DEVELU. 
ai5 
snows melt it is generally the deepest and the most rapid; in the sum¬ 
mer it is almost dry. We passed it when at the lowest, at about two 
hours after sunrise, and found it then half-way up the breasts of our 
horses. 
On the 10th, instead of travelling in the middle of the plain, and pass¬ 
ing through the gap at Sherour, which is the regular road, we kept to 
the right nearly at the foot of the hills ; and having passed several large 
and flourishing villages, reached our tents at Sadrek, a village which 
gives its name to the district. At a distance the houses appeared 
intermixed with small white tents ; but we learnt that the musquitoes 
are here so extremely numerous, that the inhabitants are obliged to 
secure themselves against their attacks, by sleeping in linen chambers, 
or musquito nets, which they erect on the tops of their houses between 
two poles. In addition to these, each village is crowded by storks, 
which build their nests on the tops of the highest houses and happily 
destroy that monotony of view which Persian villages too generally 
present. 
The next day, on the same direction, we reached Develu, a large 
village, the Ketkhoda of which was an old soldier who had served Aga 
Mahomed Khan in all his wars. On many of the mountains towards 
the Russian frontier, the Persians have placed pillars of stone to serve 
as scarecrows, which at a distance look like sentinels. 
The following morning, the 12th, we entered upon another most ex¬ 
tensive tract of fertile land, called Gerni, from a river of that name that 
flows through it. It extends between a chain of hills on one side that 
border the Lake of Sivan, and Mount Ararat on the other. Every 
acre seems to be turned to account in the cultivation of corn and rice j 
and villages stand so thick, that it is difficult to go a mile without pass¬ 
ing one. On the left of our road, near two low hills, is the monastery of 
Virab, built over a well, in which the Armenians say that their Saint 
Gregory was confined and miraculously nourished. 
Our tents were pitched at the village of Ak-bash, or white-head, close 
to the stream of the Gerni, which takes its rise in the neighbouring 
mountains, and flows into the Araxes. Before we reached them, when 
s s 2 
