A little more than an hour brought us to the end of the plain, where the Bareda turns short to the east, and passes by a narrow and deep defile, through the mountain. The road follows the stream. The whole mountain, as seen on both sides of the pass, is of a peculiar character. The stratum of the rock is very irregular; at places it has the dip, but with much irregularity. The rock is limestone, of a very soft, yielding kind, and breaks to pieces readily from the action of the atmosphere. Much of it is a very coarse kind of breccia--appears to have been broken into small pieces, and again combined with a soft cement. Some of the pieces seem to have been subjected to the action of water, while in a separate state. But a great deal of the mountain has all the appearance of an immense mass of marl, and much of it is in a very soft state, so as to be easily reduced to a fine white dust. In some places the road is worn or cut ten, fifteen, or perhaps twenty feet, down through this marl-like rock.
There are at some parts of the pass considerable precipices of rock on one or both sides, and on the face of some of these rocks and at a considerable height from the ground we saw the entrances of tombs. It must have been difficult to cut such holes in the face of the rock at such a height. Near the end of the pass we crossed a good arched stone bridge, and soon found the valley beginning to open. The character of the rock continued the same, and the whole face of the country was peculiarly barren, except a narrow strip along the river. The waters of the river, even in the mountains, were taken out of its bed, wherever it could be done, and made to water a little space on both sides, which space was more or less covered with trees. We saw indeed in two places, channels cut across the face of the rock above the road, which I am of opinion was for the purpose of carrying the water thus high, that on clearing the pass, it might be used for watering a wide space of country on the eastern side. If this was the case, the neglect of modern times has let go to ruin what may formerly have given fertility to a wide district east of the mountain, now almost utterly barren. Many things have fallen back greatly in this country. As the valley opened below the pass, the water was taken out, and made to keep nearly a horizontal course, along both sides of the channel, and used to water all the district between it and the former bed, and on this district were fields, corn, vines, fruit-trees, poplars, willows, and grass for the flocks of sheep and goats, and other domestic animals.