Because it is a region of water dispersal, Armenia is also the gathering-site of the heads of outflowing watercourses. If the distance at the divide between the uppermost reaches of two divergent watercourses be short, it is hardly a barrier to human intercourse. This condition prevails in the uppermost reaches of the Euphrates and of the Aras. The important town of Erzerum is the symbol of this union. Within its walled area the traffic of the central plateaus of Asia joined with Mesopotamian or Black Sea and Mediterranean freight, after having followed the easterly approach to Turkey through Tabriz and the southern affluents of the Aras, north of Urmiah Lake. Through this eastern avenue of penetration Asiatic peoples and products have been dumped century after century into Turkish territory. The valley of the Euphrates, rather than that of the Tigris, is therefore the main artery of communication between north and south in eastern Turkey. It is the avenue through which the ideas of Iran came into contact with Semitic thought. But the uniting influence of the great river was far from being exerted on Oriental peoples alone. In its broad southern course, the river provided ancient merchants with a short-cut which greatly facilitated land travel between the Ægean or Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. Another city, Aleppo, is the geographical monument which grew with the increase of travel in this stretch of the Euphrates or declined as the channel became less and less frequented. It is the western counterpart of Mosul in the sense that it also is a point of convergence for routes proceeding from every quarter of the compass. The chief Turkish route leaves the Euphrates at the angular bend near Meskeneh. A two-days’ journey across the desert brought the traveler to Aleppo. Beyond, the ancient road hugged the shores of the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean and, passing over the dull gray of the broad Cilician plain, headed for the huge cleft in the limestones of the Taurus, known as the Cilician Gates. Past this breach it is the plateau of Anatolia--a region whose physical isolation has always influenced the life of its inhabitants. Today, south of the Cilician Gates, the land is Arabian in speech and Semitic in thought, while in the country to the north the prevailing language is Turkish, which differs from the refinement of Arabian as markedly as the crudity of the Turkish mind differs from the intellectuality of the Arabian.