Note 3 — Chapter X · RETURN TO THE BORDER RANGES—ΘΆΛΑΤΤΑ, ΘΆΛΑΤΤΑ!

Again the hills opened after our passage of the river, and, nearing Ashkala, composed a plain. We reached our destination at a quarter to seven, beneath the shadows of night. It is a Mohammedan village of some size, with a few Armenian houses; the houses are above ground. The valley must have in places a width of six or seven miles. Its character became apparent as we rose above it on the following morning, after crossing an affluent to the Frat, called the Kara Hasan Su, which was almost concealed by a crust of ice. Like the plain of Erzerum, it has probably been covered with a sheet of water during no very remote geological period. The floor of the valley presents, in fact, an almost level surface; but a special feature in this second lake-like extension of the Euphrates basin is a bold mass of rock which protrudes in the neighbourhood of the village, isolated from the heights upon the north. The close resemblance of this hill to some of the spurs from those heights suggested the conception of a remote age when this valley was in its infancy, and the mountains which now rise on its opposite margins were integral parts of a single block of elevated land. The further we advanced towards the west, the more the plain narrowed; we were pursuing a diagonal course along the lower slopes of the northern barrier, and we could see the river at some distance, partly ice-encrusted, and partly threading the snow in several tiny channels.3