/7J

TO

ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D.,

DEAN OF WESTMINSTER,

IN REMEMBRANCE OF A LONG FRIENDSHIP AND

MANY ACTS OF KINDNESS.
B H 13
1
TRANSCAUCASIA
AND

ARARAT
BEING \

NOTES OF A VACATION TOUR IN ml*

AUTUMN OF 1876.

BY JAMES BRYCE,
AUTHOR OF 'THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.'

WITH COLOURED MAP.

T n i E,:D

^London:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1878.
 PREFACE.

THE following pages contain a record of impressions

received during a journey in the autumn of 1876
through Russia, the Caucasian countries, and the
Turkish empire. They are first impressions only,
forwhich no value can be claimed except that which
belongs to impressions formed on the spot, and (as the
author trusts) without a prejudice in favour of either
of the states which are now contending in the regions

here described. Yet even first impressions, if honestly

formed, may sometimes atone for their
crudity by
their freshness. What most readers desire to know
about a country is how it strikes a new-comer. A
book that tries to give this, to present the general

effect, so to speak, of the landscape, may have its

function, even though it cannot satisfy the scientific

student of geography or politics.

The author, however, did not travel with the inten-
tion of writing a book, nor would he, sensible as he is

of his imperfect knowledge, have now thought of

sending these notes to the press but for two reasons.

One is the unexpected importance which the outbreak
of war in the countries he visited has given to them.

2005342
IV PREFACE.

The other the urgency of his friends, whose curi-

is

osity regarding Mount Ararat has made him think

it worth while to print a narrative of what he saw, and

who assure him that some account of a mountain

which every one has heard of, but about which com-
paratively little has been written, would be more
interesting to English and American readers than he
had at first supposed.
He indebted to his friends Captain J. Buchan
is

Telfer, R.N., Mr. Douglas W. Freshfield, and Pro-

fessor Judd, of the Royal School of Mines, for
information on several points, and returns his thanks
'
to the Editor and proprietors of the Cornhill Maga-
zine* the permission they have given him to
for

reprint the substance of an article which he contri-

buted to that magazine in last May.
The publication of the book has been delayed by a
domestic sorrow which has destroyed such pleasure as
the composition of it might have given, the loss of

one whose companion he had been in mountain expe-

ditions from childhood, and to whom he owes what-
ever taste he possesses for geographical observation
and for the beauties of nature.

LINCOLN'S INN, LONDON :

September 12, 1877.

 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

THE VOLGA AND THE STEPPE OF SOUTHERN RUSSIA.

(Pp. I-4I.)
PAGE
Nijni Novgorod and its Fair .. .. .. .. .. 2
The Volga steamers and the life on board .. .. .. 5

Scenery of the Volga .. .. .. .. .. .. n

Navigation of the river : trade on it.. .. .. .. 13
Kazan .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 15
The Jigoulef Hills 19
Saratof .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 22
Resemblances between Russia and the United States .. 23
Railway journey through the steppe to the Sea of Azof .. 30
Character of the steppe impressions of its scenery
: .. 31
The Sea of Azof 37
From Rostof to the foot of the Caucasus .. .. .. 38

CHAPTER II.

THE CAUCASUS.

(Pp. 42-87.)

Structure of the Caucasian chain .. .. .. .. 42

Character of its scenery .. .. .. .. .. 46
Its historical importance .. .. .. .. .. 48
Peoples inhabiting the Caucasus .. .. .. .. 51
Vl CONTENTS.
PAGE
Russian conquest of Daghestan and Circassia .. .. 56
Present political condition of the mountain country .. 59
The watering-places :
Pjatigorsk .. .. .. .. 61

Railway to Vladikavkaz .. .. .. .. .. 67
Road over the main chain to Tiflis .. .. .. .. 69
The Dariel Pass the Caucasian Gates
: .. .. .. 73
Mount Kazbek .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 77
Descent into Georgia : arrival at Tiflis .. .. .. 83

CHAPTER III.

TRANSCAUCASIA.

(Pp. 88-130.)

General physical character of Transcaucasia : its moun-

and plains
tains .. .. .. .. .. ..
89
Climate and vegetation scenery : . . . . . . . .
92
Natural productions .. .. .. .. .. .. 95
Inhabitants Mingrelians
:
; Imeritians .. .. .. 97
Georgians or Grusinians Armenians ; .. .. .. 100
Tatars: their brigandage .. .. .. .. .. 105
Persians ;
Russians ;
Germans ;
the mountain tribes . . 1 1 1

Russian government and administration .. .. .. 116

Impressions of the country, social and historical .. .. 123

Political future of Transcaucasia .. .. .. .. 125

CHAPTER IV.

TIFLIS.

(Pp. I3I-IS6.)

Situation and aspect of the city .. .. .. .. 131

Divisions of the city : the Russian quarter .. .. .. 134
The Eastern town .. .. .. .. .. ..
135
The German colony .. .. .. .. .. .. 138
 CONTENTS. vil

PAGE
The inhabitants : mixture of races ; aspect of the streets.. 141
History of Tiflis .. .. .. .. .. .. 147
Walks and excursions : the Sololaki Hill :
Kajori .. 151

CHAPTER V.

THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT.

(Pp. 157-1970

The steppe of the Kur valley .. .. .. ..

..159
Alarms of robbers : the Red Bridge .. .. .. .. 162

Valley of the Akstafa :

Delijan .. .. .. ..165
The Goktcha Lake : Daratchitchak 168

Scenery of Armenia Mount Ala Goz : .. .. .. 171

Erivan aspects of Eastern life
: .. .. .. .. 175
The Sardar's palace : the mosque .. .. .. .. 179
Drive through the Araxes plain .. .. .. .. 185
The Ford of the Araxes .. .. .. .. .. 189
Aralykh at the foot of Ararat .. .. .. .. .. 190
View of Ararat : ruins of Artaxata .. .. .. 193

CHAPTER VI.

ARARAT.

(Pp. 198-241.)

Various names of the mountain .. .. .. .. 198

Its identification with the Mountain of the Ark in Genesis 199
Notices of it in mediaeval books of travel .. .. .. 204
Legends relating to it .. .. .. .. .. .. 208
General structure of the two Ararats .. .. .. 210
Geology: Abich's views stated .. .. .. ., 214
Volcanic phenomena absence of central craters: .. .. 217
Meteorology :
great height of the snow-line.. .. .. 222
Vegetation .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 227
Animals ., .. .. .. .. .. 230
Vlll CONTENTS.
PAGE
General aspect view of the mountain from the plains
: .. 231
Political importance of Ararat .. .. .. .. 233
Belief in its inaccessibility : recorded ascents .. .. 235
Great earthquake of 1840 .. .. .. .. ..239

CHAPTER VII.

THE ASCENT OF ARARAT.

(Pp. 242-293.)

The start from Aralykh

Ascent of the outer slopes
The Cossack station and well of Sardarbulakh
Kurdish shepherds at the well with their flocks
Climb by night from Sardarbulakh to the foot of the cone
Ascent of the great cone
Cossack and Kurd refuse to ascend further ..

The great snow basin :

upper slope of rotten rock
The Summit .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 277
View from the summit .. .. .. .. ..
279
Descent to Sardarbulakh .. .. .. .. .. 285
Reach Aralykh : our Cossack escort .. .. .. 292
Impossibility of ascending Ararat .. .. .. ..
293

CHAPTER VIII.

ETCHMIADZIN AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE.

(Pp. 294-326.)

Road from Erivan to Etchmiadzin .. .. .. .. 294

Foundation of the Armenian church .. .. .. 297
Monastery of Etchmiadzin : the Cathedral .. .. .. 299
Relics: the hand of St. Gregory .. .. .. ., 302
The Seminary ; general impressions of the monastery . .
305
Armenian history ..
Sk'etch of .. .. .. .. 311
The great Armenian emigration .. .. .. .. 314
 CONTENTS. IX

PAGE
Present condition of the Armenians .. .. .. .. 317
Physical aspect of the Armenians : their language and
literature .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 321
Their sufferings under Turkish rule .. .. .. .. 324

CHAPTER IX.

FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA.

(Pp. 327-361.)

The Kurds their character and history ..

: .. .. 327
The journey back from Erivan to Tiflis alarms : of robbers 330
Railways in the Caucasus .. .. .. .. .. 334
By rail from Tiflis to Gori .. .. .. .. .. 335
The rock city of
Uphlis Tzikhe* .. .. .. .. 339
Across the watershed into Mingrelia .. .. ..
345
Arrival at Poti : difficulties of embarkation .. .. 348
Poti and its inhabitants .. .. .. .. .. 351
Crossing the bar of the Phasis .. .. .. ., 357
View from the sea off Batum .. .. ., .. .. 359

CHAPTER X.

FROM POTI TO CONSTANTINOPLE BY THE BLACK SEA.

(Pp. 362-389.)

Batum and its port .. .. .. .. .. .. 362

Trebizond .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 363
Character of the Pontic coast.. .. .. .. .. 367
Samsun and Sinope .. .. .. .. .. .. 369
The steamer and its passengers : Persians and Turkmans 372
Turks, Greeks, and Armenians .. .. .. .. 374
Franks; mixture of languages .. .. .. .. 377
Condition of Asia Minor :
melancholy impression it makes 378
Sail down the Bosphorus .. .. .. .. .. 382
Constantinople: first view of the city .. .. .. 384
Picturesqueness of its interior .. .. .. .. 388
X CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XI.

SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS.

(Pp. 39<>-420.)
PAGE
Remarks on the state of Transcaucasia .. .. .. 390
Religion as a separating influence in the East .. ..
392
Russia in working her Asiatic territories
Difficulties of ., 394
Annexation injurious to Russia .. .. .. .. 396
Impressions of Turkey the Turks an army of occupation
:
398
The Turkish government is dying .. .. .. .. 402
Anarchy in the provinces .. .. .. .. .. 405
Is it possible to erect an Armenian state ? .. .. .. 406
Can the Turkish administration be reformed ? .. .. 408
Colonization .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 411
British interests :
export trade to the Euxine .. .. 412
India and the Suez Canal .. .. .. .. .. 413
Influence of England in the East .. .. .. .. 415
Feelings towards England : her true policy .. .. 417
TRANSCAUCASIA
AND

ARARAT
illan & Co
TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

CHAPTER I.

THE VOLGA AND THE STEPPE OF SOUTHERN RUSSIA.

NORTH-WESTERN Russia, although it is now pretty

easy of access from Western Europe, and contains
two such wonderfully striking cities as Moscow and
St. Petersburg, very little visited by travellers.
is

South-eastern Russia is hardly visited at all. Nijni

Novgorod, whose great fair draws some few sight-

seers as well as men of business from Germany and
the farther west, seems to be the limit of the tourist,
and beyond it, all the way to Tiflis or Constantinople,
one does not see a single stranger travelling for
pleasure, and discovers from the attentions which the
western visitor receives,how rare such a visitor is.
I need, therefore, make no apology for giving some
short account of the Lower Volga, and the great steppe
of Southern Russia, before getting to the Caucasus
and Armenia, for all four are likely to be equally
unfamiliar to English readers. As this does not apply
to the gathering which has made Nijni famous, there
is no occasion to describe it here, especially as a full
account of the fair and its humours may be found in

B
2 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

a lively little book of collected letters published

three years ago by Mr. Butler Johnstone. One or two
observations, however, it is worth while to make by
way of advice to future travellers.

People are constantly told that Nijni Fair is Oriental

and picturesque, that they will find in it
specimens of
allthe peoples of Eastern Europe and Western Asia,
dressed and demeaning themselves each after its
several kind that it is in fact a sort of Eastern
ethnological museum. This may have been true
twenty years ago it is not true now. The fair is
;

picturesque, and in a certain way, which I will men-

tion presently, more striking than one expects, but
there is no longer any great richness of costume, any
great variety of national types observable. Asiatic
as well as European Russians have now, except in the

peasant class, taken to Western fashions in dress, and

so far as the outer man goes it is hard to tell a Sibe-
rian of Irkutsk from an Odessa or Riga merchant.
The Finnish tribes from both sides of the Ural Moun-
tains, and the various Turkish or Mongol tribes of the

steppe, Kirghiz, Bashkirs, Kalmucks, and such like,

are not represented, or at any rate not so as to be
a noticeable feature ;
it is only the Persians and the
few Turkmans who come from Tashkend or Bo-
khara that give anything of an Oriental character to
the vast crowd, estimated at 100,000 people, that is

gathered here every July. Nor, again, are there

many beautiful articles to be seen exposed for sale.
The display of jewellery was not larger or better than
one might see in any two good shops in St. Peters-
 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. 3

burg ;
and the other goods shewn silks and carpets
from Tiflis and Persia, furs from Siberia, ornamental
work of various kinds from different places in Russia
might have been bought as good, if not as cheap,
in the bazaars of Moscow or in Regent Street. The
interest of the fair lies deeper, and is matter for the
economist or politician rather than for the artist.
Here one stands at the great centre of Russian
commerce and influence, the heart which pulsates over
Eastern Europe and the half of Asia. The limits of
its influence, the remotest points whence people flock

to attend it, are Teheran and Bokhara to the south-

east, Kiakhta, on the Chinese frontier, to the east,
Warsaw and Riga on the west. Over all this area
Russia practically commands the markets, and here
her manufactured goods, iron, pottery, cotton stuffs,
and so forth, are exchanged for the caravan tea
which has been brought across Siberia, carpets and
silks from Persia, wool from Turkestan. The absence
from the stalls of English, French, and German goods
makes one realize how successful the Russian pro-
tective tariff has beenout foreign com-
in shutting

petition while the roughness and tastelessness of the

;

home manufactures, which imitate Western patterns

without Western finish, shew how little chance Russian
manufacturers would as yet have against their neigh-
bours in a fair field.

Here you have under your eyes, in the substantial

form of long islands covered with Siberian or Uralian
iron, of fleets laden with fish from Astrakhan, of a
whole suburb built with bales of caravan tea, the evi-
B 2
4 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

dence of those movements and relations of trade

which the imagination usually finds it so hard to
realize, and which are such mighty factors in social as
well as political history. The scene speaks not only
of the vastness of the scale on which this trade goes
on, but also of the rude and undeveloped condition
of the countries that support it, where the mechanism
of exchange and distribution is still so imperfectly

organized that men are obliged to see one another

and to bring their wares to this central spot to be dis-

played, instead of trusting to agencies and correspond-

ence. This concourse of merchants, and many details
of the business done, which can only be understood
when they are actually seen, do therefore present
enough that is interesting and curious to repay the
trouble of a journey hither. And there is one view,
at least, too striking to be forgotten by any one who
has enjoyed it, I mean the coup d'ceil over the whole
fair from the Mouravief Tower. To the east, one sees

Nijni town, whose ancient kremlin (citadel) and green-

domed cathedral crowns the lofty southern bank of
the Oka in front are the two great tranquil streams
;

Volga and Oka each a quarter of a mile wide,

bearing on their bosoms thousands of vessels from
every part of the vast water system of Russia be- ;

tween them lies the Fair itself, long streets of brick

warehouses, booths, and tents, bubbling and throbbing
with the busy crowd, which pours to and fro, on foot
and in carriages, across the bridge of boats that joins
the Fair to the city ;
while round all lies a boundless

green plain, along which the straining eye follows the

 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. 5

three shining lines of \vater till they sink below the

far horizon.

We steamed away from Nijni on the morning of

August 24th, threading our way through an endless
crowd of vessels laden with iron, fish, and wood.
As the last masts and domes vanished behind us, we
felt as entering a
if new world, borne along by the
strong majestic stream to the mysterious East the
East which discovery has so spared that it is now
less known and more mysterious than the West. One
thing, however, remained to remind one forcibly,
almost ludicrously, of the West, I mean the steam-
boat that carried us, which was built exactly on the
pattern of those that ply on the Hudson or the

Mississippi. Of her three decks, one was almost level

with the water, and occupied by the third class pas-
sengers a second, raised above the last, contained
;

the and second class saloons and a third, which

first ;

was open, formed the roof of the saloons, and supplied

a pleasant promenade. She was a swift as well as

light and handsome boat, drawing, when half loaded,

only four feet of water, and a jolly old Russian

admiral who was on board, and seemed, from the
authority he assumed, to be a director of the com-
pany that owned her, insisted on showing us over every
nook and cranny of her, with an air that seemed to
doubt whether England could produce her like. Every-
thing seemed clean and trim and comfortable enough
during the day the saloon especially, opening imme-
;

diately on the deck, with windows which commanded

a view of both banks, was a better sitting-room than
6 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

one often finds in an English vessel. But at night we

could not help regretting the snug berths of an
American steamer. For in Russia there are (speaking
generally) only two classes of travellers, those to whom
expense incurred for comfort and propriety is nothing,
and those to whom comfort and propriety are scarcely
known. The former carry their own bedding about
with them ;
the latter do not go to bed at all, but
coilthemselves up in their sheepskins and go to sleep
wherever it may happen. The large and respectable
middle class of Germany or France, who want comfort,
but cannot afford luxury or lordly independence, do
not exist. Hence, in all hotels, except the very best,
and everywhere in the steamers, you get no blankets
and sheets except by special arrangement, and have
always a sort of sense of bivouacking in your rug or
great-coat. That was what had to be done here in
the little sofa cabins round the saloon.
As
regards food there was nothing to complain of.
Russia is eminently a land of good cooking even the ;

simple stchi, or cabbage broth, on which one often has

to fall back, is usually tasty and nourishing, and here,
with sterlet and sturgeon swimming about him, and
cooks who know how to make the most of their
materials, an epicure might have been content. The
sterlet soup, of which the Russians are so fond of talk-
ing, quite answers reputation, and other dishes
its

whose names I
forget are hardly less famous. Our
only difficulty about dinner was how to order it, for
table d'hote is the rare exception in Russia, and none

of the steward's staff spoke anything but Russian or

 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. /

Tatar.
1
The waiters in Russian inns and steamers are

usually Tatars ;
most of them come from Riazan or
Penza, and are good-looking fellows enough, but some
are downright Kalmucks in face. So when six o'clock

arrived,we had to hunt up and down the boat for

some good-natured passenger who talked French or
German, and through him convey our wishes. Fortu-
nately the good-nature of Russians is boundless, and
here, where a traveller is so rare, he is an object of
special interestand goodwill, who is talked to about
the country and its prospects as if he were an ambas-
sador, or even a special correspondent. This friendli-
ness was all the pleasanter because we had hardly

expected it.
Everyone had said to us in St. Peters-
"
burg, You have come at a bad time. Our people
are greatly exasperated against England. They
regard you as the abettors of the Turks, as the ac-

complices in the Bulgarian massacres." (This was

just after the great massacres of May had become
known Russia and before the English indignation
in
"
meetings in
September.) They think that you prefer
Mohammedans to Christians, and for your own selfish

purposes heaven knows what they are are ready to

support and justify all the oppressions and cruelties of
the Turks. So when you get away from this cosmo-
politan town up to Moscow and the interior of our
country, you must be prepared to meet with rudeness,
perhaps even with insults."

1
The spelling "Tatar," instead of the old and admittedly erroneous
"Tartar," seems to be now sufficiently well established for an un-
scientific writer to adopt it.
8 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

Nothing of the kind. I am bound to say that we

never fell into talk with a Russian without being

reproached with our sympathy for the Turks. It was

always assumed that we, as Englishmen, of course
stood over the massacres, and we were asked how
we could be so unchristian. Indeed to most people's
minds England appeared scarcely less guilty than the
Porte, for was it not England that by rejecting the
Berlin Memorandum had stopped the joint action of
the Six Powers ? Was
not the English fleet at
it

Besika Bay and the English envoy at Constantinople

that encouraged Turkey to harden her heart ? But
even the reproaches were made with perfect courtesy.
Whether one would have been better treated two
years before, I cannot say, but considering the pro-
digious excitement that reigned an excitement that
pervaded all classes, and which seemed to us to have
to do with Panslavic theories, and still less with
little

schemes of territorial aggression- it was a wonder to

me that, being generally recognized as Englishmen,
we were treated so well.

Except a few Persians and Turkmans from Bokhara,

who performed their devotions towards Mecca with

exemplary regularity, the passengers seemed to be all

Russian subjects, though several were Germans, natives

either of Germany or of the Baltic Provinces. Two or
three of the others, as well as the captain, who was an
officer inthe imperial navy, spoke French or a little

English, so that one was not ill off for opportunities of

talk. But it is quite a mistake to suppose, as is com-
monly believed in England, and as the Russians them-
 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. 9

selves are always telling you, that in Russia everybody

in the better classes speaks one or more foreign lan-
guages. The high nobility do, no doubt, speak French
as well as the Parisians themselves, though the growth
of national spirit and of what are called Slavophil

principles makes them use it less than formerly ;

many of their daughters, who are often educated by

English governesses, speak English also, while scien-
tific and literary people, professors, engineers, and
such like, must of course know German. But the
ordinary Russian, not merely the shopkeeper, mer-
chant, and priest or monk, but the officer, civil
servant, or lower noble, is confined to his mother

tongue. One meets in travelling with enormous

numbers of officers they are all in uniform and seem
to form half the population of the country and most
of them shake heads when you accost them in
their

either French or German. In fact I do not believe

that a knowledge of foreign languages is any more
common than in England, or as common as it is in

Germany. The difference rather is that those who

do speak French or German speak it more fluently
than we. And the popular notion on the subject
seems to have arisen partly from this fact, partly
because most Englishmen form their impressions from
the high society, or from the commercial society, of
the capital (which quite an exceptional place,
is itself

no more typical of Russia than New York is of

America), and partly from the abundance of Germans
scattered allover the country and filling so many
civil and military, educational and scientific posts. It
10 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

is upon these Germans that he who travels without a

courier or a knowledge of Russian has chiefly to rely ;

and it will go hard with him on a steamer, or at a

if

railway station, or in a baker's or druggist's shop in one

of the bigger towns, he cannot find such an one willing
to interpret for the nonce. Failing these, he is indeed
badly off. For there are so few words common to the
Slavonic languages with the Teutonic or Romance,
and the alphabet is at first so puzzling, that it is hard
to remember even the common names of things, or to

decipher a railway time-table.

