar" _par excellence_, "The Level." It is the bed of an ancient lake, and so has a general family resemblance to the "morfa" of Tremadoc in North Wales, though the hills surrounding it are considerably higher than Snowdon; and the change from mountain to plain is so abrupt and obvious that one can say definitely to a few yards where one leaves the one and enters on the other. The point is further emphasized, by an old pebble beach. [Illustration: THE MOUNTAINS OF TKHUMA AND JILU. From the top of the "Staircase" pass immediately above Amadia. The mountain in the centre is Ghara Dagh on the southern side of Tkhuma. To the left is Galiashin, the dominant peak of Jilu; and Sat Dagh further off upon the right. The crags in the middle distance rise up out of the Zab Gorge. No. 8] The plain measures about sixteen miles by ten, and is in form an oval with pointed ends, the long axis running nearly north and south. It is absolutely treeless, save for a few poplars round the villages that are scattered over its face. Though but little of the plain is cultivated it is all magnificently fertile; for the black alluvial soil grows anything that will endure the long winter and deep snow natural at an elevation of six thousand feet; and the corn and melons of Gawar are famous throughout the land. A considerable river, the Nihila or Nile, wanders down the centre and is joined by several others from the high mountains at the sides. This river on leaving the plain flows northward through a deep and fine gorge to join the Albak; and their united streams constitute the Zab. Being thus a dead level, Gawar looks as easy a place to cross as well can be. We see our destination before us perhaps twelve miles away, and nothing seems to be necessary but to make a bee-line for it. In reality few things are more difficult than crossing this or a similar plain, unless you know the way or have a guide who knows it. The river is bordered with wide swamps; and such fords as exist upon it (and they are not many) can only be approached from certain directions: while the stranger is constantly liable to stumble (like the luckless Duke of Monmouth) on "rhines" or irrigating channels; the muddy bottoms of which are unfordable for animals, except at certain points known only to the villagers around. A fertile level like this should swarm with villages and carry a large population; but of the villages that once were here (almost all of which were Nestorian Christian) many are now absolutely deserted, and others have become Kurdish and so do little work in the world. This has been brought to pass, not by the villagers abandoning their Christianity--for that is so rare a thing as to be almost unknown--but by what foreign residents characterize as "the hermit crab Act."