"It is real rough travelling in the mountains," says the Mosul resident casually; and the traveller just arrived from Europe hears that innocent observation with dismay. He has undergone a fortnight of _arabas_ and _khans_ and _chóls_ and _zaptiehs_, and lo! that purgatorial experience is dismissed as a holiday jaunt. It is therefore with some misgiving that he enters those formidable mountains where he has been promised enlightenment as to what "real rough travelling" means.
Let it be recorded for his consolation that he will learn the worst at the outset. If he is not daunted at Akra he may quite fairly count on winning through. The ascent from that town to the top of the pass behind it is as nasty a bit of climbing as any in all Hakkiari, and he who achieves it with credit may pass as a graduated mountaineer. The path is not so nerve-shaking in appearance as some of the dizzy goat-tracks that have to be encountered beyond it; but it is an epitome of every trial which can be ordinarily presented in concrete form. It is steep and rugged and rotten. It traverses slabs of sloping rock, and sheets of slippery scree. Its surface is pitted like honeycomb with holes about twelve inches deep and six or eight inches in diameter; and if any better traps could be devised for tripping unwary pedestrians, or breaking the legs of horses, no doubt they would be provided to make the entanglement complete. Our _katarjis_ admit that it is bad, but regard the badness as incorrigible. "Her nainsell didna mak ta road" (a fact that is quite self-evident), and "if shentlemans are seeking ta Red Gregarach" what better going can they expect?
From the summit of the pass (full three thousand feet above the plain) we descend into a fertile valley, well watered by a mountain rivulet, and feathery with lofty pampas reed; and an equal ascent on the further side brings us to the top of a second range of mountains, from which we can take our first survey of the wild land whither we are bound.
Beneath us lies the Zab valley, a chaos of hummocks and hollows all flung together confusedly like the waves of a choppy sea; and the broad bright ribbon of the river, almost equal in volume to the Tigris, picks out a devious passage through a maze of interlacing bluffs. The opposite side of the chasm is defined by a bold escarpment, scarred by the tracks of winter torrents and buttressed by jagged limestone fins. And above this, along the horizon, tower the great snow peaks of the Hakkiari Oberland--the _rigidus Niphates_ of Horace; the spot where (according to Milton) Satan first planted his feet when he alighted on the new-made world.