Let us turn southward and make an excursion to Bitlis before resuming the journey to Van. At various points in this high mountain valley are massively built stone Khans which are intended as refuges for travelers at unfavorable seasons of the year. They make considerable pretensions to architectural beauty, having portals and arched recesses and are of great antiquity. Three hours' hard riding down a bare stony valley would bring us to the entrance of Bitlis.
When approached from this side Bitlis comes upon us as a surprise, for until you are within it, there is nothing but a few trees to suggest that an inhabited place is near. It lies completely below the level of the upper valley which here suddenly makes a sheer descent so that the river which has now been swelled into a fair sized torrent, breaks into rapids and cataracts in its passage through the town. In the middle of the place it is joined by another stream from the mountains towards the northwest: and the buildings climb up the hillsides at the meeting of these valleys, rising one above another with a striking effect. Thus the Tigris breaks its way through deep chasms below, and for several days' journey descends with great rapidity to the lower country. We will be struck with the massiveness of the stone built houses with large courts and gardens and abundance of trees surrounded with strong walls, the coping stones of which are constructed so as to rise to a sharp angle at the top.
In the middle of the town between the two streams rises the castle, occupying a platform of rock, the sides of which fall away precipitously and like all the cliffs around have vertical cleavings. The space which it covers is large, and it forms a very conspicuous object with its square and circular towers following the broken surface of the ground. There is a dull tone however, about the town, because of the brown sandstone which is used in its construction, being of the same hue as the bare mountains about it.
Remember that now we are on the southern slope of the mountains facing Arabia, and the climate is milder than in the Valley of Moush. The elevation is four thousand seven hundred feet and the thermometer rarely falls below zero in winter.