It was nearly six o’clock, and progress became easier now that we could see our way distinctly.  The Cossacks seemed to grow lazier, halting as often as before and walking less briskly; in fact, they did not relish the exceeding roughness of the jagged lava ridges along whose tops or sides we toiled.  I could willingly have lingered here myself; for in the hollows, wherever a little soil appeared, some interesting plants were growing, whose similarity to and difference from the Alpine species of Western Europe alike excited one’s curiosity.  Time allowed me to secure only a few; I trusted to get more on the way back, but this turned out to be impossible.  As we scrambled along a ridge above a long narrow winding glen filled with loose blocks, one of the Kurds suddenly swooped down like a vulture from the height on a spot at the bottom, and began peering and grubbing among the stones.  In a minute or two he cried out, and the rest followed; he had found a spring, and by scraping in the gravel had made a tiny basin out of which we could manage to drink a little.  Here was a fresh cause of delay:  everybody was thirsty, and everybody must drink; not only the water which, as we afterwards saw, trickled down hither under the stones from a snow-bed seven hundred feet higher, but the water mixed with some whisky from a flask my friend carried, which even in this highly diluted state the Cossacks took to heartily.  When at last we got them up and away again, they began to waddle and strangle; after a while two or three sat down, and plainly gave us to see they would go no farther.  By the time we had reached a little snow-bed whence the now strong sun was drawing a stream of water, and halted on the rocks beside it for breakfast, there were only two Cossacks and the four Kurds left with us, the rest having scattered themselves about somewhere lower down.  We had no idea what instructions they had received, nor whether indeed they had been told anything except to bring us as far as they could, to see that the Kurds brought the baggage, and to fetch us back again, which last was essential for Jaafar’s peace of mind.  We concluded therefore that if left to themselves they would probably wait our return; and the day was running on so fast that it was clear there was no more time to be lost in trying to drag them along with us.

Accordingly I resolved to take what I wanted in the way of food, and start at my own pace.  My friend, who carried more weight, and had felt the want of training on our way up, decided to come no farther, but wait about here, and look out for me towards nightfall.  We noted the landmarks carefully,—­the little snow-bed, the head of the glen covered with reddish masses of stone and gravel; and high above it, standing out of the face of the great cone of Ararat, a bold peak or rather projecting tooth of black rock, which our Cossacks called the Monastery, and which, I suppose from the same fancied resemblance to a building, is said to be called in Tatar Tach Kilissa, “the church rock.”  It is doubtless an old cone of eruption, about thirteen thousand feet in height, and is really the upper end of the long ridge we had been following, which may perhaps represent a lava flow from it, or the edge of a fissure which at this point found a vent.