There was an oddly miscellaneous little library on
board, consisting apparently of the leavings of many
travellers, mainly Russian, but with several French
novels and about as many solid German treatises, and
two books in English. One of these last was a record
of spiritual manifestations in America, whose presence
there surprised a Russian acquaintance of ours, for all

spiritualistic writings are strictly prohibited by the

police, and this, instead of lying about on the cabin

table, ought to have been seized at the frontier, and

reserved for the private enjoyment of the censor.
There is a very comprehensive Index Expurgatorius
in Russia, and people often told me they found their

best Western books carried off by the custom-house,

never to reappear. But, as every body knows, Alex-
'

ander Herzen's revolutionary

'
Kolokol found its way
everywhere, and was read by all the officials up to
the Emperor himself and the same is said to be the
;

case with the less brilliant socialist writers of to-day.

The other book was ' Scenes of Clerical Life/ whose
 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. II

pictures of an English country town, with its gossips,

quarrels, and sorrows, lit up by a noble life like that of

Janet's Repentance/ had never seemed

'
Mr. Tryon in

so vivid as when read in this far-off land, and set side

by side with the parallel, yet wonderfully dissimilar,

glimpses of Russian life which were given us in the

pages of a scarcely less wonderful genius, Ivan
Turgenef.
Of all modes of travelling, a river steamboat is

probably the pleasantest. It is exhilarating to rush

through the air at a pace of eighteen miles an hour,

the swift current adding several miles to what the

strong engines can accomplish. One moves freely

about, reads or writes when so inclined, sits down and
chats with a fellow passenger, enjoys to perfection the

bracing freshness of the air and the changing hues of

sunset. All this is to be had on the Volga steamers,
phis the delightful sense of novelty and although the ;

scenery is not striking, it may be called pleasing, quite

good enough to see once. Mr. Mackenzie Wallace
(whose very interesting I assume to be known
book
to any one who reads this one 1
)
thinks the Volga
tame, but I cannot help fancying this is because the
Russians, who are eager to make the most of every-

thing their country can shew, had talked too much to

him about We, who expected only a muddy stream
it.

between banks, were agreeably surprised by

dull, flat
the reality. Of course, it is not so grand as the Danube
is above the Iron Gate, or the Douro between the wine

1
It may be proper to say that .this chapter was written before I had
read more than a very little of Mr. Wallace's book.
12 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

country and Oporto, nor comparable in point of beauty

with the richly wooded Upper Mississippi, or the
Rhine, or the Upper Elbe. It is altogether in a less
ambitious style than any of these, so that one is not
even reminded of them. But in its own quiet way it is
enjoyable, and the more so from the contrast between
the two shores. All the way down from Yaroslaf till
near the Caspian the right bank is high, from 120 to
1 60 or even 200 feet above the
stream, generally steep,
often prettily wooded, or cut down by picturesque
little gullies filled with brushwood. On this side one
sees no cultivation, though here and there a .village
nestles between the hill and the shore, or crowns the

top of the slope with the green cupola of its church

glittering afar off under the sun and might fancy
;

that one was sailing down through a half-occupied

pastoral land. But up behind, on the table-land of

which this steep bank is the edge, there is a well-
peopled country, full of farms and villages, with a
soilwhich, away down southward beyond Kazan,
becomes exceedingly fertile. The opposite, the left
or north-eastern bank, is perfectly flat ;
first a belt
of sandcovered by the stream in the floods of

spring, then willows and alders, then pastures and

cornfields with patches of wood between, and here and
there a low ridge, hardly to be called an eminence,

stretching away farther than the eye can reach. Be-

tween this boundless plain and this bold hill the

Volga sweeps along in majestic curves and reaches,

and the contrast between the two, the varying aspects
which the promontories take as one approaches and
 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. 13

recedes from them, give a pleasing variety to the

landscape. Except at one point, you cannot call it

beautiful, but it is all so green and so peaceful, the air

is such a sense of expanse

so exquisitely clear, there is

in the wide plain and the sky vaulted over it, the

stream down which one speeds is so wide, and calm,

and strong, that there is a pleasure in the voyage it is

easier to feel than describe.

The ship touches but seldom at the banks, for there
are few towns, and when she does stop, it is rather for
the sake of taking in wood than of passengers or cargo.
A gang of women is usually waiting for us at the
wharf, who carry on board bundles of chopped wood ;

while all the spare population of the villages comes

down in its sheepskins and stands looking on, munch-
ing its cucumbers the while. Sheepskins, with the
woolly side turned in, are the usual summer as well
as winter wear of the peasants in these parts. As for
cucumbers, the national passion for them issomething
wonderful. They are set down at every meal in hotels
and steamers, while the poorer folk seem to live
pretty much upon them and bread. If I were asked to
characterise themost conspicuous externals of Russia
in threewords, they should be "sheepskins, cucumbers,
emeralds." x We
meet or overtake plenty of vessels,
sometimes making slow way under sail, sometimes
towed by a tug, sometimes working themselves up
by the primitive contrivance of an anchor and wind-
1
The profusion of fine gems, especially emeralds, rubies, and sap-
phires, you are shewn in geological and antiquarian collections, sewn
on to sacerdotal vestments, stuck on to the gold plates with which the
sacred pictures are overlaid, is
extraordinary.
14 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

lass,the anchor carried up-stream for several hundred

yards and dropped, and the ship hauled up to it by

winding up the anchor cable with the windlass. But
these vessels are nearly all laden either with fish from

Astrakhan, to feed the peasantry of the central pro-

vinces, or with iron or copper from Siberia and the
Ural on its way to the manufacturing district of Tula.
Local traffic there is very little ;
for the country is

peopled only by peasants whose life is simple, and

whose wants are few. Many villages are not even
Russian, but belong to some of the various Finnish
tribes Tchouvasses, Tcheremisses, Mordvins who
formerly occupied the whole of this region, though
most of them have now adopted, or are fast adopting,
the religion, customs, and tongue of their Slavonic
masters. In another half-century the country will
be completely Russian.
But the through traffic, as a railway man would
say, is great and still increasing, and for its sake the
government have taken some pains with the Volga
navigation, which the numerous shoals and sandspits
render very troublesome. Buoys are anchored in

many dangerous spots, landmarks are placed along

the shore, and at night coloured lights are shewn.

Although our steamer drew only four feet of water

there were so many shoals and sandbanks about, that,
instead of holding an even course down the middle
of the stream, she was perpetually darting across it

from the one shore to the other, so as to keep in the

deepest part of the channel. Whenever one of the
shallower parts was reached a bell was rung, which
 . THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. 15

brought some of the crew forward, and one of them

took his place armed with a long pole, the lower part
" "
of which was marked in colours, just like the stick
in each foot's length having a different
croquet,
colour. This pole he nimbly plunged into the water
just before the bow, till it touched the bottom, and
then seeing by the marks on it what the depth was,
"
he sang out, vosem," "sem," "shest" (eight, seven,
six), as the case might be, the vessel still advancing.
As the smaller numbers began to be reached, a slight
thrill ran through the group that watched, and when

"piat" (five) followed, the engines were slowed or

stopped in a moment, and we glided softly along over
the shoal till "sem," "vosem," "deviat" (nine), follow-

ing in succession, told that the risk of grounding was

for the moment past.

Watching these manoeuvres, and the constantly

changing yet singularly uniform landscapes which
revealed themselves as we rounded one promontory
after another, time wore pleasantly on, till about noon
on the second day we saw the towers of the famous
city of Kazan rise above the low north-eastern shore,
and found that there was just time to drive there and
back in a swift droshky, so that to the end of one's

life one might talk of having done Kazan. Though

in our maps Kazan appears as standing on the Volga,
it is really nearly three miles from the summer bed of

the stream, on an eminence beyond a flat piece of

ground over which the spring floods pour. The country
round is so level that the hill, which is covered by its
kremlin, seems quite imposing, albeit only some forty
1 6 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

feet high. This elevation, with the battlements of the

kremlin wall, two or three old towers, and the blue
and gilded domes of the churches, gives the city from
a distance a somewhat lordly look, not unworthy of
the former capital of a great Tatar Khanate. Inside,
however, it is disappointing to find scarcely a trace of
antiquity. One of the towers of the kremlin, a curious

pyramid of brick, is said to come down from the

days of independence, but the rest was destroyed and
rebuilt by the Czar Ivan the Terrible (a contemporary
of Elizabeth), and the town, like most places in
Queen
Russia, has been so often burnt down that now every-
thing is new. Long straight streets with stuccoed
houses, a university with a stiff Corinthian portico
(columns also of stucco) and dreary corridors to right
and left, official buildings without end, and shops with
glass fronts to them, give it an air of respectability

and civilization
very different from most Russian
towns, which are chiefly open spaces of grass or mud,
interrupted here and there by brick cottages and
wooden shanties. But there is nothing except a few
slender minarets in the lower town to betray that
Oriental character which We had been wont to asso-
ciate with its sounding Oriental name. Among the
people in the streets, who were few enough, there
were some with the black sheepskin hats which the
Tatars affect otherwise there was little to distinguish
;

them from ordinary Russians. However, the truth

is that the diversity of blood in all this part of the

country gives rise to many types of face, and one

finds it hard to say which is the true Russian. In the
 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. ij

centre, between Kief, Moscow, and Petersburg, there

is no doubt a purer Slavonic race but in these;

more easterly governments the Muscovites are only

comparatively recent colonists among Finnish and
Turkish tribes. The Tatars of Kazan, who are no
doubt Turks, retain not only their language and
their religion but their social usages they rarely or
;

never intermarry with the Russians, but otherwise live

on good enough terms with them, and do not seem to
complain of the Christian government, which has been
wise enough not to meddle with their faith. Since the
fall of their Khanate three hundred
years ago, they
have rarely given any trouble, and now serve in the
army like other subjects of the Czar. They are usually

strong men, and sinewy, of a make more spare

lithe
than that of the Russians, and do most of the hard
work both here, in their own country, and at Nijni
and other trading spots along the river. In their
faces is seen a good deal of that grave fixity which
gives a dignity even to the humblest Oriental, and
contrasts so markedly with the mobile features of the
Slav.

Sailing away from Kazan, and seeing its glittering

towers and domes sink slowly from view into the
boundless plain, we inquired from everyone we could
talk to about the ruins of the ancient capital of the

Bulgarians, which are said to exist some few miles

from the huge shapeless mounds
river to the east,

which are now the only memorial of a kingdom older

than any of the Russian principalities, a kingdom
which flourished in the sixth and seventh centuries,
C
1 8 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

before the Bulgarian hordes descended into the Danube

valley tovex the Byzantine emperors. But no one
knew anything of the ruins indeed I doubt if any one
;

on board had heard of them before. Archaeology,

except perhaps as a branch of hagiology, or in the
learned circles of St. Petersburg and Moscow, has

scarcely to exist in Russia; it is one of the

begun
time everywhere, and, as one may see
latest births of

from the fate of so many of our own pre-historic

monuments, does not commend itself to the practical
mind of the agriculturist. The only countries in which
the traveller finds the common people knowing and
revering the monuments and legends of their remote
past are Norway and Iceland, where the sagas read
aloud in the long nights of winter from manuscripts

preserved in lonely farm-houses, have through many

generations fired the imagination and ennobled the
lifeof the peasant, who knew no other literature and
history than that of his own ancestors.
Below Kazan the scenery of the river remains
much the same for many miles. On the east the
Kama comes in, a majestic stream, about one-third of
a mile wide, bearing on its calm bosom flotillas of
vessels laden with iron from Perm and the Ural, and
tea brought by caravan across Siberia. After the
confluence the Volga is not at first sensibly wider, but
it
grows deeper, and the steamer, instead of flitting
like a dragon-fly hither and thither across the current,

holds on an even course down the middle, leaving on

the a labyrinth of low and generally wooded isles.
left

Gradually the bank on the right increases in height,

and strata of chalk begin to crop out on its face, till
 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. 19

at lastwe reach the Jigoulef hills, the most beautiful

piece of scenery on the whole river, and one which
would be beautiful even in a country far more attractive
than Russia. Hills four to six hundred feet high rise

steeply on the right bank of the stream, clothed with

luxuriant wood, beech, hazel, birch, oak, hornbeam,
and other deciduous trees, their autumnal gold and
scarlet mingled here and there with the dark green of
fir
clumps, their slopes cut deep by ravines and bushy
little dells, where a patch of sunny greensward is seen

through the boughs beside a sparkling brook. Imagine

thiswealth of wood interrupted here and there by a
miniature cliffof blue limestone, crowning the summit
of some jutting promontory, and the whole mirrored
in the glassy flood thatpours along, deep and strong,
but smooth and silent as a lake, with ridge after ridge
and bay after bay down the long vista of its banks,
and you have a picture to which all Russia, from the
Euxine to the Frozen Sea, cannot supply the like. The
elements of beauty in it are so simple that one is half

surprised to find the result so beautiful. Perhaps this

is partly because we English are so little accustomed
to great rivers that they make a correspondingly pro-
found impression on us, the sense of their grandeur
and of the tremendous part they play in the develop-
ment of countries and nations giving them a power
over the imagination which enhances even the visual

perception of their beauty.

All along this range of hills which borders the
stream for more than twenty miles, there is not a
house or sign of life visible but up behind, on the
;

C 2
2O TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

level ground stretching out to the south and west, the

land isrichly cultivated, and indeed constitutes one of
the largest and best cultivated estates in all Russia,
the property of Count Orloff Davydoff, who owns the
whole country enclosed in that remarkable bend of
the Volga, which may be seen on any map of Europe
between Simbirsk and Saratof. Just at the eastern-
most point of the bend the river turns south, breaking

through the Jigoulef ridge which has bordered it for

twenty miles, and here, at the town of Samara, one

seems suddenly to pass, as if through a gate in the
from Europe into Asia. Up to this point all
hills,

has been green, moist, fresh-looking, the air soft

though brilliantly clear, the grass not less juicy than
in England, the wayside flowers and trees very similar
to our own, if not always of the same species. But
once through the hills, and looking away south-east
across the boundless steppe towards Orenburg and
the Ural river, a different climate and scenery reveal
themselves. The air is hot and dry, the parched
earth gapes under the sun, the hills are bare, or
clothed only with withered weeds plants and shrubs
;

of unfamiliar aspect appear, the whole landscape has

a tawny torrid look, as if of an African desert.
Henceforth, all the way to the Black Sea, one felt
one's self in the glowing East, and seemed at a glance
to realize the character of the wilderness that stretches
from here all the way, a plain with scarcely a mound
to break its monotony, to the banks of the Oxus and
the foot of the Thian Shan mountains.
Along the first part of this great plain the Russians
 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. 21

were then building a railway, the terminus of which,

not quite completed, we saw at Samara. It has now
been opened as far as Orenburg, a distance of 280
miles, and they talk of carrying it on from Orenburg
to Tashkend, the present capital of their dominions in
Turkestan. The distance, however, is so great over
1200 miles by the present route and money is so
scarce, that this is not likely to be soon accomplished ;

although would immensely strengthen their hold

it

upon Central Asia, enabling troops and supplies to

pass from the Volga to the Jaxartes in three days,
instead of four or five weeks. As the country is flat,
with only one great river, the Ural or Yaik, to be
bridged, the construction of the line would not present
grave difficulties but all the wood for sleepers would
;

have to be carried along as the rails were laid, the

steppe being perfectly bare, station-houses must be
built, men must be kept to clear the line of snow,
and the traffic would not for many years, or perhaps
centuries, to come be sufficient to cover the expenses
of working. The Russians, who are eager to become
a great commercial nation, would no doubt find an
easier market for their goods in Central Asia but ;

those countries are too thinly peopled, and too likely

to remain so, to make even this an object of great

consequence. If the railway made, it will be

is for

military rather than for commercial reasons.

From Samara onwards (a town famous for the
" "
cure of koumiss or fermented mare's milk, which
is said to be so efficacious in consumption and some
other complaints) the river scenery becomes less
22 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

interesting. On
the east, one has always the bare

steppe, stretching farther than eye can reach in an

unbroken flat. On the west, ridges of brown, or red,
or yellow hills run along the river, breaking down to
it in cliffs of limestone, the strata perfectly horizontal

cliffs not high enough to be fine, with never a wood,

and seldom a village. The streamthough wider
itself,

than was above, hardly seems so, on account of the

it

numerous arms, enclosing low woody islands, into

which it divides itself. Hearing that it was still more
monotonous farther down towards Astrakhan, and
that that city, spite of its high-sounding Oriental
name, was only a second-rate modern Russian town,
full of dried fish and fever, we determined to quit the

steamer at Saratof, 1 and travel thence to the Cau-

casus by railway, running first west into the heart of
the country, and then south across the great steppe
to the Sea of Azof. By this time nearly all the cabin

passengers had gone, but the lower deck was still

crowded with Armenians and Persians bound for

Astrakhan, whence they were to proceed, by another

steamer of the same company, across the Caspian to
Baku in Transcaucasia, or to Lenkoran on the fron-
tiers of Persia. We
took leave with some regret of
these picturesque groups and of the majestic stream,
which we never expected to see again and, landing ;

at Saratof, climbed the high brown hills that rise above

it to take a last lookover the solemn eastern steppe,
still for the most part left to the rude tribes of
Kirghiz
and Bashkirs that wander over it with their flocks and
1
Pronounced Saratof.
 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. 23

their tents of felt, but destined, such is the fertility

of its soil, to wave one day from end to end with
luxuriant harvests.
Travellers are fond of talking of the Oriental cha-
racter of Russia and though the smart saying about
;
\

scratching Russians and rinding Tatars is pretty well

exploded (nobody can be essentially less like a
Tatar than the Russian is),
there are, no doubt, certain

points, mostly mere externals, in which Russian towns,

or Russian usages, recall those of the East. For
instance, the cupolas of churches are covered outside
with tiles gay colours, and in the
or iron plates of
interior the most honourable places are the corners,
in which, therefore, czars, patriarchs, and other great
folk, are buried. The houses (except in the greatest
cities) are low, buying and selling goes on chiefly in

the bazaars, the horses carry loud jangling bells, people

prostrate themselves at worship, instead of merely

bowing or kneeling and when you ask for water,
;

they do not give you a basin, but they pour water on t

your hands. Such resemblances as these are only

natural the wonder is, considering that Russia had
;

for many centuries closer relations with the East than

with the West, that there are not many more of them.
What is far more curious is on the Volga so
to find

many things and ways in Russia which remind one of

America points ;
of resemblance between nations

apparently as far removed from one another in man-

ners, religion, history, and government, as they are in
I amused myself in noting down some of
space.
these points of resemblance those which are merely
 24 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

external and accidental, as well as those which really

have a meaning and give the list for what it is worth.
Both are big countries. Their extent is immense,

and everything in them is on a vast scale rivers,

forests, lakes, distances. One of a journey
thinks little

of a thousand miles. Land, being so abundant, is of

little value hence, partly, it is that in both a town
;

covers so great an area, with its wide streets, its

gardens, its unutilized open spaces. Hence we find in

the middle of settled districts ground that has never
been touched by plough, or spade, or axe. Hence
agriculture is apt to be wasteful, because, when the
soil grows less productive, he who tills it can move
elsewhere.
Both are new countries. Although the Russian
,
race and kingdom are old enough, they have occupied
most of their present territory no longer than our
colonists America, while they have been learning the
arts of civilization only since the days of Peter the
Great, and have acquired them very imperfectly even
now. Material development is therefore still incom-

plete, and is the first thing in every one's thoughts,

the thing to which the energies of the people are

mainly devoted. Literature and science have struck

root, but have not yet had time to grow high or spread
their branches. Things are still pretty much in the
rough, have what we should call a colonial air about
them ;
streets are ill-paved, public buildings are un-

finished, thereis a mixture of

magnificent designs
with imperfect accomplishment. It is chiefly raw

material that the country produces, timber, corn, and

 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. 25

cattle ;
the finer kinds of manufacture are still back-
ward, and so, on the whole, is art. The
general want
of settledness is seen in the ease with which the popu-
lation move from place to place. Single workmen
wander over the whole country ;
a peasant family
thinks of migrating from the central provinces to
little

the steppes of the far south.

