At Bitlis is a missionary station in charge of Rev. Mr. Knapp. The Kurdish mountains rise about the city in bare, cold grandeur. These summits are the conclusion of the Taurus Chain. They are the Niphates of antiquity, on the highest peak of which Milton makes his Satan to alight. [Par. Lost III. 741, "Nor stayed, till on Niphates' top he lights."]
The Castle is said to have been built by Alexander the Great. Bitlis was the site of an ancient Armenian city and was strongly fortified in the days of the Saracens. It recently contained thirty thousand inhabitants, ten thousand being Armenians. This city was the scene of a terrible slaughter and being determined that the Armenians who were left should perish by starvation, the Porte placed Mr. Knapp under arrest for treason and ordered him taken to Constantinople for trial before United States Minister Terrell.
Returning up to the head waters of the Tigris we next see a level plain extending eastward, hemmed in on either side by lofty mountains. Here in August are wheatfields extending up the hillsides to quite an elevation, showing what the harvests of that region might become under safe and careful husbandry.
Five hours' journey from Bitlis brings us to the opening of the valley eastward, and as mountain ranges go sweeping around to the north and to the south, suddenly Lake Van bursts upon our astonished vision in all its beauty and grandeur. Fed by the snow upon the mountains, but with no visible outlet, Lake Van is about twice the size of Lake Geneva, as it lies in a hollow of these highlands five thousand feet above the tide. Its extreme length is ninety miles, its breadth where widest is thirty miles. This mountain lake is only five hundred feet lower than the highest sources of the Tigris. On the northwestern shore of the lake are the remarkable ruins of the very ancient Armenian city of Akhlat, on the North Mount Sipan, an extinct volcano with most imposing form and lofty summit, while on the southeastern shore is the Castle rock of Van, which, without exaggeration may be spoken of as one of the wonders of the world from its extraordinary formation, its rock-hewn chambers and its cuneiform inscriptions.
Coming down to the lake on its western shore and skirting it northwards, the little valleys are found full of copious springs surrounded by willows and poplars and an abundance of most luxuriant grass. Orchards filled with walnut, plum and apricot trees delight the eyes, and the apricots also the palate, being of excellent flavor. The ruins of Akhlat may be said to consist of three parts, the gardens on the upper, the ruined city on the second level and the castle one half mile distant on the lake shore. In the steep sandstone cliffs which wall in the ruined city, are numerous caves and also many artificial chambers, some of which were inhabited as late as 1880 as many doubtless now are in all parts of the mountains by the destitute Armenians. The most of the ruins here are of a Saracenic style of architecture. The castle is a large rectangular fortress measuring six hundred yards from the sea to the crest of the hill and three hundred yards across, having two gates which stand opposite to one another in the middle of the eastern and the western wall. Two ancient mosques, some fruit trees and ten inhabited cottages are the inventory of its contents. We must cut short the trip up Mount Sipan which is fourteen thousand feet high, for the sail in a very cumbrous craft across the lake to the city of Van.