Given better means of transport, and better government, one may yet see Lake Van become a health resort and a _bad_; for its waters are certainly curative in certain types of skin disease. The writer has known an obstinate case of soriasis cured by a summer spent in camp on the lake, with regular bathing as part of the day's programme. The effect on human hair is also very peculiar; for an English lad with ordinary light-brown hair developed, under similar treatment, an aureole of the purest gold ever seen on human head. The change seemed permanent too, at least as regarded all that was above scalp-level at the time. Later growth was unfortunately of the original hue! This country was formerly the home of one of the great empires of ancient history; that of the Urartians, or Khaldians, who could dispute the hegemony of Asia with Assur, at the time when the first colonists were settling on the seven bare hills that afterwards were Rome. Van (Dhuspas as it was then called) was their capital; and their kings had their palace on the great limestone ridge that rises, like the vertebrae of some huge saurian, 300 feet above the alluvial plain. As a stronghold this rock was impregnable, and could turn back even Assur at her strongest; and to this day the masses of cyclopean masonry on its crest, and the scores of inscribed cuneiform tablets on its precipitous faces, bear witness to the might of its former lords. The language in which these inscriptions are written is unknown elsewhere (unless it may prove to have affinity with the mysterious Hittite, in spite of the difference of script); but fortunately a tri-lingual inscription left by Xerxes the son of Darius has enabled the records to be deciphered. They do not, as a rule, possess as much interest as the Assyrian inscriptions; and are usually to the effect that "I, Menuas son of Ishpuinis, set up this stone, and invoke the Curse of Cowdray upon the man who throws it down." Menuas, and his son Argistis, were the two most powerful monarchs who occupied the throne of Dhuspas; and their reigns (B.C. 820 to 760 or thereabouts) coincided with a period of decadence in the rival power of Assyria. But in 735 B.C. the Empire of Urartu succumbed before Tiglath Pileser II; though their then king, Sharduris II, was able to make good his defence of this unconquerable citadel. The plateau of Van is at present the home of the Armenian race; but it is very doubtful whether these have any connexion with the aboriginal Khaldian inhabitants. Their own traditions absolutely contradict the theory; but their modern national writers are apt to claim such descent, now that European scientists have made out the meaning of the inscriptions. Whatever their blood may be, there the Armenians are now; but it is one of the features of that most tangled problem, the Armenian question, that members of the race are never more than a minority, wherever they are found.