Both are countries whose interest lies in the future
rather than in the past. Indeed Russia has less of a

past than America, seeing that the latter has the past
of England, whereas Russian history is a very twilight
sort of business tillthe great Polish war of the six-
teenth century. Names of czars and patriarchs can be
given, and a few famous battles fixed, but in the main
it isan uncertain as well as dreary record of family
quarrels between savage princes and incessant border
warfare with the Tatar hordes. Russia has compara-
tively few great characters or great historic scenes to
look back to all the more, therefore, must she look
;

forward and scan the new horizon that rises towards

her. Like America, she sees a prodigious territory,
much of it
magnificent stores of
wonderfully fertile,

minerals, undeveloped regions lying beyond the limits

of her present settlements and she cannot but indulge
;

in many schemes and fancies for the future. An edu-

cated Russian, like an American, is penetrated by a
sense of the great destiny reserved for his country,
and is apt to carry the sort of sanguine temperament
which this feeling breeds into his private concerns.
People venture boldly, live expensively, enjoy and

indulge the moment, confident that things will some-

26 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
how come right in the long run. No nations are so
fond of speculating, writing and talking about them-
selves l readers of Turgenef need only be reminded
;

of what goes on among the Russians at Baden-Baden,

in his famous novel Smoke/ which gave so much
'

offence at home. Not unconnected with this is their

tendency sudden impressions and waves of feeling.

to

Naturally a susceptible, perhaps an inconstant, cer-

tainly an impatient, people, the Russians are apt to be
intoxicated by the last new idea or doctrine and ;

their lively sympathy makes a feeling, belief, enthu-

siasm, that has once been started, spread like wild-fire

through the whole educated, sometimes even down

into the uneducated, class. This is less the case in
America, but several of the political and social move-
ments we can remember there, like Know-nothingism
and a somewhat different way) the women's whisky
(in

war, seem to illustrate the same kind of temper.

Being new, and feeling themselves new, both are
extremely sensitive to the opinion of older countries,
and anxious sometimes to compel, more often to con-
ciliate, the admiration of their neighbours. In Russia,
as in America, the question put to the stranger is,
first
"
What do you think of our country ?" and an appre-
ciative answer is received with a thrill of pleasure
which a German or an English breast would never
experience on the like occasion. With all their
patriotic self-confidence, they have a consciousness of
having but just entered the circle of civilization, and
are pleased to be re-assured. They are, therefore, like
1
This, however, has very much diminished in America of late years.
 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. 2/

the Americans, eager to learn what foreigners think of

them, they do everything they can to set off the good

points of the country, both physical and social and ;

they are apt to be unduly annoyed at hostile criticism,

even when proceeds from foolish or ignorant people.
it

It partly perhaps for the same reason, as well as

is

from the dominant officialism, that they are more par-

ticular insome small points of social etiquette (the
wearing a black coat, for instance, or the use of appro-

priate titles in addressing a comparative stranger)

than people are in countries where the rules of eti-
quette are so old that every educated man may be
assumed to know them. It does not satisfy them
that their material greatness should be fully admitted ;

they wish to be recognized as the equals of Western

Europe in social and intellectual progress, and insist,

as many American writers used to do, on their mission

to diffuse new economical and social principles.

Among minor points of similarity that strike one,

may be named the mysterious element that underlies
their politicshere, as in America, one hears a great
deal of talk about secret societies, and cannot quite
make out what these societies amount to (I do not
believe they are really dangerous to the Govern-
ment) ;
the attitude ofwomen, who are here more
aspiring, independent, and, in the slang sense of the
"
term, advanced," than anywhere else in Europe the ;

development of strange sects, such as the Duchobortz

and Molokans, and semi-religious, semi-socialist com-
munities ;
the forwardness of children, who are much
more seen and indulged than in France or Germany ;

the costliness of inns, of living, of manufactured

28 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

goods, indeed of almost everything except locomo-

tion the corruption of officials (or at least the
;
general
belief in such corruption, for
whether it really exists
I do not venture to pronounce) even the structure ;

of railway cars and steamboats, which seems to have

been borrowed from America, and is certainly pre-
ferable to what one finds in the rest of Europe ;

and, lastly, the general good-nature and easy-going

friendly ways of the people, who, like the Americans,
are far more willing to make friends with and do
their best for a stranger, if only he will shew some
little politeness and some little interest in the country,
than are either the French, or the Germans, or our-
selves.

Of course I am not insensible to the many striking

contrasts between the two nations, the most striking
of which is that in Russia there
is, speaking broadly,

no middle class, but only an upper and a lower, and

that lower almost entirely uneducated and politically

powerless. In America there is

nothing but middle-
class, a middle-class which is well-taught, intelligent,
political to the marrow of its bones. Any one can
draw out for himself all the differences which flow
from this one, and from the singular unlikeness of
religions. But the curious thing is to find in the face
of these differences so many points of resemblance.
Saratof is one of the largest towns in Russia that
is to say, it has a population of 80,000 people, scat-
tered over a space of some four or five miles square,
the meanest streets being as wide as Regent Street, and
the main ones twice as wide. It lies high above the

Volga in a shelf-like recess among the bare hills, burnt

 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. 2Q

up in August to a dismal brown, and so dry that a dust-

cloud raised by the least wind is perpetually hanging

over the town, just as smoke-clouds do over Sheffield
or Manchester. Like most towns in Russia, it has
absolutely nothing in the way of a sight, not even a

provincial museum or an old church ; everything is

modern, common-place, and uninteresting, and life

itself, one would think, must partake of the same

character. The only thing to remember it by, besides

its splendid situation, looking out over the Volga and

the great steppe, was the more than usually large

proportion of Germans among the people, a lucky

thing for the traveller asking his way, and one which
gave to many of the houses an appearance of snug
neatness distinctly Teutonic ;
for though your Slav
is sometimes magnificent, he is rarely comfortable.
All this part of Russia, down the river as far as

Tzaritsyn, is full of German colonies, planted by

Catherine II. inhope that they would teach
the

cleanliness, neatness, and comfort, and, above all,

good methods of agriculture, to their Russian neigh-
bours a hope which has not been realized, for they
have remained for the most part quite distinct, living

in their own villages, not intermarrying with the

Muscovites, often remaining ignorant of their lan-
guage. By most prosperous of these colonies
far the

belong to the Mennonite or Moravian persuasions,

who thrive as the Quaker colonists throve in America.
But now one hears that they are mostly leaving Russia
altogether, fearing the enforcement of the new law of
universal conscription. To them, who hold war a
3O TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

sin, service in army is a more serious evil than

the

emigration to Canada and they appeal to the pro-

;

mise Catherine made that they should never be so

required to violate their conscientious scruples. The
government is perplexed : it does not wish to break
faith, but, like all governments, it hates making ex-
ceptions, especially invidious exceptions in favour of
people who do not hold the national faith.
At Saratof we took the railway which carried us
with only two changes of carriage all the way to the
foot of the Caucasus, a journey of 1 100 miles, which

occupied from Sunday afternoon to Wednesday

afternoon. We had intended to descend the Volga as
far as Tzaritsyn, cross over to the Don at Kalatch,

and descend the Don by steamer but finding that ;

there was only one, or at most two steamers a week

on the Don, that the steamer would probably have
started from Kalatch just before we arrived there,
that the duration of her voyage could not even be

guessed at, since most of the time was spent in

getting her off the sandbanks on which she was con-

stantly grounding, and finally that the only way of

escaping the voracious crowds of mosquitoes was
to fling oneself into the river, which, however, was
too shallow to afford the relief of drowning, we aban-
doned this idea, and preferred even the fatigue of
seventy continuous hours in a railway car. Fortu-
nately that fatigue turned out a great deal less than
we had expected. In no country, except America,
is railway travelling so easy, I might almost say
enjoyable, as in Russia, if only you are not in a
 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. 3!

hurry to get over the ground. The cars have a pass-

age down the middle, and a little platform at each

end where you may stand when the dust is not too

distressing. The seats, even in the second class, are

wide, low, and comfortable, and they can be pulled

out in such a way as to form an excellent couch, where
one can sleep soundly all night long. In the first

class there are luxurious couches, both for night and

day. The pace never exceeds, and seldom reaches,
twenty miles an hour, so that one is not much shaken,
and can read without injury to the eyes. Excellent
refreshment-rooms are provided at intervals of three
or four hours, at all of which the passengers dismount
and take a hearty meal, washed down by vodka or
by countless glasses of lemon-flavoured tea, weak no
doubt, but of a flavour such as one never gets in an
English hotel. One has ample time, not only to eat
and walk up and down
at these stations, but to get out
at most of the Except upon such lines as that
others.
from St. Petersburg to Moscow, or Moscow to Nijni
Novgorod, the number of passengers is not so great
as to crowd the carriage, and you can generally find

somebody who talks French or German (most

pro-
bably a German himself), and
pleased at the oppor-
is

tunity of airing his knowledge. Partly from these

facilities for moving about, partly from the interest
of seeing a new bit of country, we stepped out of the
train after three nights and three days less tired
than one usually is
by a journey from London to

Edinburgh.
The scenery of this vast region, which the Don and
32 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

its tributaries drain, is monotonous, so

intensely
monotonous that its uniformity almost rises to gran-
deur. From Saratof the railway climbs the slope of
the hills that border the Volga, whose bed is here
above the ocean (the Caspian being, as every-
little

body knows, some eighty feet below the Black Sea),

and comes out on a wide slightly rolling upland, not
wholly unlike the country round Newmarket, only
that it is more bare of wood. Then it passes through
a land most of which is cultivated, and which is, indeed,
of extraordinary fertility, for here we are in the famous
black soil region, but where scarcely a sign of human
life is visible. The villages are few, and a solitary
farmhouse is almost unheard of the Russian peasant
;

is gregarious, and apparently does not mind having to

walk a good many miles to his work. The fields are

not divided, or rather there are no fields at all, but

one vast open space, in which the different crops run
in long parallel patches, corn and buckwheat predo-
minating. The greenness of Northern Russia is utterly
gone everything is dry, bare, dusty a stream seldom
:
;

appears, and when it does, is muddy and sluggish.

The houses of the peasantry, which further north
towards the forest country are always of wood, are
here mostly of clay, strengthened possibly by a few
bricks or wattles. They are wretched enough, yet not
so much worse than those of our agricultural labourers
on backward estates. Sometimes one sees on the
skirts of a village a pretty large farm standing not
without evidences of wealth, but there is mostly an

untidy look about it haystacks tumbling over, fences

 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. 33

ill-kept, nothing trim or finished. The bucolic Rus-

sian has no gift for neatness, any more than his urban
brother has for comfort.
Asthe line runs farther west, past Tambof, famous
for its horses, Kozlof, 1 a junction for a line from the

north, and Griazi, a still greater junction, where the

train from Moscow to the Caucasus joins us, the

country grows flatter and also somewhat better wooded.

Between Griazi and Voronej, the next considerable
place, one runs through an unbroken forest of beech
for eight or ten miles, a forest, however, as is mostly
the case in Russia, whose trees do not exceed twenty-
five or thirty feet in height, and which has therefore

nothing of forest gloom or forest grandeur about it ;

itis only land covered with trees. After Voronej, a

handsome-looking town which runs along the steep

westerly bank of the Don here, too, as on the Volga,
the right bank is the steep one the woods finally dis-

appear, and one enters the true steppe, that strange,

solitary, dreary region, whose few features it is so

easy to describe in words, but the general impression

of which I do not know how to convey. Our train
traversed it during an entire afternoon, night, and day,
from Voronej to Rostof, at the mouth of the Don, so
1
A propos of Kozlof, a story is told in Russia to illustrate the domi-
nance of the (Jermans, and the supposed dislike to them of the present /
heir to the throne, which is as follows. At a review a great number of
officers were being presented to the Czarevitch. One after another
comes forward bearing a German name, till at length the name of a
certain Lieutenant Kozlof is called out. "At last a Russian," cried
the heir to the throne. " Lieutenant I wish you success in your
Kozlof,
career."

1)
34 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

the impression had time to sink in. The northern

half of it is perfectly flat, as flat as a table or a pan-

cake, and is mostly all cultivated, being, indeed, as

rich a bit of soil as there
is in Europe. The corn had
all been reaped when we passed, but even from
the stubble one could partly judge how heavy the
harvest had been, and where the plough was at work
could admire the deep black friable loam which has

gone on till now, and will go on for many a year

to come, producing noble crops without the aid of
manure. Further south the country rises into a
great waving table-land, not unlike some parts of
the Sussex downs or the moors of Western York-
shire, traversed by long broad-backed ridges between
which lie wide shallow hollows. Here, except in the
river bottoms, the land is mostly untouched by culti-

vation, some of it roamed over by sheep and oxen,

much of it
altogether desolate, all of it open and un-
enclosed. the main, and would support
It is fertile in

a population almost as large again as that of Russia is

now. Whatever Russia may want, she does not want
land, and has no occasion to annex Bulgaria or
Armenia, or any other country to provide an outlet
No rock appears, except
for her superfluous children.

here and there a tiny chalk cliff, and farther south

beds of sandstone and shale in the railway cuttings ;

no except willows and poplars along the streams,

tree,
and occasionally some bushes round one of the few
villages that nestle in the hollows ;
no detached houses
anywhere. Hour after hour the train journeys on
through a silent wilderness of brown scorched grass
 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN
j?s ^ ,

and withered weeds, 1 climbing or desh&ing in long

sweeps the swelling downs, now cai^dfthg sight rof /a

herd of cattle in the distance, now ftStight^by 'a dust
storm which the strong wind drives o^reermg.-over the
expanse, but with the same unchanging. horjzon all
round, the same sense of motion without progress,
which those who have crossed the ocean know so
well. Even now, with a bright sun overhead, the
dreariness and loneliness were almost terrible ;
what
must they be in winter, when north-eastern gales
howl over the waste of snow ? Yet even in this
dreariness there is a certain strange charm. Looking
from one of these billowy ridge-tops across the vast
expanse, with the wide blue sky vaulted over it, full
of that intense luminous clearness which marks the
East, glowing at sunrise and sunset with the richest
'

hues, you come to a beauty of

feel that there is

the plain not less solemn and inspiring than that

of the mountain.

Traversing this steppe for two whole days enables

one to understand the kind of impression that Scythia
made on the imagination of the Greeks how all :

sorts of wonders and horrors, like those Herodotus

relates, were credible about the peoples that roamed

over these wilds ;
how terrible to their neighbours, how
and unconquerable themselves, they must
inaccessible
have seemed to the natives of the sunny shores of the

The plants appeared, so far as one could make them out from the
*

train, to bestill mostly of British genera. There were several Polygonaceae

and Labiatae, an Artemisia, a pretty purplish Statice, a small-flowered,

much-branching Dianthus, and everywhere Achillaea mtf/e/0/ium,vi}i\ch
seems to be the commonest of all weeds in Russia.
D 2
36 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

^Egean. One realizes also how emphatically this is

the undefended side of Europe, the open space through
which all the Asiatic hordes, Huns, Alans, Avars,

Bulgarians, Mongols entered, their

cavalry darting
over the steppe in search of enemies or booty, their

waggons following with their families and cattle, un-

checked, except now and then by some great river,
which, if it were too deep to ford, they crossed upon
inflated skins. One understands what was the
nature of the warfare that raged for so many
centuries here between the Russians of Moscow
and Kief, gradually pushing forward to the south
and east, and the nomad tribes, whom
they slowly
subdued or dispossessed Khazars, Polovtzi, Petch-
enegs, Komans, Tatars of various names, who were
wont to scour across these plains on horseback plun-
dering and burning every outlying settlement, and
returning to the banks of the Volga or the Lower Don
before the Russians had gathered to resist them.
And turning from the past to the future, one specu-
lates on the aspect which this vast and fertile territory

will presenta century or two hence when it has been

all brought under cultivation, when populous towns
will have arisen, when coal mines will have been

opened, and yellow harvests be waving all over

these now lonely downs. If Russia is then still

Russia, a nation one in sentiment and faith,swayed

by a single will, she may have become a tremendous
power in the world. But, meantime, colonization
goes on slowly ;
the future of the Russian govern-
ment and people isout of all prediction, and Europe
 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. 37

itself may have changed in some way that would

make our present calculations vain. One need not
be too sanguine or too apprehensive of the future
when it is remembered that about the future there
is only one thing that can be positively asserted, to
wit, that it will turn out not in the least like what

the shrewdest observers expect. Of all the prophe-

cies that philosophers or statesmen have made, from

Aristotle to De Tocqueville, how many have come

true ? Ithard enough to say what ought to be
is

done next year and next century may surely be left

;

to take care of itself. Moral and social causes are so

much more powerful than physical ones, or, to speak
more exactly, so often turn physical causes in an un-
expected direction, that there is really no reason why
an Englishman or a German should look on the
material growth of Russia with alarm.
As one approaches the Sea of Azof, the steppe
descends pretty steeply towards the south, and near
the low ground forms some little cliffs which may

perhaps be the origin of the name Kprj/j,vot (the

Crags) which Herodotus gives to the emporium of
the Greek traders in Scythia, at the north-east corner
of the Maeotis. Here, at the modern town of Rostof,
the Don comes down, a broad muddy stream that
dawdles along through a mesh of sandbanks to that
wretched Sea of Azof which the ancients, considering
its shallowness, and the fact that its water is almost
quite fresh, more appropriately called a marsh. It

is even shallower now than it was then, and grows

shallower every year, not only by the action of the
38 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
Don pouring in mud, but also by that of the sea
captains who sail up to Taganrog or Rostof for corn.
Having no cargo to fetch with them, they mostly
come "in ballast," and this ballast they fling over-
board somewhere between the Straits of Kertch and
Taganrog, thus forming shoals all along the track of
navigation, on which the next comer runs aground.
The government has threatened penalties on those
who are detected, but detection is no easy matter.
The trade from the Don is not only in corn, shipped
here in vast quantities, but also in wine, which is

pretty largely grown along the lower course of the

stream, and is very tolerable drinking. It is con-
sumed almost entirely by the Russians, who are
especially fond of the effervescing sort which they
call Don champagne. Nowhere in European Russia,
except here and in the Crimea, some of whose wines
are excellent, does the grape seem to be regularly
cultivated.
A dense haze filled the air as we crossed the Don,
caused either by the dust-storms which the wind
raised, or by the smoke of steppe-fires, and cut off

such view towards the sea as the flatness of the

ground would have permitted. Soon we were again
in the grassy wilderness, hundreds of miles wide, that

lies between the Don and the Caucasus. Fires were

blazing over the steppe, whether accidental or lit

all

for the sake of improving the pasture, I do not know >

the any rate, was extremely fine when night

effect, at
came though the grass was too short to give
on,
either the volume of blaze or the swift progress
 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. 39

which makes a prairie fire so splendid and terrible.

" "
I say grass from habit, but in reality it is rather
\veeds than a carpet of herbage that are to be found
on the steppe, at least in autumn ;
weeds whose
flowers, especially one of a clear light yellow which
reminded me of a small hollyhock, pleasantly diversify
the plain, but which seldom rise over two feet from
the ground. However, as they have gone on living
and dying and burying themselves for myriads of
years on this soil, they must have accumulated a
considerable depth of vegetable mould, of which the
settler now reaps the benefit. All this country is now

beginning to be settled, not indeed at an American

pace, but sufficiently for a visitor who returns every
fifth or sixth year to notice the difference. There are
so few villages visible that one finds it hard to know
where the settlers live however, the sight of haycocks
;

right and left and less frequently of stubble

of the line,
fieldswhence the corn has just been lifted, proves
well enough that inhabitants there must be some-
where. Though every ten or fifteen miles there is a
station, a station does not
Russia imply that there
in

is any likelihood of
passengers it is a place for the
;

train to stop, for tumblers of tea to be consumed, for

people to stretch themselves, for the station-master to

exchange remarks with the engine-driver. There is
but one train in the day so its arrival is something
;

of an event in the neighbourhood, and not to be

treated lightly. Few of these stations had villages
attached. All through this region, as elsewhere in
Russia, one never sees a solitary house, or even a
40 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

group of houses, and unless a village happens to be

country seems, according to the season,
in sight, the

a green or a brown wilderness, unbroken by tree or

hedge. Hereabouts there is not even the chance of

seeing a wandering horde of Kalmucks, for that in-
teresting race, who are nearly all Buddhists, and, as
most ethnologists hold, of Mongol stock, dislike the

neighbourhood of Russian colonists, and keep more

to the east along the Lower Volga, and by the shores
of the Caspian, where the steppe is mostly salt, and
therefore less fit was a disappoint-
for agriculture. It

ment not to meet with this last remnant of the hosts

of Zinghis Khan, dwelling in felt tents, and worship-

ping the Dalai Lama but the world is large, and

;

one cannot see everything in it.

As we get southward, the country grows rather

more uneven, and long smooth ridges, mostly of gravel,
but sometimes shewing sections of sandstone or lime-
stone strata, where a gully, the bed of some winter
stream, has cut through them, run across the plain.
There are few rivers, but a good many muddy ponds,
in which cattle are trying to find refuge from the
scorching air. Who they belong to does not appear,
for the long straggling villages of mud-built rudely-
thatched houses come at intervals of many miles.
Hitherto there had been no sign of the proximity of
the Caucasus, except the sight of the strong flood
of the Kuban, whose muddy white, ugly in itself,
but lovely to the eyes of a mountaineer, proclaimed it
glacier-born. But now, some eighteen hours after
we had left Rostof, several sharp craggy hills of
 THE VOLGA AND THE SOUTHERN STEPPE. 4!

limestone rose on the southern horizon, and behind

them, dimly seen under brooding clouds, appeared a
huge mass of high land, stretching east and west
was the Caucasus,
further than the eye could follow. It
and the weariness of the steppe and the railway
all

was forgotten in a moment, when, after the two thou-

sand miles of plain we had traversed from the Gulf of
Bothnia hither, we saw the majestic chain unroll itself

before us.
42 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

CHAPTER II.

