The big climb now lay ahead of us. We pushed on. The scenery became much more interesting. The forest thickened, and instead of chestnut and beech appeared the _pinus insignis_ and the mountain fir. We went up and up. Again I was reminded of Thüringen in Germany, and this time it was much more like it. The road grew steeper, the ravines larger, and the courses of winter's mountain torrents were now dry rocky boulder paths. The mountain fir with its drooping branches stood erect in marshalled battalions on the mountain slopes in the valleys, the tops swaying to the eternal music of the mountains. We quenched our thirst at excellent falls and springs on the way. It grew from chilly to very cold. Our blood was in a very poor condition, and the biting wind bit clean through one. We were now at the last climb of (Mount) El Ghaz Dagh, 5481 feet high, the ridge of which we were to cross being 4500. At five o'clock other horses gave out, and ours were taken, so I cramped up in another vehicle with the choush, from whom I understood by signs that we had in our turn invested Kut. Our heavy guns will soon shake it to pieces if we do invest it. It was slow work to the top of the peak, but once over we descended rapidly in the face of an icy wind for two hours. Tiny log-built hamlets lay clustered up together for warmth on the sides of the valleys. We followed the main valley until the stream widened at a saw-mill. There we lit fires and made ourselves warm and cooked some soup. We slept inside dark empty rooms in the mill, and here struck a new pest. They were swarms of lice and fleas, and we did a _shikar_ for them most of the night. I arose early feeling a rhythm of returning health. The cold bracing air of the mountains had undoubtedly done me a lot of good, and I felt stronger, although colitis and malaria still troubled me, and everything we ate was followed by sharp abdominal pains--a legacy of the siege. I washed in the icy stream by the light of dawn. What a magnificent morning it was! The last mists of night floated away, and left the terraces of bronze-green firs shimmering in the morning sun and climbing up to the blue of heaven on the white sheets of El Ghaz Dagh. This would make an excellent trout stream. My last tin of milk and sugar which had kept me going so far was finished. My own cart had appeared in the night, and I left in it at 7 a.m. After a few miles of fern-edged brooks that tumbled along quite New Zealandy, we reached the plain again, and followed a road among scantily cropped stretches until three o'clock, when my driver pointed away to the right and said the one word. "_Kastamuni!_" Turning around I beheld far away in a treeless basin a reddish-brown patch which proved to be the clay tiles of houses. In the distance it appeared as a brown-carpeted dip sunk down beneath the almost treeless grassy plain. This, then, was my first glimpse of our immediate bourne.