One man of our acquaintance was caught by a descending avalanche and swept down the hill by the moving mass. While motion lasted, he was of course fairly safe; but he had the wits to remember that the peril must come when the foremost part of the great snow-slide was checked on the level, and the hinder part, still advancing, squeezed itself together like a telescoping railway train. By good luck he was upright when motion ceased and he felt the snow consolidating round him. Working his body frantically to and fro, he made as it were a little cell for himself, so that he remained uncrushed; but he was buried and held a prisoner, for his legs and feet were fast. There he remained for three days, for a man can breathe through a considerable thickness of even compressed snow; and there he was when his friends came out to search for his dead body. They probed the snow with stick; and, as it happened, poked one down actually into his chamber, so that he was able to catch the end of it and hold on. He was extricated but little the worse. An American missionary in the land had a similar experience in one of the side valleys. He and his party made a rash attempt to cross a slope of new snow, lying to the depth of perhaps six inches on the smooth surface of old hard stuff; and naturally they started an avalanche. The whole party of eleven men were borne down a matter of 2000 feet; and the marvel was that only one of them perished. At one particular place an enormous avalanche is an annual event, owing to the peculiar configuration of the gorges. The winter fall on a whole mountain side is artfully concentrated into one funnel-shaped valley, which discharges into the Zab itself; and the snow-slide frequently dams the stream for some hours. There is a profitable harvest of great fish to be gathered in the dry bed below the dam at that time; though such gleaning is of an unusually exciting character. For naturally when the dam does go, it goes with a rush; and the point of safety is a good distance above the normal level of the current! The average width of the river in the mountains is perhaps fifty yards, and its pace is very great; yet such temporary bridgings are not uncommon. The writer has seen a case where an avalanche had not only crossed the river, but had then been swirled round by the configuration of the rocky slope on the other side, so that it overwhelmed a house that had been built in what appeared to be an absolutely safe recess. Seven lives were lost on that occasion, though one old man was found living after six days burial under the snow, the roof-beams having so fallen as to make a protection for his head. In such a land as this, life is a hard matter; all cultivation is on terraces, built as described above, and subject to the constant danger of destruction by flood or avalanche.