THE CAUCASUS.

IN the days of the Crimean War, when the Caucasus

first drew the attention of the Western world, English-

men mostly thought of it as a chain of snowy moun-

tains running from the Straits of Kertch to the
Caspian Sea, inhabited by a race of patriotic heroes
and beautiful women, called Circassians, who main-
tained perpetual strife against the encroaching Mus-
covite. Since then travellers have begun to penetrate
and some of our own countrymen have even scaled
it,

summits. But our conceptions are still so

its loftiest

vague that there will be no harm in making some

general remarks on the range before I describe what
I saw in traversing it.

a chain, that is to say, a long and com-

It is really

paratively narrow strip of high land sloping steeply

both ways from its central axis whereas many of our
;

so-called mountain ranges are rather, like the Hima-

layas, the edges of plateaux, or, like the Andes, them-
selves a vast plateau with isolated eruptive masses
scattered over its surface. It is, however, by no
means, as the old maps represent it, a uniform chain,
but rather consists of three sufficiently well marked
 THE CAUCASUS. 43

divisions. First, we have the western section, lying

along the Black Sea coast, where it is comparatively

low, indeed, in the north-west little more than a line
of insignificant hills, and mostly covered with wood.
The considerable heights begin about the fort of
first

Gagri, fifty miles west-north-west of Sukhum Kaleh,

where one peak reaches 9000 feet. Next comes the
central section, from the neighbourhood of Sukhum
Kaleh, a well-known Black Sea port, eastward as far
as Mount Kazbek and the Dariel Pass. This is the
loftiest and grandest part, having many summits that
rise far above the line of perpetual snow, and at least
seven exceeding 15,000 feet, deep and gloriously
wooded valleys ; ample seas of ice surrounding the
great peaks. Lastly, there is the eastern section, which
is almost conterminous with (and which I shall there-
"
by the name of) Daghestan, the Mountain
fore call

Land," extending from the Dariel Pass to the Caspian

Sea. Here the heights are not quite so though
great,
three or four peaks exceed 13,000 feet, and one, the
extinct volcano of Basarjusi, reaches 14,722 feet.

There is of course, therefore, much less snow and ice.

The range splits, throwing out, some forty miles east
of the Dariel road, a great spur to the north-east,
crowned by several lofty glacier peaks, while the main
axis runs south-east at a uniform elevation of 10,000
or 1 1,000 feet, till it rises for the last time in the summit
of Basarjusi. In the angle between the above men-
tioned spur and the main chain lies Daghestan, a
wide table-land, intersected by profound gorges, itself

mostly bare of wood, but throwing off to the north a

44 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

sort of buttress of hilly country, which sinks gradually

into the great Kalmuck Steppe. Approaching the
Caspian, the declivities become gentler, the summits
lower, the country altogether more open so that here
;

the people dwelling to the south found it necessary to

protect themselves from the irruptions of the bar-

barous tribes of the northern steppe by the erection
of a mighty rampart, the so-called Caucasian Wall,
remains of which may still be seen near the port of
Derbend, on the Caspian coast.
The length of the whole mountain country, from
Taman, on the Sea of Azov, to the peninsula of
Apsheron, on the Caspian, is about 800 miles ;
its

Daghestan, about 120.

greatest width, in
Geographically, the most remarkable features of
the Caucasus are the simplicity of its structure, the

steepness of its and its great persistent

declivities,
altitudethrough the central and eastern sections.
Unlike the Alps and the Rocky Mountains, it does
not throw out, or rather split up into, any long second-

ary ranges parallel to one another; I mean such

ranges as the Bernese Alps or the great Vorarlberg
ridge to the north of the Inn. Nearly all the higher
branch chains, and by consequence nearly all the
valleys, are at right angles to the main axis, and are
therefore comparatively short. All the loftiest sum-
mits are on or close to the watershed, which may be
taken as being in the Caucasus generally coincident
with the axis of elevation. One may conclude from
this that the elevating forces acted (again speaking
generally, for there are exceptions) along one or two
 THE CAUCASUS. 45
1
lines only, and acted there with an intensity which is

fairly represented by the prodigious height of the

great summits. Several of these, and notably Elbruz

and Kazbek, are volcanic, both composed of trachyte,
and Elbruz according to Mr. Freshfield, who, with
Messrs. Tucker and Moore, first ascended it
showing
traces of a crater at the top. The
other great peaks
of the central section, such as Koschtantau, are be-
lieved to be mostly granitic while in Daghestan it is
;

asserted that limestone rocks are found to form nearly

all the loftiest summits. Every one knows that the
height of the peaks of a mountain chain is quite a
different thingfrom the average height of its water-
shed. In the Pyrenees, for instance, the average of
the watershed is higher than in the Alps, though the

tops are very much lower. In the Caucasus this per-

sistency of elevation is even more remarkable. For

some two hundred miles east from Sukhum
Kaleh,
there isno point where the range sinks below 8000
feet, and very few where it is nearly as low whereas ;

in theAlps one has a good many passes across the

main chain between 4000 and 5000 feet high. The
consequence of this is that there are only two passes
across the Caucasus which are practically used by
travellers, those of the Dariel and the Mamisson (a
little farther west than the Dariel), and only one, the
1
The geological structure of the chain is still imperfectly known ;
but there seems reason to believe that in the central section there are
two parallel axes of upheaval not far apart from one another, the
northernmost of which is also, in the western part of that section, the
watershed, while farther east the southern axis divides the stream
heads.
46 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

Dariel, which is traversed by a road practicable for

wheeled carriages.
These physical features naturally impress a peculiar
character upon the scenery of the Caucasus. First of

all, they give it a certain want of variety. You do

not, as in the Alps, see, when you reach a lofty point
of outlook, snow mountains lying all around you in

different ranges or knots ; as, from the Aeggischhorn,

one sees the Finsteraarhorn and Jungfrau group to
the north, and the icy giants of Zermatt to the south,
or as, from the Sasso di Pelmo or Marmolata in the

Venetian Alps, with snow-capped summits rising on

either hand, you can trace the vast arc of Noric and
Rhaetian snows from the Tauern of Gastein to the
far-off crags of the Ortler. There is not the same
richness of re-grouping among the great mountains,
discerned from different points, as one has among the
numerous parallel chains of the Alps. Then, secondly,
there a complete want of lakes, which usually occur
is

where a ridge more or less parallel to the axis turns

the course of a valley, or at any rate where the general

declivity is not very abrupt No tarn bigger than

Buttermere or. Loch Achray seems to have been
discovered in the whole length of the Caucasus.
This defect the rivers do not atone for, since in
the central section they are muddy glacier torrents,
and in the eastern the dryness of the climate and
want of glacier reservoirs leaves them insignificant.
And with this there is in many parts a want of
the gentler elements of picturesque beauty which act
as a foil to the severe grandeur of snow landscapes
 THE CAUCASUS. 47

and inner gorges of the mountains, relieve the mind

from their gloom and terror, and enable it to return
with fresh enjoyment to scenery that taxes all its
powers.
Against these drawbacks there are to be set the
magnificent scale on which the Caucasus is built, and
the extraordinary boldness of its lines. On the north,

especially, it rises in some places like a wall, the

snowy tops seeming to run down with a steeply fall-

ing, unbroken ridge into the dead flat of the steppe.

The gorges are deeper and more savage, the summits
mount with a more imposing steepness, than one sees
elsewhere in Europe and in some of the southern
;

valleys, especially those of theIngur and Kodor, to

the south-west of Elbruz, the forests have a tropical

luxuriance, for which no parallel can be found nearer

than India or South America. What Dr. Hooker, in
' '
his Himalayan Journals (most delightful among
books of scientific travel), says of the Himalayas as
compared with the Alps is true of the Caucasus also,

though in a less degree. They are not so beautiful as

the Alps, but they are more majestic. One is less

charmed, but more awed. And this impression of awe

is heightened by the fact, that in the Caucasus there
is so much less of human life and history than in the

Alps. Instead of groups of cheerful ckdlets, sur-

rounded by herds of cattle browsing on the lofty
pastures up to the very edge of the glacier, one finds
either solitude or at most a dingy stone or log-built
hut. Few corn-fields are seen waving in the valleys,

such as the climber descries from the summit of the

48 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

Jungfrau or the Todi. There are no passes that have

echoed to the tramp of armies no towns, congesta
;

manu praeruptis oppida saxis, that have been the

strongholds of ancient freedom or the bulwarks of
hostile empires. Nature alone speaks to -the traveller,

and speaks in her sternest accents.

Nevertheless, the Caucasus has a profound historical

importance, and that importance depends in a remark-
able manner on the peculiar physical character which
I have endeavoured to describe. It is just because
the chain so steep and with an axis so uninter-
is

ruptedly lofty that it has formed in all ages an im-

passable barrier between the nomad peoples who
roamed over the northern steppes and the more
civilized and settled races dwelling to the south, in

the valleys of the Kur and Aras, the Phasis and the

Euphrates. From the beginning of history the

Caucasus is to the civilized nations, both Greek and
Oriental, the boundary of geographical knowledge
indeed, the boundaiy of the world itself. Beyond it
all is fable and mystery, not only to Herodotus, but

even to Strabo and Ptolemy. Pompey, in the last

Mithridatic war, led the Roman legions as far as its

southern foot, defeating the Iberians in a battle near

the spot where the Dariel road emerges from the
mountains above Tiflis. Some centuries later, the
armies of Justinian repeatedly disputed with those of
Chosroes Nushirvan the possession of Imeritia, and
sometimes advanced their outposts far up into the

gorges of the hills above Gori and Suram. But

neither Roman nor Persian ever crossed to the north,
 THE CAUCASUS. 49

or endeavoured to hold any part of the mountain

country in permanent subjection. So, too, the waves
of barbarian conquest that successively descended
from the Ural and the Altai across the plains of the
Caspian fretted and foamed in vain against this

gigantic wall, and were forced to seek their ingress

to the southern countries either to the east of the

Caspian into Iran, or round the northern shores of

the Black Sea towards the Danube valley. In this

respect there a singular contrast between the case of

is

the Alps and that of the Caucasus. Since the days

when the Rhaetians saw Drusus, "like the bird that
bears Jove's thunderbolt," carrying war into the valleys
of the Inn and Drave, there has never been a time

(save during the seventh and eighth centuries), down

tillthe cession of Venetia in 1866, when regions on
both sides of the Alps have not, either practically or
nominally, formed parts of the same empire Roman,
or Romano-Germanic, or Austrian ;
whereas the
countries immediately to the north and south of the
Caucasus have never obeyed the same ruler (except,
perhaps, in the lifetime of Zinghis Khan), until Russia
established herself in Georgia at the beginning of this

century. So, too, while commerce has in all

ages gone
on pretty briskly across the Alps, there has been
none, so far as can be made out, over the few and
passes which the Caucasus presents.
difficult Greek
traders from the colonies on the Pontic coast pene-
trated to the foot of the mountains long before the
Christian era, as Genoese traders did in the middle

ages ;
but we hear of no one crossing them or ex-
E
50 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

ploring their recesses. What little trade there was

crept up by Derbend, between the Caspian and the

hills, from Persia to the north. In them, as in the
other mysterious boundary of the ancient world, the
Pillars of Hercules, the Greeks laid the scene of my-

thological exploits and marvels. Colchis, to which

the Argo sailed, lay under their shadow ;
Prometheus
was chained to one of their towering rocks ;
near them
dwelt the man-hating Amazons beyond them gold- ;

guarding griffins and one-eyed Arimaspians carried

on perpetual war. So it remained for many cen-
turies, down to the days of Marco Polo and Mande-
ville, in the east as well as in the west. Readers of the
Arabian Nights remember that there Mount Kaf
will

is the limit of the world, and the usual threat of a

"
magician to an obstinate sultan is, I will transport
thy city beyond Mount Kaf, and transform all the

people in it into stones."

It is true, no doubt, that this complete absence,
down till quite recent times, of knowledge about the
Caucasus, and of attempts to carry trade or conquest
into it from the south, is partly due to the uninviting
nature of the countries beyond, and to the fact that,
so far as trade was concerned, even the stormy
Euxine provided an easier route to Scythia. But a
good deal must be ascribed to the peculiarly difficult

and impracticable character of the chain itself, which

not only stopped armies and caravans, but kept the
inhabitants in a state of isolation and barbarism.
One of the most remarkable characteristics of the
Caucasus is that, while it has acted as a barrier be-
 THE CAUCASUS. 51

tween the north and the south, stopping and turning

aside the movements of population, it has also pre-
served within its sheltered recesses fragments of the
different peoples who from time to time have passed

by it, or who have been driven by conquest into it

from the lower country. Thus it is a kind of ethno-

logical museum, where specimens may be found of
countless races and languages, some of which pro-

bably belong to the early ages of the world races ;

that seem to have little affinity with their present

neighbours, and of whose history we know nothing
except what comparative philology can reveal. Even
before the Christian era it was famous for the variety
of its peoples. Herodotus says :

"
Along the west side of the Caspian Sea stretches
the Caucasus, which is of all mountains both the
greatest in extent and the loftiest in height. It con-

tains many and various nations, living mostly on the

fruits of wild trees."

Strabo describes the Caucasus as inhabited by an

immense number of different tribes, speaking different
tongues, and many of them very savage. He reports
the story that seventy such tribes resort, chiefly to buy
salt, to the Greek trading station of Dioscurias, on the

Euxine coast, of whom the bravest and most powerful

are the ferocious Soanes, and tells how in summer the
natives climb the mountains shod with shoes of ox-

hide, their soles full of spikes to give them a hold upon

the ice. Many of them are troglodytes, he adds, who,

owing to the cold, dwell in holes. Some use poisoned

arrows. Another writer says that some are cannibals
E 2
 52 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

there is at any rate a consensus as to their ferocity.

And Procopius, writing under Justinian, when the
region might have been comparatively well known,
declares that on the top of the mountains there never
falls either snow or rain, because they are above the
highest clouds.
No more
inappropriate ethnological name was ever
propounded than that of Caucasian for a fancied divi-
sion of the human family, the cream of mankind, from
which the civilized peoples of Europe are supposed to
have sprung. For the Caucasus is to-day as it was in
Strabo's time, of races differing in religion, lan-
full

guage, aspect, manners, character races so numerous ;

and still so little known that I shall not attempt to

do more than mention some of the most important.
In Daghestan, the "mountain land"/#r excellence,
the most numerous race, and one of the finest races

anywhere, is the Lesghian, whose number, including

minor allied tribes, is estimated at 560,000. They
are all Sunni Mohammedans, and devout Moham-
medans, a people profoundly religious, among whom
Shamyl found his chief support, and whom he ruled

chiefly through their zeal for that enthusiastic form of

their faith which went by the name of Muridism, a
sort of revived Islamism, not unlike that of the
J Wahabis in Arabia. It began with the preaching of
a certain Kazi Mollah, about the year 1823. The word
Murid is said to mean ''teaching disciple." Shamyl
himself was by birth of a tribe apparently akin to
the Lesghian_stock, named Avars, whom one may

fancy to be a branch, left behind in its old dwelling-

 THE CAUCASUS. 53

place, of the great nomad nation which held Pannonia *

(Hungary) from the sixth to the eighth century, and

which, after being for some generations the terror of
the Greeks, Franks, and Italians, was finally subdued
or extinguished by Charlemagne. These Avars are
said, alone among these peoples, to have a regular
literary language, which, however, is written in Persian
characters. Here in Daghestan many of the tribes
occupy only one or two valleys, yet remain distinct
in language and customs from their neighbours, and

may probably remain so for centuries tocome, an in-

exhaustible field for the ethnologist. North-west of
the Lesghians, towards Vladikavkaz, is the large
Mohammedan tribe Tchetchens, and beyond them the
Ingushes, while south-west of Lesghistan, towards the /TV
Dariel Pass, dwell the Hessurs, or Chewsurs, a small

people, who still array themselves in helmets and

chain armour, carry shields and spears, and declare
themselves descended from the Crusaders, though
how Crusaders should have come there they do not
explain. The truth seems to be that they wear, being
nominally Christians, small crosses of red or black
cloth sewed upon their clothes, and that some one,
having been struck by the similarity of this to the
Crusaders' usage, set the tale a-going.
On both sides of the chain to the west of the
Dariel road, are the Ossets, a people partly Christian,

partly Mohammedan, partly pagan, speaking an Indo-

European tongue, in which some traveller discovered
a strong resemblance to German, but which is now
generally held to belong to the Iranian group. They
 54 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

call themselves Ir, or Iron, and number about 30,000.

*

They have been well disposed to the Russians almost

from the first, though indulging in occasional rob-

beries, and their position, close to the great line of

communication, made their friendship valuable. On

the northern slopes of the mountains, between Vladi-
kavkaz and Pjatigorsk, lies the territory of Kabarda,
inhabited by Mohammedans speaking a tongue which
is generally held to be a branch of the Tcherkess
or Circassian, 2 a manly and vigorous race, who have

mostly been on good terms with Russia, and some of

whose nobles have risen to high places in her army.
Still farther west, between the watershed and the

Kuban, stretching far to the north-west of Elbruz

lay Circassia, inhabited by tribes who called them-

selves Adighe, and whom the Russians knew as Tcher-
kesses. They were nearly all Mohammedans, though
of rather a loose kind, admirable horsemen and marks-

men, living by war and pillage, and leaving to their

women such tillage as the character of the country
permitted. South of them, in the upper valley of the
Ingur, and amid the grandest scenery of the whole
Caucasus, dwell the Suans or Svanny, the Soanes of
Strabo and still farther west, on the wooded moun-
;

tains that border the Euxine all along by Sukhum

Kaleh, are the Abhasians, a people supposed to be
Other estimates raise the number of the Ossets to 60,000. The
1

numbers given here are taken from a Russian statistical publication of

some reputation, but I dare say they are only rough estimates.
2
. The Kabardans are sometimes, but apparently on insufficient grounds,
classed as Circassians. Distinct from both seems to be the small tribe
of Tatars who inhabit the upper valley of the Baksan, at the foot of
Elbruz.
 THE CAUCASUS. 55

allied to theTcherkesses, and sometimes included

with them under the Circassian name, but speaking
a distinct language. They were converted to Chris-

tianity by Justinian, but have since relapsed, some into

a loose sort of Mohammedanism, some into paganism.
They are the most unmitigated rogues and thieves in
the whole Caucasus, whose only occupation, since

they were first heard of, has been kidnapping children

to sell for slaves, formerly into the Roman and, since
its fall, into the Turkish empire. In their country the
Turks have lately, in May 1877, effected a landing,
and are reported to have been joined by 10,000
mountaineers. As the whole Abhasian population

probably does not exceed 70,000, this story must be

received with more than distrust. They are, no doubt,
disaffected to Russia now, as they were to Turkey
formerly, and would be to anybody who should try
to check their misdeeds. But they are too wild and
unstable to be of the least use in a campaign.
The Muslim peoples of the Caucasus are held by
most travellers to be superior in energy and upright-
ness to the Christians. I saw too little to judge

whether but enough to be sure that the

this is so,

Christianity of the mountain tribes is the merest

name. Some, like the Hessurs and the cognate tribes
of Pshaws and Tushins, are really polytheists, and

worship, besides what they call the Christ-God, a god

"
of war, and gods or " angels of the earth, the oak, the
mountain, and so forth. In fact, their Christianity
consists in kissing the cross, in feasting and idling on
certain holidays, fasting on others, and in worshipping
56 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

deities, some of whom go by the names of Christian

saints. Such ceremonies as they have bear traces
of Georgian origin ;
so it is likely enough that the
Georgian princes, whose suzerainty they used to ac-
knowledge, were the instruments of their conversion.
The Suans worship the Georgian queen Tamara
to this day, along with St. George : and the priest
they seem to have a hereditary and illiterate priest-

hood repeats fragments of prayers and psalms, and

receives a gift for his pains. Bitter blood feuds rage

among them, for and passionate

they are a fierce

race, and seldom enoughrichpay the heavy com-

to

pensation in cattle which ancient custom entitles the

man to require hence murders go
relatives of a slain ;

on from generation to generation exactly as in Corsica

till
lately, or inIceland in the days of the old republic.
To write the history of Russian conquest in the
Caucasus would lead me too far afield, and would
require various geographical elucidations which I have
no space for. One remark, however, is worth making,
to remove a misconception which was current in

England at the time of the Crimean War, when some

enterprising spirits proposed that we should use the
mountaineers as allies against the Czar Nicholas.
There never was any general war in the Caucasus,

nor any concerted action among the tribes who de-

fended their independence. We used to talk of the
Circassians as a people inhabiting the whole chain,
and carrying on war against the Russians, whereas in
reality they were only one among many races, the
majority of whom were neutral or favourable to
 THE CAUCASUS. 57

Russia. Although outbursts and disturbances occa-

sionallyhappened in other places, the struggle was in

the main confined to two districts :

Daghestan, in the
east,where Shamyl, at the head of the Lesghians, and
one or two minor cognate tribes, maintained a religious
war ;
and Circassia proper, the country of the Adighe
or Tcherkesses, who occupied what I have called the
western and lowest section of the chain, and the hilly

country lying to the north of it and drained by

the Kuban. The intermediate tribes, Tatars of the
Baksan valley, and Kabardans, both of whom are
Mohammedans, as well as the semi-Christian Ossets,

Ingushes, and Suans, were generally quiet, and pre-

vented that co-operation against the Russians which
Shamyl more than once tried to bring about. The
Tchetchens, who number about 115,000, had given
the Czar some trouble, but were mostly reduced
to a sullen submission before 1854, being inferior in
martial qualities to both Lesghians and Kabardans.

