One morning, on emerging from the underground mud hut in which we had passed the night as guests of a Kurdish chief, we caught a glimpse of Mount Ararat, towering 17,000 feet out of the clouds in front of us. According to our map this marked the most easterly point of our itinerary, and Mount Ararat can scarcely have been less than forty miles away from us. Our own elevation must have been about 6000 to 7000 feet above the level of the sea; this circumstance, together with the clearness of the atmosphere, enabled us to make out the outline of the giant mountain quite distinctly a long way down to its base. For, unlike all the other mountains we saw on our journey, Mount Ararat stands by itself, rising in the form of a single cone from the plain. In the further course of our journey, not far from Bitlis we caught a glimpse of Lake Van to our left. Indeed, we almost skirted its shores, though it lay beneath us covered with ice and snow. The lake is situated about 5000 feet above sea-level: thus our own altitude must have been considerably more. Bitlis is on the caravan road from Erzeroum to Mosul, about ten miles to the south-west of Lake Van on about the same level, namely, 5000 feet, on the banks of the Tigris, with about 39,000 inhabitants. We stayed at the konak of the Governor in the centre of the town, on an elevation which was formerly a fortress, at the foot of which the usual Oriental bazaar stretches through several narrow streets. Bitlis has belonged to the Turks since 1514, when it was occupied by Sultan Selim I. Here we were once more in touch with civilization by means of the post office and a telegraph station, and spent a few days interviewing different people—an English Vice-Consul, some missionaries and Armenians—and choosing horses for the continuation of our journey on horseback to Diarbekir, which took several days and passed without incident.