On their eastern side the Hakkiari Mountains subside into the plain of Urmi, and the journey down to that town from Tergawar is quite a tame affair after such wild experiences as are furnished by Jilu and Baz. We have merely to cross the last two down-like ridges of mountain, and then the country changes, with the startling suddenness induced by irrigation, to a fertile crop-covered plain, plentifully chequered with trees. Ten years ago Urmi town was but an overgrown village, crowded with mean houses of sun-dried mud brick, and girdled with crumbling mud walls. Only occasionally did a gateway of burnt brick, with some pretensions to architecture, usher one into the courtyard of some notable; into a garden constructed exactly on the lines depicted in the Assyrian sculptures, and a house in a state of more or less disrepair. Within the walls the city remains thus to this day; though recent changes have promoted the growth of a suburb with an air of "underdone Tiflis," where Persians have produced a bad imitation of the Russian imitation of European style. By far its most picturesque feature (not excepting even the mosque courtyards) is its great Bazaar. This is a good specimen of the usual Persian type, which is far more ambitious than the Turkish. It is a maze of ill-lit corridors, roofed with domical brick vaults, and lined on either side with the booths of the merchants and artificers. It will be long ere a visitor's eyesight can accustom itself to the darkness, and longer still ere his "bump of locality" can master the intricate windings of the passages. He will enter in to explore them joyfully, for they are a perfect feast of Oriental _genre_ subjects depicted in the richest of subdued harmonious colouring; but if he wishes to emerge again, he had better charter a guide! The alleys are lit only by small holes pierced in the crowns of the vaulting; and so solid seem the beams of light that fall athwart the dustladen gloom, that the passenger instinctively checks his pace before he ventures to breast them. The townsfolk are mostly Persians; and the typical costume of the lower classes consists of rather loose trousers, with a wide-skirted tunic coming down as low as the knee and girt at the waist with a sash. Over this they usually wear a sleeveless jacket of brown frieze, and the cap is of light brown felt, shaped like half a gourd. It is practically the same dress that we see represented as Persian on the old Greek sculptures. Richer men wear a full-skirted coat of dark blue, with a cap of black astrachan.