Shamyl himself was a great man, crafty and cruel, no

doubt, but with a daring, a tenacity, and a fertility of
resource that remind one of Abd-el-Kader, and able
to raise to a marvellous height the fanaticism of his
followers.
1
He was wonderfully eloquent, and added
to his reputation for sanctity that of bearing a
charmed life, for he had, like Abd-el-Kader, re-

peatedly escaped when he was believed to have been

1
A prophet is not an uncommon phenomenon among these peoples.
There have been some of late years in Persia ; and a quite remarkable
one appeared among the Tcherkesses at the end of last century, by name
Bey Mansur, who roused his countrymen against the Russians and was
captured by them at Anapa in 1790.
58 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

killed, and reappeared unhurt some distant spot

in

Though he never commanded more than a few thou-

sand warriors, and in his later days only a few hun-
dreds, the physical character of Daghestan, a country
of plateaux intersected by profound and narrow gorges,
made all the efforts of the Russians fruitless, until they
abandoned the plan of regular expeditions against
him, and set themselves to hem him in by construct-
ing military roads, and erecting forts which com-
manded the gorges, and drew a narrowing cordon
around him. When his last stronghold, the rock for-
tress of Gunib, was stormed by the army of Prince
Bariatinski, in August 1859, he came down and sur-
rendered like Vercingetorix to Caesar, happily to meet
a milder fate, for, after an honourable exile of a few
years near Moscow, he was allowed to proceed to
Mecca, and died there not long ago.
A little later, in 1864, the Tcherkesses of the west
finally submitted. The Russian government, who
knew by experience that their marauding propensities
were incurable, adopted a plan which was no doubt
stern, but may have been necessary. They offered
them their choice of quitting the mountains, where
they were uncontrollable, and settling in the low
country along the Kuban, or else of emigrating into
Turkish territory. Numerous envoys from Turkey
came among them, and urged the latter course, which
was accordingly chosen by the bulk of the nation.
Four hundred thousand are said to have come down
to the ports whither the Sultan had promised to send
vessels to receive them. The vessels, however, like
 THE CAUCASUS. 59

everything else Turkish, were late in coming, diseases

broke out, and a large part of the Tcherkesses died
before the embarkation took place. Of those who
sailed, themajority were settled in'Lazistan, or in
Turkish Armenia, north of Erzerum. Of these last,
some have been since transferred to Europe, and have
played their part in the Bulgarian massacres of 1876.
Others are now fighting the Russians, or rather taking
the opportunity which the war gives them, of murder-

ing the natives in Armenia. The fate of a nation

driven from its ancestral seats cannot but move our
sympathy. But there was nothing else in the cha-

racter or history of the Circassians to justify that

sympathy. Their supposed chivalry, like most chival-

disappeared upon
ries, close examination.
They lived
upon robbery and the sale of their children, and of
the ferocity which accompanies their robberies they
have given us hideous examples in Bulgaria, and still
more recently in the Armenian campaign.
The Tcherkess country is now for the most part unin-
habited, though some few of the old inhabitants linger
in the valleys or in the Russian towns of the steppe.
Its lower parts,along the tributaries of the Kuban, are
being colonized by the Russians, but the fevers that
infest these wooded valleys have proved very fatal to

the new-comers, and the inner hollows of the moun-

tains remain abandoned to the wild bull, largest of

European quadrupeds, who ranges unpursued through

these vast solitudes. Last autumn all was quiet
through the Caucasus from end to end, and a traveller
with a couple of Cossacks was safe even among the
60 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

warlike Lesghians, many of whom have taken service

as irregular cavalry under the Russian flag.
1
The
only exception is to be found among the independent
Suans before mentioned, who, singularly ill-condi-
tioned fellows as they are, are nevertheless in some

ways the most interesting of all the Caucasian races,

having preserved many curious primitive customs and
forms of ritual. They have resisted several attempts
of the Russians to collect taxes from them, and one
one of their villages was last summer in a state of

armed resistance to the feebly led attacks of a detach-

ment of troops sent against them. Being only some
10,000 in number, they will, of course, be reduced
without difficulty as soon as a military road is made
into their country,and all the more readily as they
live in a state of perpetual feud with one another,
village against village, and family against family.
There is no political organization. Each man, like
the Cyclopes in Homer, rules over his wife and chil-
2
dren, and cares nothing for his neighbour.
1
Since the above was written, an insurrection is reported to have
broken out not only in Abhasia, where the Turks have landed, but among
the Tchetchens and the Lesghians in Daghestan. It is hard to make
out what has really happened ; but apparently the rising has not been
important there, and will be easily suppressed. So long as the Dariel
road is not threatened, Russia need not much care about Daghestan,
whose tribes are too far from the Euxine to co-operate with the Turks.
The Tcherkesses are all gone from Circassia, and the Abhasians are too
fickle and cowardly to constitute any real danger. Indeed, the Turkish
troops are now (July 1877) being withdrawn from their country altogether.
2
For further details regarding these Suans, the curious reader may
'

be referred to Central Caucasus of Mr. Freshfield, whose party

'

was almost the first in recent times to visit their country, and were
'

exposed to some danger from them ; to Captain Telfer's Crimea and

Transcaucasia,' vol. ii. and appendix; and to a work by Dr. Radde,
'
the eminent botanist, entitled Die drei Langenhochthaler Imeritiens.'
 THE CAUCASUS. 6l

So far, therefore, as safety to life is concerned, the

explorer of the Caucasus has little to fear. But of
course there are absolutely no facilities for travelling
such as we find in the Alps or even in the Carpathians,

no inns, no roads, no guides, and in some regions no

beasts of burden. Except that the risk of being eaten

or piercedby poisoned arrows is gone, the mountains
are much same state as they were in the time
in the

of Herodotus and Strabo. The Dariel military road,

of which more anon, crosses the chain near its centre,
and there is, as I have said, a network of roads in
one part of Daghestan otherwise nothing passable
;

by wheels. Here and there a village or a shepherd's

hut will shelter the traveller, but often he must
depend upon his tent, and, like Virgil's Libyan herds-
man, carry all that he wants with him, food, bed-
ding, and weapons and to do this, he needs a little
;

army of porters, whom it is often troublesome enough

to manage.
is only one part of the Caucasus that has
There
"
been, as the French say, " utilised for the purposes
of tourists or pleasure seekers, and even that part is

not in the Caucasus at all, but .in the steppe at the

foot of it. This
the mineral water region lying to
is

the south-west of the town of Stavropol, and due

north of Mount Elbruz or Minghi Tau, 1 the highest
summit of the whole chain. Here four or five little

Minghi Tau (fatt = dagh = mountain)

1
is the true local name, the

Tatar name, of this monarch of European mountains (it lies entirely in

PDurope, north of the watershed). Elbruz is said to be Persian, and is
certainly the usual Persian name for the Caucasus and for a mountain
chain in general ; it is given to the lofty chain which runs round the
south and south-east extremity of the Caspian.
62 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

bathing-places lie pretty near to one another, the chief

of which, Pjatigorsk, is entitled to a few words of

description.
To
reach Pjatigorsk, one leaves the railway from
Rostof to Vladikavkaz at a station called (by inter-
pretation) Mineral Waters, a wooden erection planted
right down in the middle of the desolate steppe, and
finds some twenty two-horse droshkys drawn up out-
side, whose drivers are shouting, gesticulating, and
jostling one another like so many Irish carmen. It is

a long business making a bargain with one of them,

forthough there is plenty of competition, there is also
a trade-union feeling that prices must be kept up in
the common interest and in Russia the driver is
;

generally pretty resolute, and, though he asks at first

a great deal more than he expects to get, can never
be brought below the minimum he has originally re-
solved upon. Our experience was that, when the bar-
gain has once been made, he will abide by it, and not
try to spring fresh demands upon you. When. at last
a driver had got us, and embarked our baggage, he

set off at full speed over what seemed to .be the open
steppe, though after a while we discovered from the
wheel tracks on it that it was the regular and only
foad to the most frequented of all the watering-

places in Russian empire.

the Here, where the
neighbouring mountains make the climate moister,
the grass was pretty thick and not so utterly brown
as farther north. Of flowers, the commonest is a
species of Statice, growing in large patches, which
light up the rolling steppe with a purple glow that
 THE CAUCASUS. 63

reminded one of the heather bloom on the moors of

Scotland in August. Mounting gradually towards a
gap in the group of limestone hills which here projects
into the plain, and culminates in the bold peak of
Beschtau, 7000 feet above the sea-level, we entered a
low wood of beech and oak, the first we had seen
since Voronej, 700 miles back, and, on emerging from

it, to the south-west, saw Pjatigorsk at our feet, and

the outer slopes of the Caucasus rising behind it.
Alas the southern sky was thick, and where the
!

snows of Elbruz and Dykhtau ought to have

glittering
appeared, there were only clouds and darkness.
its name (Five Mountains)
Pjatigorsk, which takes
from the summits of the picturesque mountain
five

group just mentioned, has been resorted to for its

sulphurous waters, which are drunk as well as bathed
in, one hundred years. Its progress was
for nearly

slow so long as the Tcherkesses were accustomed to

swoop down from the hills to the south-west and
carry off the unlucky patients as prisoners. In those
days Russian magnates came with a train of two or
three hundred servants, and encamped by the springs
for two months at a time. Afterwards a military post
was established, to keep off the marauders, a
bath-house was erected, and now, since the railway
has come within three hours' drive, new streets are
rising in all directions, and the number of visitors will

no doubt increase rapidly. Far as the Caucasus is from

St.Petersburg, the bathing-places of the Rhine or
Bohemia are still farther, and as Southern Russia fills
up, the population which forms the special clientele of
64 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

Pjatigorsk grows larger and wealthier. One great ad-

vantage which it possesses is that, in addition to its
own sulphurous waters, there are three other springs
not far round each of which a bathing village has
off,

grown up, one of them chalybeate, a second alkaline,

with iodides and bromides, and a third, the Narsan
spring at Kislovodsk, strongly impregnated with car-
bonic acid as well as iron. This last discharges 190,000
cubic feet of gas in twenty-four hours, and is often
resorted to as a sort of tonic by people who have gone
through the regular course of sulphurous or alkaline
waters. Like the famous spring of B6rszek, in Tran-
"
sylvania, which is used in the same way as an after

cure," it is quite cold (56 F.) and the physical pleasure

;

of a plunge into its glittering waters, filled with car-

bonic acid gas rising and breaking in great bubbles,
is one of the most intense that can be conceived. It

is like
bathing in iced
champagne.
Watering-places in all countries are pretty much like
one another I suppose because they are all new, and
;

all designed for the same class of persons. There is

therefore not much that is distinctive about Pjatigorsk,

except the contrast, so frequent in Russia, of civiliza-

tion, even a rather pretentious civilization in the town,
with a primitive rudeness all round it. It is as if Ems
or Luchon were to be set down in the middle of a
Western prairie, where everything is as nature made
it. To the east and west there is the open steppe, all

pasture land ;
to the north, a hill called Mashukha,
rising boldly some 1600 feetabove the town and 3500
feet above the sea ;
to the south, an upland, which
 THE CAUCASUS. 65

mounts slowly into great grassy downs that stretch

backwards towards the main chain of the Caucasus,
whose summits shew above it much as the giants of the
Bernese Oberland do from the Jura between Basle and
Olten. There can be few finer panoramic mountain
views in the world than that from the top of Mashukha
in clear weather, with this long line of icy pinnacles

on one side, and the boundless steppe on the other.

I climbed the hill before breakfast, in the hopes
of enjoying this prospect, but jealous clouds still
brooded over Elbruz and his brethren, and the only
glimpse I got of him was long afterwards from the
sea between Poti and Batum. One was well repaid,

however, by the view over Pjatigorsk itself, and the

two other villages which lie near to, though quite
distinct from, it one of them, the Scotch colony,
:

planted here in the time of Alexander I. by mis-

sionaries sent to convert the Tcherkesses ;
the other
a German colony, of somewhat later origin ;
all three
laid out in straight lines, with trees running down
their streets,and roads being made to connect them.
They bore an almost ludicrous resemblance to those
bird's-eye views of suburban estates or rising water-
ing-places which one sees on the advertisement boards
of our railway stations, and suggested how little

variety there is in the world after all. Here at the

foot of Mount Kaf one is reminded of Saltburn-by-
the-Sea, or the Holland Park Estate. The advantage,
on the whole, was on the side of Pjatigorsk, which is
not only a pretty little place, but has that look of
F
66 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

what the Germans call Freundlichkeit, a cosy cheerful-

ness, which is not common in watering-places, and
rare everywhere in Russia. What amuses one most
is that, in so apparently peaceful a place, everybody

goes about fully armed. Nearly all the male visitors

are in uniform. After you leave Rostof, all the guards
on the train, the porters at the stations, the waiters at
the hotels, seem in a state of constant preparation to
resist a Circassian foray. The very boy who brings
up your boots the morning comes with daggers
in

rattling in his belt, and a string of cartridge holders

sewed to the breast of his coat. So it is all through
the Caucasian countries. In fact, arms are as neces-
sary a part of a man's dress as a hat you are ;

remarked, and in the wilder places, despised, if you

do not wear them. Inside the town there is not
much to notice. There is an hotel with a hand-
some facade, a highly ornate coffee-room, and sleep-
ing accommodation little better than that of a
Russian steamer. There is a sort of boulevard in a
hollow of the hill, where officers on sick leave, all in

uniform, and a few ladies saunterup and down under

the rows of trees between the bath-houses and the
long wooden gallery where the waters are drunk.
The drinking arrangements are agreeably simple. A
glass tumbler is let down by a string into a deep well
and pulled up with the water, whose taste, to be

sulphurous, not very disagreeable.

is Nobody has
anything to do except play cards and smoke, the
ladies joining freely in both amusements. The im-
mediate neighbourhood is too bare to supply inviting
 THE CAUCASUS. 6/

drives, and as for the Caucasus, a Russian would

as soon think of starting to scale those rosy-tinted

peaks as a Scarborough dandy of chartering a

smack to cross to Holland. English travellers are a
puzzle altogether to the Muscovite mind but when ;

it comes to alpine boots and ice-axes, they give the

problem up.
We had intended to break into the Caucasus here,
and make our way past Elbruz into Suanetia, where
the grandest scenery in the chain is to be found, and
thence to Kutais or Suram. But partly the difficulty
of finding a courier or interpreter, partly the disturb-
ances among the Suans, and, most of all,want of time,
made it necessary to abandon this plan, and be con-
tent with travellingby railway to Vladikavkaz, and
thence by the Dariel road to Tiflis, a journey which,
though it is by no means so grand as the other, is
still rich beauty and interest to be worth
enough in

coming way from England. Accordingly

for all the

we returned to the station at which we had left the

railway to reach Pjatigorsk, and, catching the same
train there is but one in the day reached Vladikav-
kaz after a journey of about six hours. The line runs
along the open steppe, which is intersected by many
low ridges, and occasionally by deep gullies, traversed

by whitish torrents, the offspring of the glaciers which

in this part of the chain descend from the great snow
mountains. A
remarkable feature of this steppe is
the great number of tumuli which lie scattered over
its surface, and which are supposed to be the burial

F 2
68 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

mounds of primitive races. They are commonly

called Kurgans, and are found associated with rudely
hewn wooden figures exceeding life size. Nothing is
known of the purpose of these last, though probably
they were nor of their origin, except that it
idols,
must lie in
very remote times, since they are men-
tioned by ancient Greek writers as then existing in

Scythia.
To
the south the great chain rises with extraordi-

nary abruptness, its snowy tops seeming to run straight

down into the plain, so that one almost fancies it pos-
sible to reach one of these tops by following a single
ridge right upwards without descending into any inter-
vening valley. What with the gloomy weather and
the gathering shades of night, we could distinguish

nothing more than patches of white under the clouds,

but the lower declivities seemed to be thickly wooded
almost down to the level of the steppe. The line
comes to an end at Vladikavkaz, more than a thou-
sand miles from Moscow, and now a place of much
consequence, not only as the chief fortress of this
part of the country, commanding the entrance to the
Dariel military road, but also as a trade centre from
which the goods brought hither by the railway are
forwarded by road to Tiflis or distributed through
the surrounding country. Its name means Controller,
or Key, of the Caucasus. It is a large, straggling sort

of place, with the usual wide streets and low houses,

improved, however, by the rows of trees that have

been planted down some of them, and by the variety
of uniforms and picturesque Caucasian dresses which
 THE CAUCASUS. 69

its mixed population displays. The inn is highly

primitive but as we had arranged to start next day
;

with the dawn, that was neither here nor there the ;

mountain fever had seized us on finding ourselves at

last under the shadow of this mysterious chain, and

made us reckless of discomforts. At five next morn-

ing the sky was clear and bright, and, to our amaze-
ment, a snow-peak was looking in at the window,
seeming to hang over the town. We were in the
steppe, outside the mountains altogether, and here
was an icy pinnacle, soaring into the air 14,000 feet
above us, no farther off than Pilatus looks from Luzern.
Itwas Kazbek, the mountain where Prometheus hung
in chains. Hither the ocean nymphs came to console
him over this desert to the north lo wandered, driven
;

by the gadfly of Hera.

Up to this point we had managed to get on pretty

well in hotels, railways, and steamers with German
and French and a few words of Russian. Now, how-
ever, that it became necessary to take to the road,
and enter upon those interminable wranglings with
postmasters at post stations which every preceding
traveller has described in such repulsive colours, the
real difficulties of the way seemed to begin. We
therefore thought ourselves fortunate in falling in
with two Russian ladies bound for Tiflis, whose ac-

quaintance we made in the train, and who, after a

preliminary skirmish about English sympathy with

Turkish cruelties, had proposed we should make up a

party to hire a vehicle to carry us over the 126 miles

of road to the southern capital. Afterwards they
7O TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

picked up, rather to our disgust, a fifth partner, a Cir-

cassian gentleman, also making for Tiflis. We had of
course conceived of a Tcherkess as a gigantic warrior,
armed to the teeth with helmet and shield and the
unerring hating the Russian intruder, and ready
rifle,

to die for Islam. This Circassian, however, turned

out to be an advocate practising at Stavropol, and

graduate of the university of Moscow a short,

swarthy man, who was, I believe, a Mohammedan,

but never turned to Mecca all the time we were with
him, and in other ways shewed small regard for the
precepts of the Prophet. Our vehicle went by the
name of an omnibus, but was what we should call a
covered waggonette, with a leather roof and leather
curtains made to draw round the sides, no useless

protection against the dust and sun. It held four, or,

at a pinch, six, inside, and one outside beside the

driver and conductor, and seems to be the kind of
carriage most used by travellers of the richer sort on
this frequented piece of road. We
made our bargain
with the conductor for the whole way, but changed
horses and driver at each post station. There are in
all eleven stations on the road, at intervals of from

eight to sixteen miles, better supplied with horses,

and altogether better appointed, than probably any-
where else in Russia, as is natural when one considers
the importance of the route, and the great number of

military and civil officials who are constantly tra-

versing it. These stations, however, are not neces-
sarily or properly inns. At most of them it is a
mere chance if you find anything to eat beyond
 THE CAUCASUS. 71

bread, and possibly eggs. The room or rooms in

which the traveller halts while horses are being

changed contains no furniture, except a table, two

wooden chairs, and either an ancient sofa or two
wooden frames they cannot be called bedsteads on
which a luxurious traveller may lay his mattress and

pillows, if he can spare the time for sleep, and does

not mind being disturbed by the irruptions of other

wayfarers at all hours during the night. In point of

fact, few travellers do stop. The rule in Russia is to

go straight ahead, by night as well as by day, eating

at odd and dozing in your carriage when you
times,
can. One soon gets accustomed to that way of life,
fresh air and excitement keeping any one who is in

good health right enough so long as the journey lasts.

