below. One by one the stars died
out as the yellow turned to a deeper glow that shot forth in long
streamers, the rosy fingers of the dawn, from the horizon to the zenith.
Cold and ghostly lay the snows on the mighty cone; till at last there
came upon their topmost slope, six thousand feet above us, a sudden
blush of pink. Swiftly it floated down the eastern face, and touched and
kindled the rocks just above us. Then the sun flamed out, and in a
moment the Araxes valley and all the hollows of the savage ridges we
were crossing were flooded with overpowering light.

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 in