_ 308 _ extreme need of it, gave him a jug of it. We continued our journey along the same arm of the sea, and after nightfall we crossed a great bridge over a large, fast-flowing river which flows into this sea. A short distance from three or four shady places situated along that arm of the sea, peopled by Armenians and Kurds, at this time depopulated and decimated by the plague, we came across a woman walking about those plains, mad because her husband and four or five sons, daughters and servants had died, and no one but she was left in her entire house. We put up in a city called Vastan, situated to the west of the road peopled by Kurdish Moors and Armenians, who live from their crops. It is much older than Van, and was a large settlement of much renown, already destroyed and ruined, where almost all the people who had lived there had died of the plague. I went into a house in search of a chicken for supper and saw a girl who was wounded and moaning. I came out again in more than a hurry. I went to the caravanserai without thinking any more about eating that evening. At the end of this arm of the sea, in the middle of it are two islets, one larger and well-peopled by Armenians and Kurds, called Ahtamar, which has a fortress and a captain placed there by the Turk, for all this sea and the
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