Geographical Journal (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society): Volume VIII, No. 5 [‎26r] (54/154)

A JOURNEY IN THE VALLEY OF THE UPPER EUPHRATES.
457
Euphrates and Kemakh on the further bank. At this point a severe
thunderstorm, which had been brewing all day in the Dersim mountains
behind Kemakh, broke over us, with the result that a small stream
which lay between us and the town was turned into an almost unford-
able torrent. By making a considerable detour we succeeded in passing
this obstacle, and so reached the Euphrates. The river, which flows at
this point through a high and precipitous ravine, is here spanned by a
wooden bridge, which we crossed to ride down a ladder-like staircase
into the town of Kemakh. We rode the whole distance from Hassan
Ova to Kemakh in nine hours twenty minutes, but we travelled very
slowly for the last two hours, and the journey could easily be accom-
THE WESTERN EUPHRATES ABOVE AGHIN (LOOKING NORTH).
plished in eight and a half hours. It is quite possible that the road
which was so often traversed by Byzantine armies (Sebastea—Tephrike—
Kamacha *) may have coincided with the route along which we travelled
from Hassan Ova to Kemakh, but we saw no sign of any ancient road
along our path.
Kemakh is a small town of about fifteen hundred houses, of which
only thirty-five are Armenian. The town is clustered round a precipitous
rock, which rises close to the left bank of the river, and on which there
are remains of what must once have been an impregnable fortress. It
most probably occupies the site of one of the several towns called Theo-
dosiopolis, which existed in this part of the Byzantine Empire.f In
* Ramsay, ‘ Hist. Geogr.,’ p. 56.
t Vide Ramsay, op. cit., pp. 282 and 447.