ROMAN RUINS AT GERNI. 
339 
We returned the next day to our encampment. On the 14th of 
August Mr. Ellis arrived; and on the 27th we departed for Tabriz, 
with the intention of retracing, as far as Nakhjuwan, the road by which 
we had arrived, and crossing the Araxes at Gerger. We were unfor¬ 
tunately stopped at the outset of our journey by an alarming illness 
that attacked Mr. Ellis, and were obliged to halt at our first stage upon 
the banks of the Gerni river. 
I took advantage of the delay to see the church of Keghort, es¬ 
teemed in the country as a place of great curiosity, and celebrated 
among the Armenians as having been for a long time the sanctuary of 
their famous relick already noticed, the head of the spear that pierced 
the side of our Saviour. 
Accompanied by the Mehmandar we took an almost due easterly di¬ 
rection, travelling on the banks of the Gerni, until it makes its exit from 
a deep glen, within which it is confined from its source. Leav¬ 
ing it on our right hand, we travelled over an excessive dreary, stony 
country, the soil of which was generally calcareous, and enlivened by 
no cultivation, until we approached the large village of Gerni, from 
which the river now takes its name, where we once more appeared to 
enter upon an inhabited region. 
This place is situated upon the brink of an immense chasm, on the 
opposite side of which arises an arid perpendicular mountain. On 
the side of the village the ground is formed into a variety of slopes and 
precipices, where are to be seen the remains of a fortress, consisting of a 
gate and a long extent of walls. In one corner of it, immediately upon 
the brink of a precipice, are the remains of a building of the Ionic 
order, of the architecture of the middle ages, bearing every mark of 
Roman workmanship, and quite foreign to^hy thing Persian or Arme¬ 
nian. It struck me as the remains of a small temple, although, from 
its complete dilapidation, it would be impossible to decide with pre¬ 
cision what was its original shape. The diameter of the columns was 
of two feet. The Ionic capital, the ornaments of the frieze, parts of 
the ceiling, and all its remains, were in perfect good taste, and still so 
well preserved as to show that it was a highly finished building. 
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