166 ARAKAT. 



ruin on tlie left of tlie road. The village of Etchmiadzin 

 is conspicuous, from a distance, by the number of its 

 churches ; they are of the usual Armenian style of archi- 

 tecture, lofty for their size, with circular towers capped 

 by stumpy steeples. The village and bazaar are poor, and 

 the place is in a very uninteresting situation, on a broad 

 plain, watered by the stream, which has its sources on the 

 eastern flanks of Alagoz. The convent and cathedral 

 are within a large fortified enclosure, which has in its 

 time resisted many attacks from the infidels. We were 

 assigned a room in the convent, and the monks did what 

 they could to make us comfortable. They all wear the 

 Circassian hood, or ' baschlik,' which is far more graceful 

 than the square cap of the Russian priest, or the cowls of 

 European Orders. The cathedral is a quaint old building, 

 covered with elaborate but somewhat barbaric sculpture, 

 and decorated internally with fine wood-carving and 

 numerous pictures of saints. The greatest sign of pro- 

 gress about the place is a large reservoir, which has been 

 lately constructed. 



We were invited in the evening to take tea with the 

 Patriarch. He is a fine but not intellectual-looking 

 man, with a splendid beard ; he was dressed in robes 

 of purple silk, and wore magnificent Orders, some of 

 which had been presented to him on his recent visit to 

 St. Petersburg. We were introduced by an Armenian 

 merchant, whose acquaintance we had made on the Black 

 Sea, and whom we now again most opportunely met. 

 ' His Holiness,' who quite plays the Pope amongst his 

 countrymen, was very affable, and, coidd he have spoken 

 any Christian language except Russian, would doubtless 

 have given us a good deal of interesting information. As it 

 was, he spent the best part of an hour in proving to his own 

 satisfaction how much more charitable and tolerant the 



