TURKISH FRONTIER. 
171 
crossed, we pricked on at a pretty round pace, and soon reached 
a Turkish village, whose situation was rendered picturesque by 
the tower-crowned heights in its neighbourhood. These, like 
those in Georgia, were the remains of ancient strongholds, and 
of religious buildings erected, in old times, by the Christian 
sovereigns of the country. At this point the valley narrowed 
considerably; and, as we proceeded, I observed more ruins. 
They were towers also ; and, probably, had belonged to a chain 
of posts, formerly established, to close the pass. A few 
wersts farther, we forded the Kars, a stream which afterwards 
takes the name of Arpatchai; here it is neither wide nor deep ; 
but on its approach to the monastery of Kotchivan, it is joined 
by another little river, called the Akhoor, and become by 
the union a considerable body of waters, takes a course through 
several fine valleys, till it pours its tributary urn into the Araxes, 
long before that river reaches the plain of Ararat. 
The mountains, on all sides of us, appeared of a rounded form ; 
not a rock even, nor a single tree, broke the smooth surface of 
the snow, nor interrupted the regularly-flowing lines of the 
hills. We passed, however, through a very close ravine, where 
we found rock enough in our path, and had to ascend a rough 
and steep side of a mountain. During our course over it, we 
came to the mins of a deserted village ; a sight to which my 
attendants seemed, in all ways, to be perfectly familiar. But 
such ruins, thanks to civilization, are almost as strange to a 
European’s eye, as discordant to his taste. The tale they tell, is 
of too unqualified a misery, to give any pleasing feeling of interest, 
while passing their trampled remains. The delapidations of 
time or of war, on great cities, or on buildings of national conse¬ 
quence, derive grandeur from the magnitude, and not unfrequently 
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