CHAPTER XXII.
May 28.—We left Urfah this evening, and passed the night at Khudhr Elias, where our hospitable host had prepared an entertainment for us, to which Mutran Agop and several of the Armenian and Syrian clergy were invited. The Bishop made many inquiries respecting our Church, and expressed his sincere desire for the religious improvement of his people. On the following morning we bade farewell to our kind friends at 4 a.m. and pursued our journey over an undulating and barren country till noon, when we reached Tcarmelik, where we located ourselves in a ruined mosque which stands by the side of a large khan in tolerably good repair. Just below the mosque is a capacious reservoir measuring eighty feet in depth. We passed several of these rock cisterns during our day's journey, and they are common in this district along the caravan routes. There is a large Coordish village of conical mud huts in the vicinity, but the villagers had all gone into the Serooj to pasture their flocks.
May 30th.—We started from Tcarmelik at 4 a.m. and at noon reached Birejik on the Euphrates, where we were accommodated on the terrace of an Armenian house close under the castle, in order to be in readiness to cross the river early in the morning. The general features of the road to-day were like those of yesterday; the country is barren but more rocky, and