The drawback is that you may happen to be uncon-
trollably drowsy just when you are passing through
the finest bit of scenery.
Vladikavkaz lies sufficiently clear of the mountains
to enjoy a noble view, looking westward along their
northern slope, which capped by several snowy
is

summits ; among them, and almost farthest to the

west, the magnificent Dykhtau (16,925 feet). All
this, however, is soon lost, for the road runs straight
hills, keeping the bottom of the valley,
south into the
and in eight or nine miles enters a superb gorge
among the limestone mountains which here, as in the
Alps, form the outer heights of the chain. Clothed,
wherever there is room for a root to hold, with the
richest deciduous wood, they rise in wonderful pre-

cipices 5000 or 6000 feet above the valley, ledge

72 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

over ledge, and crag above crag, while at the bottom

they press the river so close that at some points
the road has been cut out in the overhanging cliff
face, and the streamlets from above break in spray
over it. The scenery is like that of parts of the
Bavarian Alps, only on a far grander scale. After
a time the glen widens a little, and its character

changes, for we leave the limestone, and come between

mountains of slate or schist. Here the slopes are
scarcely less steep, but more uniform. They rise so
abruptly that one hardly understands how wood can
grow on them, and are seamed by deep torrent beds,
dry at this season, but shewing by the piles of stone
and gravel on each side of them with what tremend-
ous force the winter waters must descend. Behind
them bare, rocky tops occasionally stand out, rising
farabove the region of trees, and here and there,
where a lateral glen comes down, and the declivity
is less abrupt, Osset villages are seen, clusters of huts
more like beehives than human dwellings, with small,
rude square towers, perched on eminences for refuge
against a sudden attack. The population of the
valley is chiefly Osset ;
to the east, behind the savage

ridges which guard it on that

side, lies the country,

first, of the mainly pagan Ingushes, and then of the

Mohammedan Tchetchens, a powerful group of tribes

quite distinct from the Ossets and Ingushes in blood
and speech.
Hitherto the valley bottom has scarcely risen above
the level of the steppe, and several of the character-
istic steppe plants have held their ground, mixed with
 THE CAUCASUS. 73

the alpine flora of saxifrages, gentians, and so forth,

1
which beginning to appear.
is But now, about six-
teen miles from Vladikavkaz, the valley seems sud-

denly to come to an end, and the track to vanish

among the tremendous crags out of which the river
descends in a succession of cataracts. The road
crosses to its eastern bank, and mounts rapidly along
a shelf cut out of the mountain-side. At the bottom
of the gorge there is the furious torrent on each side ;

walls of granite rising (vertically, one would think,

though I suppose they cannot be quite vertical)

4000 feet above it behind are still loftier ranges of
;

sharp, red pinnacles, broken, jagged, and terrible,

their topmost summits flecked with snow, not a bush,
or flower, or blade of green to relieve their bare stern-
ness. This is the famous Dariel Pass, a scene whose
grandeur is all the more striking because one comes
so suddenly upon it after the exquisite beauty of the
wooded limestone mountains farther down a scene ;

worthy of the historical associations which invest it,

alone of Caucasian glens, with an atmosphere of

all

ancient romance. Virgil is renowned for nothing more

than the singular felicity of the epithets with which
he conveys a picture or a story in a single word and ;

the phrase, " duris cautibus horrens Caucasus" seemed

so exactly to describe this spot that I was tempted
to fancy he had in his mind, when he used it, some
account by a Greek traveller who had wandered thus
far. The mighty masses that hem in this ravine do
1
Among the commonest plants up the valley are our pretty little

English ferns Cistopteris fragilis and Asplenium septentrionale.

74 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

with sharp crags in a way that one

literally bristle
does not see even in the aiguille ranges of Mont
Blanc. The scene is more absolutely savage, if not
more majestic, than any of the famous passes of the
Alps or Norway. It is not merely the prodigious

height and steepness of the mountains it is their ;

utter bareness and the fantastic wildness of their

riven summits, towering 7000 or 8000 feet above
the glen, that fill one with such a sense of terror
and desolation. A
stronger military post can hardly
be imagined. Approaching it either way, the pre-
cipices seem to bar all further progress, and the
eye seeks in vain to follow the road, which in one
place passes by a tunnel behind a projecting mass of
rock. For about a quarter of a mile the bottom of
the gorge is filled by the foaming stream, so that it is

only along the road that an army could advance.

Half-a-dozen cannon could command the road, and
a single explosion destroy it. At the upper end,
where the ravine widens a little, and gives space for
buildings, the Russians have erected a fort, and
keep a small garrison. Behind, on a great rock
mass, that rises some 300 feet in the middle of the
glen, are the ruins of a far more ancient fortress,
where,according to the Georgian legend, Queen
Tamara dwelt, and caused all those of her suitors
who did not please her (they were more numerous
than Penelope's) to be flung into the torrent below.
Some of the foundations looked so like Roman work
that we wondered whether they might not be the
remains of the fortress which tradition attributes
 THE CAUCASUS. 75

sometimes to Darius, son of Hystaspes, sometimes

to Alexander the Great, which Pliny describes, and
which was offered by a Hunnish prince to the Roman
emperor Anastasius, and, when he hesitated, seized
by the Persian king Kobad. His son Chosroes, the
great enemy of Rome, held the pass to prevent the
irruption of the nomads of the northern steppe, and,
in the treaties he made with Justinian, stipulated that

the latter should pay his share of the expenses in-

curred for a common benefit. Certain it is that this

pass is the farthest point to which the dominion of

Rome can ever have stretched on this side and to
;

think that we were

re-entering here, after traversing
such huge spaces of Scandinavia and Scythia, the
former territories of the same empire which we had
quitted at Hull, conveyed to us a lively idea of the
vastness of that empire. It is hard, however, to

believe that there can ever have been much danger

of invasion through such a gorge as this and I;

cannot but think that the Scythians who ravaged

Upper Asia in the seventh century B.C., and the other
nomad which have from time to time pene-
tribes
trated from the north, must have come along the

Caspian shore by Derbend. Nimble mountaineers

might conceivably have effected a passage, when
there was nothing but the rude track which can be
just discerned here and there on the western bank
of the Terek (the present road is on the east bank,

high above the stream) but that a whole people

;

should have brought through their waggons and their

flocks seems well-nigh impossible. Be that as it
 76 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

may, this is beyond question the site of the famous

Caucasian or Iberian Gates. 1
Above
the gorge the valley widens a little, and its
sides, though not less lofty, are somewhat less precipi-
tous. To avoid the floods which have covered the bottom
with gravel, the road mounts the western slope, along
which prodigious masses of alluvium are heaped up,
the remains, one would think, of some ancient moraine.
Such traces of glacial actionabound in the glen
through its entire length. Towards Vladikavkaz they
take the form of well-marked terraces here they are ;

but quite as huge, and where some side

less regular,

ravine comes in, its stream often cuts through a hard

mass of rounded blocks and gravel for a depth of
several hundred feet. The walls of the Dariel gorge
itself are of grey, large-grained granite but one sees ;

many other igneous rocks in the cliffs porphyries,

xi. 3, 5 ; Tac. Ann. vi. 33 ; Pliny, Nat. Hist. vi. 5, 1 12 and

1
See Strabo,
xiv. (who gives the fullest description both of the Caucasian and Caspian
Gates, which he distinguishes carefully, evidently intending the Dariel
by his Caucasian Gates) ; and Procopius, Pers. i. 10, and Goth. iv. 3.
I wish some university or other learned body would offer a prize for an

essay on the Caucasian and Caspian Gates, for there is hardly a subject
in ancient or mediaeval geography more perplexing than the use of those
names. There were three passes between which boundless confusion has
arisen: first, the Dariel, sometimes called the Caucasian, sometimes the

Caspian, sometimes the Iberian Gates ; second, the pass between the
mountains and the sea near Derbend, where is the wall of Gog and
Magog, called sometimes the Caucasian, sometimes the Caspian, some-
times the Albanian Gates ; third, a pass somewhere on the south coast
of the Caspian, called the Caspian Gates, which was really visited and
fortifiedby Alexander the Great, who never came near our Caucasus
at all. Pliny (loc. cit.) talks of a gate and fortress : "Fores obditae
ferratis trabibus subter medias amne diri odoris fluente, citraque in

rupe castello quod vocatur Cumania, communito ad arcendas transitu

gentes innumeras, ibi loci terrarum orbe portis discluso."
 THE CAUCASUS. 77

syenites, and basalts ;

about four miles above the
fort a beautiful range of basaltic columns, much like
those of the Giant's Causeway, runs along the steep
mountain-side for some distance. After this the

metamorphic schists reappear, and prevail, with occa-

sional patches of interjected igneous rocks, until,
far down in the southern spurs of the chain, one

comes again upon the limestones which have been

thrown off upon both flanks of the central crystalline
mass.
Some ten miles above the Dariel, and about twenty-
seven from Vladikavkaz, the road, descending to the
river, suddenly rounds a corner of rock, and with a
start the traveller finds himself full in face of the

magnificent Kazbek, a steep dome of snow breaking

down on the east in a grand black precipice. The
top is 16,533 feet above the sea, and n,ooo feet

above the little alpine plain or circular hollow in

the mountains where stands the aoul (village) of

Kazbek, inhabited
by Georgians. The post-house
here is one of the best on the road, and actually fur-
nishes two or three beds European beds with sheets
and a dirty blanket ; so, wishing to have a little time
to take in the wonderful scenery, we proposed to make
a halt for the night. This, however, our companions,
who were anxious to reach Tiflis, would by no means
agree to ;
and all we could obtain by way of conces-
sion was an hour and a half to climb to a little church
which stands perched on a height 1400 feet above the
glen, and commands a noble view of Kazbek with his
attendant peaks. The building interested us as the
78 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
first specimen we had seen of Georgian or Armenian
architecture it was, indeed still is, a much visited place
;

of pilgrimage, and seemed to date from the twelfth or

thirteenth century. When we reached it, the clouds
which each morning gather round the great summits
as soon as the day grows hot, about nine or ten o'clock,
still kept the top of Kazbek hid but after waiting ;

ten minutes, we were rewarded, about 4.30 P.M., by

seeing them disperse under the strong breeze, and his

glorious snowy crest came out against the intense blue

of a sky whose clearness seemed to surpass even that
of the Alps. North of it a savage glen shewed where

lay the great glacier of Devdorak, by which the

summit is ascended ;
on the other side, a line of un-
trodden snows runs south-west into the heart of the
chain ;
in the middle stood up the perfectly isolated
dome, all snow-covered, except where on the eastern
face stands out the great black precipice to which
Prometheus was chained. 1 Kazbek is a mass of
trachyte, probably an ancient volcano, with its two
snow sides looking so steep that we did not wonder
that had pronounced them inaccessible
all travellers

till they yielded to the

courage and skill of our
countrymen, Messrs. Freshfield, Moore, and Tucker,
in 1868. The climbers incurred some danger, especi-
ally in the latter part of the ascent ;
but the easier
route they discovered in descending has been taken
1
According to the generally accepted legend, which probably took
its some Greek traveller passing this way. But Aeschylus
origin from
does not conceive of Prometheus as chained in the Caucasus. In his
drama the rock hangs over the sea and the plain of Scythia, and the
Caucasus is spoken of as being at some considerable distance away.
 THE CAUCASUS. 79

once or twice since ;

and by it the ascent is not really
difficult, and involves, if the climber has proper appli-

ances, no serious risk. We longed to try our fortune,

but having nothing in the shape of a guide, nor any
chance of procuring one, and no other mountaineer-
ing apparatus, there was little use thinking further
of it
Below us,on the opposite side from Kazbek, lay
the little green plain with its patches of rye and oats,
its fields divided by low stone walls and tiny, flat-
roofed cottages beyond it, again, the eastern wall of
;

the valley rose with terrific steepness to a height of

11,000 or 12,000 feet, with slopes too abrupt to bear

snow, which only lay in sheltered northward hollows.
The elements of the view were the same as we had
seen many a time before, but somehow the view
had a character of its own quite unlike anything
European. Whether it was that one missed the
cheerful pastures dotted over with herds and chdlets,
or that there was no wood below, and comparatively
snow above, or simply that the mountain lines
little

were more ruthlessly stern and jagged, it was hard to

tell but, anyhow, the impression was quite new. The
;

Caucasus, though its latitude is but little farther south

than that of the Alps, is not a mere repetition of the
Alps on a larger scale, any more than the Russian
steppe a repetition of the Hungarian plain
is its ;

character, the impression which its scenery makes, is

wholly different.

We returned to the post-house punctually at the

appointed hour, but were met by reproachful faces.

8O TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
"
There are now no horses to be had ;
in your absence
other travellers came up, and, being ready to start,
called for all that were in the stable ;
we could not
retain them. There will be none fit for work now
before to-morrow morning." Although secretly re-
joiced to have a few more hours under the shadow of
Kazbek, still, as politeness required, we dissembled our
satisfaction,were forgiven, and prepared to spend the
night at the uninviting post-house. There still wanted
an hour to sunset so we rambled up to an Osset
;

which stands on the western bank of the Terek,

aoul,
and examined the quaint little corn-mills that have
been planted along the courses of the descending
brooks, rude buildings of loose stone about four feet
high, with a horizontal wheel inside a foot and a half
in diameter, and two bits of millstones scarcely
larger than those of the old Irish quern or hand-mill.
Civilization in the Caucasian countries has not got
so far as a windmill : at any rate, we never saw one.
On the flat, earthen roofs of the houses the people were

treading or thrashing out their rye the interiors were

;

dark, windowless, and apparently without furniture ;

the walls of unmortared stone. Pretty, fair-haired

children followed us about, offering crystals for sale,
or begging in an unknown tongue.
The Georgian village on the opposite side of the
river,where the post-house stands, is more civilized ;

its houses are arranged in something like lanes it has ;

a church which from the style I took to-be ancient,

but found to date from the beginning of this century
only, a curious instance of that steadfast adhesion to
 THE CAUCASUS. 81

old architectural models which is the rule in Georgia

and Russia, and makes it difficult to tell the age of
a building from its style, as one can generally do in

Western Europe ; though, to be sure, our descendants

may not find so simple a matter to fix the churches
it

of the nineteenth century, which imitate every earlier

fashion. In this village several of the houses had sin-

gular square towers, erected, no doubt, for purposes of

defence in the unquiet times, before the coming of the
Russians, when some neighbouring tribe might swoop
down at any moment on the peasant. Such towers
are common among most of the Caucasian peoples ;

the finest, one hears, are to be found among the inde-

pendent Suans in the Ingur valley. While we were

wandering round the church, we asked some question
about it of a gentleman leaning over the second floor
verandah of an adjoining house, the biggest in the
village, and were desired, in French, to come up the
ladder. Complying, we were welcomed by a young
man with those soft handsome features which are so
common among the Georgians, who turned out to be
the Prince of Kazbek, a Georgian noble, who owns this

part of the valley. He was entertaining two or three

government employes sent from Tiflis to examine the
glacier of Devdorak, which has several times formed
a debdcle, behind which water accumulated in a lake,
which, breaking out at last, devastated the Terek

valley. Among them

was a young engineer from the
Baltic provinces, speaking German, and an accom-

plished Armenian official, speaking both German and

French, with whom we talked about the Caucasus to
G
82 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
our heart's content, over endless glasses of lemon tea,
while the great mountain glittered before us in the
clear cold starlight. It was late when we parted
from our genial host at the door of the post-house ;

and before light next morning we had mounted the

omnibus again, and were pursuing our drowsy way
up the valley. It is
comparatively open up here, per-
fectly bare of wood, and uninhabited, except for an
occasional village surrounding two or three grim old

square towers. The scenery is more savage than

beautiful but;
if we had not seen the Dariel defile
lower down, we should have thought it magnificent,
for Kazbek occasionally shewed his snows, blushing

rosy under the first sunlight, to the west, while the

great eastern range rose more imposing than ever as
we approached the axis of the chain. The last station

on the north side of the watershed is Kobi, where we

breakfasted (as usual off the alone attainable eggs and
tea), and where is a curious Osset altar, adorned all
round with the horns of the great wild goat, Capra
caucasica,at which sacrifices, half Christian, half

pagan, are offered. Here the Terek comes down

from a wild glen running deep into pathless moun-
tains to the west, and the road turns up the short
valley of a lesser stream, remarkable from the great
number of mineral springs that gush out from its
sides. One which we drank of sparkles with bubbles
of carbonic acid gas, and had a pleasant sweetish taste ;

but all, as we were afterwards told, contain, along with

their iron and other valuable ingredients, too much
chalk to make them serviceable for medicinal pur-
 THE CAUCASUS. 83

poses. The summit level of the road, about twenty

miles from Kazbek station and forty-one from Vladi-
kavkaz, is 8015 feet above the sea, a green, slightly

undulating level, from which no distant view can be

obtained, except straight south, for on both sides it

is enclosed by mountains rising about 1400 feet above

it, while other summits farther back reach 11,000
or 12,000 feet. The Russians call this col or pass
Krestovaya Gora, or Cross Mountain, from a cross
"
planted on it. The name, Pass of Dariel," belongs
properly only to the gorge below Kazbek station,
where the fort stands but as this gorge is the
;

most remarkable feature of the whole route, and the

most important military position, geographers and
foreigners generally extend its name to the whole
road from Vladikavkaz to Tiflis. There is no forti-

fication at the top, or anywhere, save at the Dariel

gorge ;
nor did
I see any military
posts along the road.
During the war with Shamyl, however, it was
strongly
guarded, and was indeed of the utmost importance to
Russia since by holding it they not only kept open
;

their communications with Georgia, but prevented a

junction between the hero of Daghestan and the tribes
that were in arms to the west. Needless to say that
it is also of the greatest consequence to her in the

present struggle, since across it all her troops and

munitions of war are sent to Armenia.
From the open green pastures of the watershed the
road descends an almost precipitous mountain face in
a series of long zigzags, cut with admirable skill, and
at their foot reaches the pretty little Georgian village
G 2
84 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

of Mleti. Nothing can be more beautiful than the view

in descending. To the north-east you look up into a
wilderness of stern red mountains, their hollows filled

with snow or ice, their sides strewed with huge loose

blocks. Round Mleti itself woods begin to hang upon
the hills, and rye diversify the pastures, while
fields of

down the long vista that opens to the south dense

forests enclose the narrow ravine through which the
river Aragva finds its way to the low country. The
pastoral beauty of the scene is all the more felt because
you have come straight from a land of desolation ;

there is a sense of southern luxuriance about the land-

scape like that which greets the traveller who drops

into Italy from the Alps of Switzerland. Down from
Mleti the road follows the Aragva (the ^Aragon of

Strabo) through it.s deep, richly wooded valley, adorned

here and there with ruined towers, perched upon pro-

jecting points, as far as the little town of Ananaur,

where the Caucasus proper may be said to subside into

the hilly rather than mountainous country of Georgia.
These woods are really splendid, composed almost
entirely of deciduous trees, beech, oak, hazel, birch,
and such like, and so close as to look perfectly im-
penetrable. The scenery is something like that of
Killiecrankie, in Perthshire, only on a far vaster scale ;

but the river is scanty and whitish from parent its

glaciers, every way inferior to the Scottish stream.

Ananaur has a grand old castle, commanding the road

and valley, within whose walls stand two ancient
churches, elaborately adorned outside in the Georgian
style with the figures of lions and other creatures
 THE CAUCASUS. 85

elegantly carved in relief, and surrounded with ara-

besques. From here the road, which first mounts over
a ridge of and then descends past the quaint
hills,

little town of Dushet towards the Kur, is pretty

enough, but less interesting, and I relieved its tedium
by a long talk with the ladies, who, it appeared, had
done us the honour to take us for poets, because we
seemed to admire the scenery, and had been gather-
I

ing plants. As we are both lawyers, and considered

by our friends to be rather plain matter-of-fact people,
thisunexpected compliment flattered us not a little,
and on the strength of it I indited a sonnet to the
younger lady's cigarette, which was however, like its
subject, of so evanescent a nature that it need not be
reproduced Asking them about the writers of
here.
modern Russia, we found what had already surprised
us, that Turgenef does not hold among his own country
folk so transcendently conspicuous a place as Western
readers would allot him. They appear to put others,
whose works have not been translated into French or
German, or, when translated, have made little impres-
sion, on a level with him. Perhaps this is because he
has been so keen a critic of Russian weaknesses if :

so, it is another instance of that sensitiveness one so

often remarks among them.
About 1 1 P.M. our omnibus drew up in the famous
city of Mtzkhet, once the capital of the Georgian king-
dom, and seat of their patriarch, and now a wretched
village of some hundred and fifty people, dwelling in the
shadow of two noble old churches and a large ruined
castle. The position is a fine one, for it occupies the
86 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

middle of and commands the narrow valley by which

the Kur descends from its upper basin into the lower
basin of Tiflis, and is defended on one side by the Kur
itself, on the other by the Aragva, which here mingle

their waters. From very early times the site has been
inhabited, witness the numerous cave dwellings hewn
out in the soft limestone rock of the cliffs along the
Kur and
;
it was not far off that Pompey, in his famous
march to the Caucasus, defeated the Iberian armies.
Two centuries after the introduction of Christianity, a

Georgian king forsook it for Tiflis, and now its chief

importance lies in being the point where the military

road to Vladikavkaz strikes the railway from Tiflis to
the Black Sea. Anxious to examine it, and still more
anxious to lie down and sleep, on the ground, in a
post-house, anywhere, we heard with pleasure the
conventional postmaster declare that no horses could
be had before nine o'clock next morning it was im- ;

possible, not a hoof in his stable, nor in any of the

peasants' either. However, our companions, and espe-
cially the Circassian, who, I fancy, had a law-suit in
Tiflis, were unwearied and inexorable. In vain we
dwelt on the antiquarian interest of Mtzkhet, and
proposed to give them a sketch of its early history,
beginning from its founder, the great-grandson of
Japhet; in vain on the advantage of entering Tiflis
by daylight, and the unlikelihood of getting a bed
there in the small hours. In vain we even conde-
scended to put in a word for the postmaster, insisting
on the duty of travellers not to press too hardly on
"
these poor men and their hard-worked horses. Let
 t
THE CAUCASUS. 87

us get at once to the journey's end," they replied ;

"
we have been travelling only forty hours. Surely
" "
that has not tired you (dear energetic ladies). As
for Mtzkhet and its churches, the world is a big world,
and you cannot see everything in it." At last, relying
on the obstinacy of the postmaster, we agreed to go
on if horses could be found
whereupon the Circassian
;

him with so much vigour that horses

barrister bullied
were found forthwith, and in two hours more we were
rattling over the stones of the capital of Transcau-
casia, and on our first night in Asia were received
by the drowsy but friendly servants of the H6tel de
1'
Europe.
88 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

CHAPTER III.

