a little rivulet is carried underground, with openings at regular intervals for the purpose of dipping out water.  Of the houses the passer-by sees no more than is seen in any other Oriental town:  lofty walls, windowless, with low entrances; and the fronts always looking in upon the open courtyards, which bloom with trees and flowers, and usually adjoin a pleasant garden.  Inside, the chambers are usually lofty and spacious, with rows of windows which seem to form complete walls of glass.  Buildings of public importance there are none; excepting the bazaar, which covers a considerable area, and is laid out with lofty, broad, and covered thoroughfares.

The traveller turned her back upon Tabreez on the 11th of August, and in a carriage drawn by post-horses, and attended by a single servant, set out for Natschivan.  At Arax she crossed the frontier of Asiatic Russia, the dominions of the “White Tsar,” who, in Asia as in Europe, is ever pressing more and more closely on the “unspeakable Turk.”  At Natschivan she joined a caravan which was bound for Tiflis, and the drivers of which were Tartars.  She says of the latter, that they do not live so frugally as the Arabs.  Every evening a savoury pillau was made with good-tasting fat, frequently with dried grapes or plums.  They also partook largely of fruits.

The caravan wound through the fair and fertile valleys which lie at the base of Ararat.  Of that famous and majestic mountain, which lifts its white glittering crest of snow some sixteen thousand feet above the sea-level, our traveller obtained a fine view.  Its summit is cloven into two peaks, and in the space between an old tradition affirms that Noah’s ark landed at the subsidence of the Great Flood.

[Mount Ararat:  page123.jpg]

In the neighbourhood of a town called Sidin, Madame Pfeiffer met with a singular adventure.  She was returning from a short walk, when, hearing the sound of approaching post-horses, she paused for a minute to see the travellers, and noticed a Russian, seated in an open car, with a Cossack holding a musket by his side.  As soon as the vehicle had passed, she resumed her course; when, to her astonishment, it suddenly stopped, and almost at the same moment she felt a fierce grasp on her arms.  It was the Cossack, who endeavoured to drag her to the car.  She struggled with him, and pointing to the caravan, said she belonged to it; but the fellow put his hand on her mouth, and flung her into the car, where she was firmly seized by the Russian.  Then the Cossack sprang to his seat, and away they went at a smart gallop.  The whole affair was the work of a few seconds, so that Madame Pfeiffer could scarcely recognize what had happened.  As the man still held her tightly, and kept her mouth covered up, she was unable to give an alarm.  The brave woman, however, retained her composure, and speedily arrived at the conclusion that her “heroic” captors had mistaken her for some dangerous spy.  Uncovering her mouth, they began to question her closely; and Madame Pfeiffer understood enough Russian to tell them her name, native country, and object in travelling.  This did not satisfy them, and they asked for her passport,—­which, however, she could not show them, as it was in her portmanteau.