TRANSCAUCASIA.

IN this chapter I shall attempt to give a sort of

general sketch of the Russian territories lying to the
south of the Caucasus, the richest, and, for the present
at least, geographically the most important of all the
Asiatic dominions of the Czar. It is, like the rest of

this book, a record of first impressions only, but of im-

pressions formed, as I venture to believe, without any
pre-existing bias, and to a considerable extent tested
by comparison with the conclusions which other tra-
vellers have reached. And even for first impressions
there is this much to be said, that the risk of errors of
observation and of hasty generalization has some com-

pensation in the freshness with which things present

themselves to a new-comer. Occasionally he is struck

by aspects of society or politics which are really true

and important, but which one who has lived long in a
country finds so familiar that they have ceased to
stimulate his curiosity, and would perhaps be omitted
from his descriptions. This supply some justifi-
may
cation for the apparent presumption of a traveller
who admits that he had to see, and now has to write,
more hastily than he could have wished. What I
 TRANSCAUCASIA. 89

have got to say of particular parts of the country,

such as Tiflis, the capital, and Armenia, is reserved
for later chapters.

Transcaucasia a convenient general name for the

is

countries lying between the Black Sea, the Caspian,

and the Caucasus, which make up the dominions of
the Czar in Western Asia. It is not, however, an
official Russian name, for although for some purposes
they distinguish Ciscaucasia and Transcaucasia, the
administrative district or lieutenancy of the empire
which they call the Caucasus (Kavkaz) includes not
only the regions south of the mountains, but also
what the
several governments lying to the north, in

geographers call Europe. Nor does it denote any

similarity or common character in these countries, the
chief of which are Georgia, which lies along the upper
course of the Kur, south of the CaucasusArmenia, ;

on the Araxes, between Georgia, Persia,

farther south,
and Turkey Imeritia, west of Georgia and Min-
; ;

grelia,west of Imeritia, along the eastern coast of

the Black Sea. However, it is a convenient name,
and before speaking of each of these countries by
itself, something may be said of the general phy-

sical features of Transcaucasia as a whole. It may

be broadly described as consisting of two mountain
regions and two plains. First, all along the north,
there are the slopes of the Caucasus, which on this
side (at least in its western half, for towards the east
the main chain sinks quite abruptly into the levels
of Kakhitia) sends off several lateral ranges descend-

ing far from the axis, and at last subsiding into a

9O TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

fertile and well-peopled hilly country. Secondly, on

the south, over against the Caucasus, there is another
mountain land, less elevated, but wider in extent,
consisting of the chain which under various local
names (some geographers have called it the Anti-

Caucasus) runs from Lazistan at the south-east angle

of the Black Sea away to the east and south-east
till it meets the ranges of Towards the
Persia.

south, this chain ramifies all over Armenia, and here

attains its greatest height in the volcanic summits of
Ala Goz, 13,460 feet above the sea, while northward
its spurs form a hilly country stretching to Tiflis.

These two mountain masses are connected by a ridge

which, branching off from the Caucasus between
Elbruz and Kazbek, the two best known of all the
summits of that chain, divides the waters of the Kur
from those of the Rion (Phasis), and is crossed by the
great road and railway from Tiflis to the Black Sea
near the town of Suram. Although of no great height
it is only about 3600 feet at Suram this ridge has

a most important influence (to be referred to pre-

sently) both on the climate and on the ethnology
of the country. It is that which Strabo speaks of

as inhabited by the Moschici, 1 and is sometimes, there-

fore, called by modern geographers the Meschic ridge.

The two
plains have spoken of are of very un-
I

equal size. The eastern extends all along the Cas-

pian, from the southern foot of the Caucasus to the
1
Interpreters, from the time of Josephus downwards (who places
them more towards Cappadocia), have sought to identify these Moschici
or Meschi (as Procopius calls them, Goth. iv. 3) with the Mesech of
the Bible (Gen. x. 2 ; Ps. cxx. 5).
 TRANSCAUCASIA. 91

Persian frontier, and runs up the valley of the Kur,

gradually rising, to within a few miles of Tiflis. It is

open, bare, and dry ; is, in fact, what the Russians call

steppe country, or the Americans prairie, through

nearly whole extent, and though the soil is
its fertile,

much of it, especially towards the Caspian, is but

thinly peopled or cultivated. The western plain, on
the other hand, lying along the lower course of the
Rion, between the Caucasus, the Anti-Caucasus, and
the Black Sea, is moist and densely wooded, parts
of it little better than a forest swamp, but the whole,
where dry enough for tillage, extremely rich. It has
all the appearance of having been, at no distant
period, a bay of the Euxine, which may gradually
have got filled up by the alluvium brought down
by the Rion and other Caucasian streams. When
this bay existed, and when the Caspian, which we
know have greatly shrunk, even in comparatively
to
recent times, extended far up the valley of the Kur,
and was joined to the Euxine north of the Caucasus,
between the mouths of the Kuban and Terek, the
Caucasus itself formed an immense mountain pen-
insula, joined to the highlands of Western Asia by
an isthmus consisting of the Suram ridge already
referred to and the elevated country east of it. And
as at this time the Caspian was also, no doubt,
connected with the Sea of Aral (which is only some
1 60 feet above the
present level of the Caspian, and
about 80 above the ocean), one may say that the
Mediterranean then extended through this chain of
inland seas, far into Central Asia, perhaps to the sites
92 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

of those cities, Khiva, Tashkend, Bokhara, of which

we have lately heard so much.
The climates of these two plains are strangely con-
trasted, and the ridge of Suram marks the boundary
between them. On the Black Sea coast the winters
are mild (mean winter temperature about 44 R,
mean annual temperature 58), snow falls, perhaps,
but hardly lies, all sorts of southern plants thrive in
the open air, and the rainfall is so abundant that

vegetation is everywhere, even up

mountains, in the

marvellously profuse. At Poti, the seaport at the

mouth of the Rion which every traveller from the
West is condemned to pass through, the most fever-
smitten den in all Asia, one feels in a perpetual

vapour bath, and soon becomes too enervated to

take the most obvious precautions against the pre-

vailing malady. Higher up, in the deep valleys of

the Ingur and Kodor, rivers which descend from
the great chain, the forests are positively tropical

(though the vegetation itself is European) in the

splendour of the trees and the rank luxuriance of the
underwood. If there were a few roads and any enter-
prise, thiscountry might drive a magnificent trade in
wood and all sorts of natural productions.
This the general character of the Black Sea coast.
is

But when you cross the Meschic watershed at Suram,

and enter the basin of the Kur, drawing towards the
Caspian, everything changes. The streams are few,
the grass is withered on the hillside, by degrees even
the beechwoods begin to disappear and as one gets ;

farther and farther to the east, beyond Tiflis, there is

 TRANSCAUCASIA. 93

in autumn hardly a trace of vegetation either on plain

or except along the courses of the shrunken
hills,

rivers and on the northern slopes of the mountains

that divide the basins of the Kur and Aras. In these

regions the winter is very severe, and the summer

heats are tremendous. At Lenkoran, on the Caspian,
in latitude 38 N., the sea is often blocked with ice
for two miles from the shore, and the average winter
temperature is the same as that of Maestricht, in lati-
tude 51, or Reykjavik (in Iceland), in latitude 64.
The rainfall, which near Poti reaches 63 inches in
the year, is at Baku only 137, and in some parts of
the Aras valley only 5 inches. The explanation, of
course, is that, while the moist westerly winds are
arrested by the ridge at Suram, the eastern steppe lies

open to the parching and bitter blasts which descend

from Siberia and the frozen plains of Turkestan, while
the scorching summers are not moderated by the in-
fluence of a neighbouring sea, the Caspian being too
small to make any great difference in the climate.
In Armenia the same causes operate, with the addi-
tion that, as a good deal of the country stands at a

great height above the sea-level, the winters are in

those parts long and terrible. At Alexandropol, for
instance, the great Russian fortress over against Kars,
where a large part of her army is always stationed,
snow lies till the middle of April, spring lasts only
about a fortnight, and during summer the country is
1
parched like any desert.

1
The mean winter temperature of Alexandropdl is 16 F. ; its annual
rainfall 14*68 inches.
94 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

A result of this remarkable dryness of the climate,

away from the Black Sea and its influences, is that the

landscapes of Eastern Transcaucasia are bare, brown,

and generally dreary. If there was ever wood on the
lower grounds, it has been long since cut away, and
probably could hardly be made to grow if now re-
planted. There a certain impressiveness in the
is

wide views of bare brown open plains and stern red

mountains which are so often before one in these

countries, and, I fancy, in Persia also ;

the effects
both of light and shade, and of colour, are broad,
deep, solemn. These are the merits of Eastern land-
scape generally, which an eye accustomed to the
minuter prettiness of such a country as our own per-
haps underrates. Admitting them, however, I must
remark that there is not much in Transcaucasia
still

to attract the lover of natural beauty, except in two

regions, the spurs of the Caucasus and the part of

Armenia which lies round and commands a prospect
of Mount Ararat. These are certainly considerable
exceptions, for the scenery of each is quite unlike
anything to be found in Europe. The luxuriant

vegetation of the deep western valleys of the chain

and the noble views of its tremendous snowy sum-
mits, streaming with glaciers, present pictures sur-
passing even those of the Italian valleys of the Alps
pictures that one must go to the Himalaya to find
a parallel for. Ararat, again, an isolated volcanic
cone rising 17,000 feet above the sea and 14,400 feet
above the plain at its own base, is a phenomenon the
like of which hardly exists in the world.
 TRANSCAUCASIA. 95

Whether beautiful or the reverse, however, the

country is nearly everywhere rich, and might do

wonders if it were filled by a larger, more energetic,

and better educated population. There are only

three millions of people in it now ; it could easily

support twenty. The steppe soil is generally ex-

tremely fertile, needing nothing but irrigation to
produce crops of grain.
heavy In some parts,

especially along the Araxes, cotton is raised. The

warm valleys Mingrelia and Imeritia produce maize,
of

rice, and other southern cereals ;

corn grows up to
a height of 5000 or 7000 feet, and the tea shrub
thrives on the hills. The olive is not common, and,
though the vine will grow almost everywhere, the
wine is generally inferior. Some of that which is
made in Armenia is tolerable, but by far the best is

that of Kakhitia, a delightfully pretty region lying

immediately under the great wall of the Eastern

Caucasus, north-east of Tiflis. Its wine is sound and
wholesome, albeit a little acid. The natives are very

proud of it, and incessantly vaunt its merits as a

specific against fever and otherwise they certainly
;

all follow the prescription, and the Georgians in par-

ticular,a race of jovial topers, are apt to carry their

appreciation a little too far. If it would bear travel-

ling, it would be a valuable article of export and

;

possibly, when better methods of making it than the

present very primitive ones are introduced, and when

it is put in casks instead of buffalo hides smeared

with naphtha, it may rival the wines of the Don and

.

the Crimea in the markets of Southern Russia. Of

96 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

the wealth of the western forests in box, walnut, and

woods of all sorts, suited for furniture as well as

shipbuilding, it is needless to speak ;

of the minerals,
it is rather difficult, for although everyone believes
that there is abundance in the mountains, and there
is constant talk of getting up companies to work
them, very little has been done to determine their

precise amount or quality. Coal certainly exists in

the west, among the mountains of Imeritia, north-east
of Kutais, but the abundance of wood has made people
remiss in availing themselves of it. Iron and copper
have been discovered in many places the best copper ;

mines hitherto opened lie in the northern declivity of

the Karabagh Mountains, to the south-west of Eliza-
vetpol, and are worked by Messrs. Siemens Brothers.
Salt is abundant in Armenia, especially near Kulpi, on
the Upper Aras ;
and the Mingrelians, who really have
silver mines, appeal to the instance of the Golden
Fleece as proof that the precious metals exist among
them. There is no doubt that grains of gold are
found in the detritus brought down by the Phasis and
other streams, but whether it is true, as geographers
and travellers have gone on repeating ever since
Strabo set the story going, that the natives place
fleeces in the current to catch the passing particles,

I Sulphur has been

have not been able to ascertain.
got in
Daghestan, and was used by Shamyl to make
gunpowder when he could get none from Persia.
Perhaps the most remarkable mineral product is
naphtha, which bursts forth in many places, but most
profusely near Baku, on the coast of the Caspian, in
 TRANSCAUCASIA. 97

strong springs, some of which are said to be always

burning, while others, lying close to or even below the
sea, will sometimes, in calm weather, discharge the
spirit over the water, so that, when a light is applied,
the sea takes fire, and blue flames flicker for miles

over the surface. The place was greatly revered of

old by the and after they were ex-
fire-worshippers,
tirpated from Persia by the Mohammedans, who hate
them bitterly, some few occasionally slunk here on
pilgrimage. Now, under the more tolerant sway of
the Czar, a solitary priest of fire is maintained by the
Parsee community of Bombay, who inhabits a small

temple built over one of the springs, and, like a vestal,

tends the sacred flame by day and night.

If hard to give a general idea of a country so
it is

various in its physical aspects, it is even more so to

describe strangely mixed population.
its From the
beginning of history, all sorts of tribes and races
have lived in this isthmus between the Euxine and
the Caspian, and though some of them may have now

disappeared or been absorbed by others, new elements

have pressed in from the north and east. Strabo,
writing under Augustus, mentions four peoples as
dwelling south of the Caucasus the Colchians^ along
:

the Black Sea ;

the Iberians^ farther^ to the east,
beyond the cross ridge of Suram (which he calls an
aytcfav of the Caucasus) the ^Albanians, still farther
;

eastward, in the plains along the Caspian Sea and ;

the Armenians, to the south of all these, in the country

we still call Armenia. To the north of the three former,
the wooded valleys of the Caucasus were occupied by
H
98 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

many wild tribes, more akin, says he, to the Sarma-

tians, but speaking many different languages one of ;

the wildest are the Soanes, the name still borne by an

extremely disagreeable race, who inhabit the grand-
est part of the whole Caucasus, immediately to the

south of Elbruz and Koschtantau, and of whom I

have spoken in the preceding chapter. While these
Soanes have been protected by their inaccessibility in
the pathless recesses of the mountains, all trace of
1
Colchians, Iberians,' and Albanians, has long since
passed away, and though Mingrelians now live where
Jason found the Colchians, there is nothing to show
that any of the blood of Aeetes and Medea flows in
their degenerate veins. Russian ethnologists talk of
a Karthalinian stock, to which Mingrelians, Imeri-
tians, and Georgians, as well as some of the mountain
tribes, are declared to belong. But, without discussing
problems of ethnology for whose solution sufficient
materials have not yet been collected, I will shortly
describe the chief races that now. occupy the country.

Beginning from the west, we find the Mingrelians

along the Black Sea coast, from the Turkish border
to Sukhum Kaleh. They are the ne'er-do-wells of
the Caucasian family. All their neighbours, how-
ever contemptible a Western may think them, have a
bad word and a kick for the still more contemptible
Mingrelian. To believe them, he is lazy, sensual,
treacherous, and stupid, a liar and a thief. The strain
1
Those who build ethnological theories on similarities of name may
he asked whether they can establish any relationship between these
Albanians and the Albanians of Epirus and the Scottish Alban, or
between these Iberians and the Iberians of Spain.
 TRANSCAUCASIA. 99
in which the Russians and Armenians talk of them
reminded me of the description one gets from the

Transylvanian Saxons and Magyars of the Roumans

who live among them. You ask what kind of people
the Wallachs are. " A
dirty people," they answer,
"
a
treacherous people, a lazy people, a superstitious

people, a cruel people, a gluttonous people. Other-

wise not such a bad kind of people." (" Sonst ist cs
kein scklechtes Volk."} Lazy the Mingrelian certainly
is, but in other respects I doubt if he is worse than his
neighbours ;
and he lives in so damp and warm a
climate that violent exercise must be disagreeable.
He a well-made, good-looking fellow, but with a
is

dull and heavy expression which is sensual so far as

it goes. And he is certainly backward in agriculture

and making very

trade, of a singularly rich
little

country. South of Mingrelia lies Guria, on the slopes

and ridges of the Anti-Caucasus, a land where the
people are more vigorous and upright, and where, as
they have been less affected by conquest and immi-
gration, the picturesque old costumes have best main-
tained themselves. West of the Mingrelians, in the

hilly regions of the Upper Rion and its tributaries,

live the Imeritians, a race speaking a dialect of Geor-
gian, who may generally be distinguished by their
bushy hair. My personal knowledge of them is con-
fined to three waiters at three several inns, rather a
narrow basis for induction, but quite as wide as many
travellers have had some very sweeping conclu-
for
sions. They have a better name than the Mingrelians,
r
IOO TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

both for industry and honesty, and these three waiters

were pleasant, civil fellows, though not particularly
bright.
Still farther east, and occupying the centre of

Transcaucasia, are the Georgians, called by the

Russians Grusinians or Grusians, who may be con-
considered the principal and, till the arrival of the
Muscovite, the dominant race of the country. They
call themselves Karthli, deducing their origin from a

patriarch Karthlos (who was brother of Haik, the

patriarch of the Armenian nation, and of Legis, the
ancestor of the Lesghians), a grandson, or, as others
hold, great-grandson of Gomer, son of Japhet. Ac-
cording to their own legends, they worshipped the
sun and the moon and the five planets, and swore by
the grave of Karthlos until converted to Christianity

by St. Nina, in the fourth century of our era. For

several centuries their kingdom extended almost to
the Black Sea in one direction and the Caspian in
another, and maintained itself with some credit

against the hostility of Turks and Persians, though

often wasted by Persian armies, and for long periods
obliged to admit the suzerainty of the Shah. Its

heroic age was the time of Queen Tamara, who

flourished in the twelfth century, and is still honoured
by pictures all over the country, in which she appears
as a beautiful Amazon, not unlike the fancy portraits
of Joan of Arc. To her is ascribed the foundation of

every ancient church or monastery, just as all the

strongholds are said to have been built by the robber
 TRANSCAUCASIA. IOI

Kir Oghlu, 1 and as in Scotland there is hardly an

old mansion but shows Wallace's sword and Queen

Mary's apartment. Somewhat later the kingdom be-

came divided into three, Kakhitia, Karthli or Georgia
proper, on the Upper Kur, and Imeritia and in the ;

period of weakness that followed it began to look for

help to Russia. As early as 1492, a king of Kakhitia
invoked the Czar Ivan III., and in 1638 the king of
Imeritia swore fealty to Alexis Mihailovitch. The
famous treaty of Kainardji in 1774 (about which we
have had so many lively discussions) placed Georgia,
2
Imeritia, and Mingrelia, under the protection of Russia.
However, the coup de grace was given by the invasion
of the Persians, under Aga Mohammed Khan, in

1795, which reduced Georgia to such wretchedness

that the reigning king George made over his dominions
to Alexander and the country was finally
I. in 1799,
3
occupied by Russian troops in i8o2. One sees traces
of a sort of feudal period in the numerous castles ;

most of them mere_ square towers, such as we see on

the coast of Scotland and the north of Ireland, which

1
Stories of Kir (or Kara = Black) Oghlu are told all about the country.

One, localised in Armenia, represents him as meeting a party of travellers,

and among them one with pistols (then lately invented) stuck in his
belt. He asks what those things are, and, when their use is explained
to him, exclaims, "Farewell, Kir Oghlu, your occupation is gone,"
rides off into the mountains, and is never more seen.
2 '
See this treaty in the appendix to Mr. Hollands' Lecture on the
Treaty Relations of Russia and Turkey.'
3
Russia, however, did not acquire Imeritia till 1810, the Mingrelian
coast till 1829 (by the treaty of
Adrianople), the Caspian coast south o
the mouth of the Kur till 1813, and the valley of the Middle Araxes till
1828. She had already obtained from Persia in 1797 Daghestan and
Shirvan as far as the Kur mouth.
I 2
102 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

lie scattered all over Georgia and Imeritia ;

and the
organization of society was feudal till quite lately, the
peasantry serfs, the upper class landowning nobles and
their dependants. joke among the Russians
It is a

that every Georgian is a noble and as the only title of

;

nobility is Prince, the effect to an English ear of hear-

ing of obscure people, country postmasters,
all sorts

droshky drivers, sometimes even servants, described

as being Prince So-and-so, is at first grotesque. This
at least may be said for the numerous nobility, that,
although it is both vain and frivolous, it does not

despise honest occupations.

all

Everyone has heard of the Georgian beauties, who

in the estimation of Turkish importers rivalled or sur-

passed those of Circassia itself. Among them a great

many handsome and even some beautiful faces may
certainly be seen, regular and finely chiselled features,
a clear complexion, large and liquid eyes, an erect

carriage, in which there is a good deal of dignity as

well as of voluptuousness. To a taste, however,
formed upon Western models, mere beauty of features
and figure, without expression, is not very interesting ;

and these faces have seldom any expression. They

want even that vivacity which, in the parallel case of
the women of Andalusia, partly redeems the absence
of intelligence. Admirable as pieces of Nature's
handiwork, they are not charming. Turk may A
think them perfection, but it may be doubted whether

anyone who had seen the ladies of Cork or Baltimore

would take much pleasure in their society. However,
this is a point on which people will disagree to the
 TRANSCAUCASIA. 1 03

end of time ;
and those who hold that it is enough to
look at a beauty without feeling inclined to talk to
her need not go beyond Georgia to find all they can
wish. It must be remembered, however, that this

loveliness is rather fleeting. Towards middle life the

complexion is apt to become sallow, and the nose and
chin rather too prominent, while the vacuity of look
remains. One istold that they are, as indeed the
whole nation is, almost uneducated, with nothing but
the pettiest personal interests to fill their thoughts
or animate their lives.
The men are sufficiently good-looking and pleasing
in manner, with, perhaps, a shade of effeminacy in

their countenances, at least in those of thfe lowland.

They do not strike one as a strong race, either physic-

ally or otherwise, with any future before it, nor have

they ever produced a great man, or done anything

considerable in history, although they have had
civilization and Christianity, after a sort, ever since
the third century of our era, and have maintained
their religion and national existence with great tenacity

against both Turks and Persians. So early as the

sixth century, Procopius compliments the Iberians

(who are doubtless the ancestors of our Georgians) on

their resolute adherence to Christian rites in spite of
1
the attacks of the Persian fire-worshippers, who, it may
be remarked in passing, seem to have been the first to

1
Kobad, the reigning king of Persia, whose supremacy the Iberians
then owned, had tried to force them over to his faith, and began by
ordering them to desist from burying their dead, and to adopt the
Persian practice of exposing the dead body to the birds and beasts.
They refused, and sought help from the Romans (Procop. Pers. i. 12).
IO4 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

set theexample of religious persecution. The Muslims

say that the Christianity of the Georgians is owing to
their fondness for wine and
both which good
for pork,

things, as everybody knows, the Prophet has forbidden

to true believers. They belong, of course, to the
Orthodox Eastern Church, and are now in full com-
munion with the Church of Russia, of which indeed
they may be said to have become a branch, though
their liturgy differs a little in some points. During
the earlier middle ages I suspect that they were more
influenced by heterodox Armenia than by Constanti-

nople,though they separated from the Armenian

Church in the end of the sixth century, when the
latter finally anathematized the Council of Chalcedon.
Their ecclesiastical alphabet, for they have two, is
taken from the Armenian. Of their number it is diffi-
cult to form an estimate ;
it can hardly exceed 500,000
1
souls, and may be considerably less.

Scattered through Upper Georgia, and to be found

among the peasantry as well as in the towns, there is

a considerable Armenian population, who probably
settled here when their national kingdom was de-

stroyed by the Seljukian conquerors, Alp Arslan and

Malek Shah, in the eleventh century. Farther south,
in Armenia proper, they constitute the bulk of the
population in the country districts, Kurds being mixed
with them in the mountains, Tatars in the plains, and
Persians in the towns. As I shall have something to

say of them in .a later chapter, it is unnecessary to

1
The total number of the Grusinian race, including Imeritians and

Mingrelians, is estimated by a recent Russian statistician of authority

at 850,000.
 TRANSCAUCASIA. 105

describe them at present, further than to remark that

they are the most vigorous and intelligent of the
Transcaucasian races, with a gift for trade which has
enabled them to get most of the larger business of
the country into their hands. Their total number in
these countries is estimated at 550,000.
Going down the Kur from Tiflis towards the Caspian,
one finds the Georgians give place to a
the Russians call Tatars, and who are
a branch of the great Turkic family,

they settled here, no one can precisel

seems likely the earliest immigration
north, along the Caspian coast. There is
that the Emperor Heraclius, in his long war with
Persia in the middle of the seventh century, called
in to his aid the Khazars, a Scythian tribe, from
the Caspian steppe north of Derbend. Probably
these Khazars were the first Turks who settled on this
side the mountains ;
but many others must have come
in afterwards from the south-east at the time of the
great Seljukian conquests in the eleventh century.
Veritable Turks these fellows certainly are, quite
unlike the mongrel race who go by the name of the
Turks in Europe, and much more resembling, in face,

figure, and character, the pure undiluted Turkman of

Khiva and the steppes of the Jaxartes. Being in some
districts a settled and industrious race, they are, how-

ever, less wild-looking than the Turkmans, and remind

one more of the grave and respectable Tatar of Kazan
or the Crimea. Their villages, often mere burrows in
the dry soil, are scattered all over the steppe eastward
106 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

to the Caspian, and southward as far as the Persian

frontier. Many are agricultural, many more live by

their sheep and cattle, which in summer are driven up
towards the Armenian mountains and in winter return

to the steppe ;
and some of them, settled in the larger

towns, practise various handicrafts, and among others

weave those rich carpets and other woollen fabrics
which pass in the markets of Europe under the name
of Persian, but really come from the south-west shores
of the Caspian.
The Tatars are also the general carriers of the

country. On the few roads, or oftener upon the open

steppe, one sees their endless trains of carts, and more

rarely their strings of camels, fetching goods from
Shemakha, or Baku, or Tavriz, to Tiflis, thence to be

despatched over the Dariel into Southern Russia, or

by railway to Poti and Western Europe. The last of
their occupations, the one in which they most excel,
and which they have almost to themselves, is brigand-
age. To what extent it cannot attempt
prevails, I
to say, for, as every traveller knows, there is no subject,

not even court scandal, on which one hears such an

immense number of some of them obviously
stories,

exaggerated, many them honestly related, most of

of
them absolutely impossible to test. If we had believed

a quarter part of what the quidnuncs of Tiflis told us,

we should have thought the country seriously dis-

turbed, and travelling, especially by night, full of

peril. If we had gone by our own experience, we

should have pronounced the steppes of the Kur a
great deal safer than Blackheath Common. Stories
 TRANSCAUCASIA. IO/

were always being brought into the city, and even

appearing in the papers, of robberies, sometimes of
murders, committed on the roads to EHzavetpol and
Erivan and along the latter road, we found the folk
;

at the post stations with imaginations ready to see a

Tatar behind every bush. Even the Russian officials

at Tiflis, who of course desired to make little of any-

thing that reflects on the vigilance of the government,

advised us to be careful where we halted, and how we

displayed any valuables. I cannot help believing, there-

fore, that robberies do sometimes occur, and no doubt
it is the Tatars, or at least bands led by a Tatar chief,

who perpetrate them. But the substantial danger is

not really more than sufficient to give a little piquancy
to travelling, and make you fondle your pistols with
the air of a man who feelshimself prepared for an

emergency. In a dull country, far removed from the

interests and movements of the Western world, the
pleasure of life is sensibly increased when people have
got the exploits of robbers to talk about. It is a

subject level with the meanest imagination ;

the idle

Georgian noble and the ignorant peasant enjoy it as

heartily as Walter Scott himself.

Some of the tales related about these robbers re-
mind one of the legends of Robin Hood and other
high-minded outlaws, who relieved the rich in order

to relieve the poor. It is told, for instance, of Dali

Agha, who seems to be at this moment the most
famous of these brigand chiefs, that, being in love
with the daughter of a man of substance, her father
refused to give her to him except for a large sum of
IO8 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

money. Dali was poor, but brave and sanguine ;

he
demanded two years time to collect it, and when the
father promised to wait for so long, he took to the
road to collect the sum by robbery and though the ;

faithless father had married the girl to another suitor

before the appointed time, he liked the profession so
well that he has not quitted it. 1 He is at the head
of a large band, and directs them to use all possible

courtesy towards their victims, who are never killed

except in case of necessity. Out of his plunder he
gives freely to the poor, and is so much beloved that
no one will betray him ; once, while Cossacks were
scouring the country after him, he was living quietly
in Erivan under the governor's nose. physician in A
government employment was travelling towards Eli-
zavetpol to inspect the hospitals of his district, when
he saw two suspicious persons on horseback a little
way off, and drove faster on. As he turned the corner
of a hill, three more appeared, and then a band, whose

leader rode forward and wished him good evening.

"
Good evening," replied the doctor, who recognised
"
the bandit. I you are in want of money
perceive ;

well, I haven't got much, only some hundred roubles ;

"
here they are in my I see you are a good
trunk."
"
man," says Dali on what business are you tra-
;

velling?" The doctor explains that he is going to

visit a hospital, and needs some little money to reach

it, so begs Dali to let him have a couple of roubles,

which will pay for the post-horses thither. " You shall
1
A was told of the robber Arsen many years ago ; so I
similar tale
dare say it isa stock incident, applied to every famous robber in turn,
and may (who knows ?) be a form of the Sun and Dawn myth.
 TRANSCAUCASIA. 109

have Dali answered, and, taking them from his

fifty,"
"
followers, who had opened the trunk, here they are
for you. And on your way back, stop at this place ;

my men will meet you and bring you to me you ;

shall be my guest for the night."

Another time, some of the band seized a poor
priest, who was travelling home with twenty-five
roubles, which he had scraped together as a dowry
for his daughter. Fearing for his life, he gives them
the money, and is led to Dali, whom he finds in a
thick wood, seated on a carpet-spread divan. Dali,
seeing him to be a priest, receives him with respect
there is a good feeling between Mohammedans and

Christians in some parts of these countries makes

him sit down, offers him
sweetmeats, and a pipe,
coffee,
and hears the story of the dowry for the daughter's
marriage. He apologizes for the conduct of his men,
and, pointing to the bales of precious stuffs that lie
around, bids the captive take out of them the worth
of twenty-five roubles. The priest does so, and, finding
that the robbers are not watching him, he pockets a

good deal more, thinking, I suppose, that he was

spoiling the Egyptians, and makes off with his booty.
However, he is pursued and caught by some of the
band,who had not understood that he was to be
favourably treated. Brought back before Dali, he is
in terror lest they should discover how much he has
taken, and flings himself down to beg for his life.
Dali interrupts him, repeats that he is sorry anything
was taken from so poor a man. " It was an unfor-
tunate mistake, but mistakes will sometimes occur,
IIO TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

and you must pardon it. Here, however, are twenty-

five roubles ;
it is my gift to your daughter for her

marriage portion ; give them to her from Dali Agha

and go in peace."
Whatever truth there is in such stories as these, they
show the way in which the country people regard the
robbers, and explain why brigandage still holds its
ground against the efforts of the government. Some
people give another reason, and say that the inferior
do not care to put it down, but take a share of
officials

the spoils, and sometimes, when they have caught a

notable robber, release him for a good round ransom
which his friends will always pay. This I believe to
be a calumny, though of course such a thing may
have occurred once and again the chief difficulty in ;

the wayof putting down brigandage is the vicinity

of the Persian and Turkish dominions, into which
marauders can easily escape, and whence the bands
are constantly recruited by all sorts of adventurous

spirits, who have lived under a government so bad

that lawlessness seems justified. Take them all in all,

these brigands, if they are not, as one of my informants

"
said, fine fellows who mean no harm," are evidently
much better fellows than the members of their pro-
fession in Sicily or Greece, and deserve to be ranked
with Dick Turpin or Claude Duval. Very different
are the Turkman robbers who infest the road from
the Caspian to Teheran, or those still fiercer tribes,
described by Vambery, in the deserts of Khorassan
and Bokhara, who carry off into cru'el slavery all whom
they do not kill on the spot.
 TRANSCAUCASIA. 1 1 1

Besides these four nations, and the Armenians who

live scattered among them, there are plenty of Persians
in Transcaucasia, especially towards the south-west
angle of the Caspian, and on the Aras, beyond Erivan,
a region which Russia acquired from Persia only in
1828. They are singularly unlike the Tatars, whose
enemies they have been ever since the mythic times
of Sohrab and Rustum, and have an even deeper
cause of hatred than this old one of race, for while
some of the Tatars, like the Osmanli Turks and the

Turkmans, are Sunni Mohammedans, the Persians are

Shiahs, who reject and abominate the three first
Khalifs and honour Ali almost as much as the

Prophet himself. Here, however, they live

peaceably
enough together. The Tatar mostly tall and robust,
is

with a round face, rather prominent cheekbones, a

short nose, and small eyes. The Persian is slim, lithe,

stealthy and cat-like in his movements ;

his face is

long, of a clear yellowish tint, his eyes dark and rather

large, nose aquiline, eyebrows delicately arched. The
Tatar is inclined to be open ;
he is faithful to his

word, and more inclined to force than to fraud ;

the
Persian has the name of being the greatest liar in the
East "In Iran no man believes another" has be-
come in these countries almost a proverb. With
these moral disadvantages, the Persians are no doubt
in many ways a superior race, industrious and polished
even in the dregs of their civilization, after centuries
of tyranny and misgovernment. In their time they

produced great men, rulers such as Kai Khosru (the

just Nushirvan) and Shah Abbas the Great ; poets
 112 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

like Firdusi and Omar Khayyam metaphysicians ;

whose names are hardly known in the West. Their

carpets and silks and metal work are still full of ex-
quisite taste and finish. But modern Persia, from all
that one can hear, is more execrably misgoverned than
Turkey itself. The duty of the governor of a pro-
vince or town is simply to squeeze as much money
as he can out of the inhabitants ;
his methods are the
bastinado, impalement, crucifixion, burying up to the
neck in the ground, and similar tortures.
Besides these aboriginal races, Georgians, Imeri-

tians, and Armenians, and the incomers of old stand-

ing,such as Tatars and Persians, 1 there is what may

be called a top-dressing of recent immigrants from
Europe, mostly Russians and Germans. The Rus-
sians, with one exception, consist of the officials, who

generally consider Russia as their home, almost as

our Indian civilians consider England, and intend to
return to it when their work is over. The exception
is formed by the various sects of dissenters whom
the government, fearing their
disturbing political
and social influence, has banished, or at least trans-

ferred, to these remote seats. They are mostly in-

dustrious, well-disposed people, morally, if not intel-

lectually, above the level of the rest of the peasantry,

who live in large villages, exactly like those of Central
Russia, and keep themselves quite apart from the
surrounding native population. Still more distinct

are the Germans, of whom there are several colonies,

1
A
recent Russian statistical estimate gives the number of Turks and
Persians in Transcaucasia at 790,000, that of the Steppe-Tatars at
90,000.
 TRANSCAUCASIA. 113

the largest, established in Tiflis, numbering some

four or five thousand souls. They came hither from

Wiirtemberg about sixty years ago, driven out by an

obnoxious hymn-book. In respect of education and
intelligence, they are of course far above any of the
natives, while their Protestantism prevents them from

intermarrying with, and therefore from sensibly affect-

ing, their Russian neighbours. They have lost, if they
ever possessed, the impulse of progress ;
their own
farms are the best in the country, and their handi-
craftsmen in Tiflis superior to the Georgians or Per-
sians but they are content to go on in their old
;

ways, not spreading out from the community, not

teaching or in any way stimulating the rest of the
population.
All these races live together, not merely within
the limits of the same country, a country politically
and physically one, but to a great extent actually
on the same soil, mixed up with and crossing one
another. In one part Georgians, in another Ar-
menians, in a third Tatars, predominate but there ;

are large districts where Armenians and Georgians,

or Armenians, Georgians, and Tatars, or Tatars and

Persians, or Persians, Tatars, and Armenians, are so

equally represented in point of numbers that it is
hard to say which element predominates. This
phenomenon so strange to one who knows only the
homogeneous population of West European countries,
or of a
country like America, where all sorts of
elements are day by day being flung into the melt-
ing-pot, and lose their identity almost at once comes
114 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

out most noticeably in the capital of Transcaucasia,

the city of Tiflis. Here six nations dwell together in
a town smaller than Brighton, and six languages are
constantly, three or four more occasionally, to be heard
in the streets. Varieties of dress, religion, manners,
and physical aspect correspond to these diversities of
race.

The traveller's or lingua franca of

interpreter's
Eastern and Southern Transcaucasia and the Cauca-
sus generally is what the Russians call Tartar (or
rather Tatar), but what we should call Turkish, as it
differs from the Osmanli of Constantinople only in

being somewhat rougher, and having adopted fewer

foreign words. The official language, and that which
in a civilized city like Tiflis is usually the general
means of intercourse between persons of different
nationalities, Russian, which, in spite of its difficulty,
is

is learnt and spoken by a great many Armenians and

Persians, and by most of the German colonists. In

Georgia and the region farther west, Imeritia
itself

and Georgian carries one pretty well

Mingrelia,
through, the dialects of these peoples apparently

belonging to the same parent stock.

These peoples inhabit the more or less level country
south of the Caucasus. Besides them, there is a mul-
titude of mountain tribes of whom I have said some-

thing in the last preceding chapter, but who are far

too numerous and too diverse in their character to be
described at length. Probably nowhere else in the
world can so great a variety of stocks, languages, and
religions be found huddled together in so narrow an
 TRANSCAUCASIA. 1 1 5

area as in the Caucasian chain between the Euxine

and the Caspian. It is as if every nation that passed
from north to south, or west to east, had left some
specimens of people here behind to found a kind
its

of ethnological museum. Of many of these tribes

especially of those inhabiting Daghestan and the
Eastern Caucasus generally, hardly anything is
known, that is, scientifically known I : doubt if an
enumeration of them exists in any book.
All these tribes and regions, both of the mountain
and of the plain, have now accepted the rule of
Russia. The country is quiet from sea to sea. Save
for an occasional outbreak among the Suans when
the tax-gatherer or land-surveyor makes his appear-
ance, one may travel unharmed through mountain and
plain with a small escort, or perhaps unescorted alto-
gether. It is surprising enough when one remembers

how unsafe places nearer home are, and how long it

took to suppress private war and brigandage in civi-
lized Europe. The Russian military organization de-
serves part of the credit, but even more is to be
attributed to the sort of simplicity of manners which
many of these tribes retain, to the absence of tra-
vellers to be plundered, to the isolation in which they
live, separated from the world and one another by
prodigious mountain masses. Some of them are

pagans to this day, and others who, like the Suans,

call themselves Christians, have preserved nothing of

it but the internal arrangements of a church and one
or two ceremonies whose meaning has been long since

forgotten. Often they mix it with paganism, much in

K
Il6 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
the fashion of the Tcheremiss of whom Mr. Wallace
tellsthe story that he sacrificed a foal to the Virgin

Mary. There is a wonderful deal to be done in in-

vestigating the customs and beliefs, as well as the
languages, of these people, and it is surprising to find
that so few of those assiduous Germans who explore
every corner of human knowledge should have been
at work here.
That Russian influence, bringing science and civiliza-
tion in its should not have penetrated the
train,
hidden nooks of these mountains, may well be under-
stood. is less prepared to find how little it has
One
changed the accessible regions of Georgia and Min-

grelia, where, although the capital is a little Paris m

its way, the country parts remain much what they

were a century ago. The reason, however, soon dis-

closes itself to a traveller, that Russian government is
before all things military. The first object thought of
is the movement of troops, the organization of the

army, the planting of fortresses and barracks. This

was natural and necessary while the war in the Cau-
casus lasted, but since 1864, when the Tcherkesses of
the west submitted, the same system seems to have
been maintained. Such roads as have been made,
and they are few, were made almost wholly for mili-

tary purposes, and a sort of military

atmosphere still
pervades all Transcaucasia. While the Dariel military
road cost ^4,000,000, and Daghestan is traversed by
two or three beautiful lines of road with iron bridges
over the torrents, of European
many fertile parts
Russia are almost without any means of internal
communication. An enormous army, something like
 TRANSCAUCASIA. 1 1/

150,000 men, iskept in these provinces always on a

war footing. Upon this force the government has had
to spend vast sums, and consequently there has been
neither the money nor the thought and care that are
needed to bestow upon the material development of
the land and the intellectual development of the
people. Nor is this a process for which the Russians
have yet proved themselves to have a gift. They
have a wonderfully elaborate system of government,
but the machinery is so complicated that the force is

spent in making it move at all, and hardly reaches

the material to be acted upon. The effect, therefore,

considered as a means of improvement, is small in

proportion to the cost (poorly as the employes are paid)

and to the number of officials at work. And the civil
service loses that sense of initiative which is so precious
in half civilized countries. They go on working their

bureaux among these Asiatics much as if they were

in Novgorod or Riga, forgetting that what is wanted

isnot to maintain the existing state of things, but to

improve it, to enlighten and stimulate these back-

ward races.

For some time past the whole Caucasus (i.e. both

Transcaucasia and the governments immediately
north of the mountains) has formed a separate ad-
ministrative division of the Russian empire, governed

by a lieutenant who is directly responsible to the

Czar.
1
The present lieutenant is the Grand Duke
1
Transcaucasia and Daghestan consist of the following six govern-
ments, whose respective populations I append : Tiflis, 650,000 ;
Erivan, 436,000 ;
Eliza vetpol, 503,000 ; Baku, 486,000 ; Kutais,
650,000 ; Daghestan, 450,000.
K "2
IlS TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

Michael, a brother of Alexander II., who succeeded

in 1867 to Prince Bariatinski, the conqueror of Shamyl.
Like all, or nearly all, of the imperial family, he is per-
sonally courteous and popular, and is said to discharge
his official duties well. The higher offices, both mili-
tary and civil, are of course filled by Russians, many
of them, as everywhere in the empire, of German ex-

traction, or else by Armenians. All

subjects, however,
are admissible to office has been long a tradition
;
this

of Russian administration, and it is no doubt' one

reason of its success in conciliating the good-will of
its subjects, wherever there has not been, as in the
dismal case of Poland, a vehement race and religious
hatred to begin with between conquerors and con-

quered. The sort of good-nature and susceptibility

to impressions whichmarked a
is so feature in the
: Russian character makes them get on far better with

strange races than either we, or the Dutch, or the

Spaniards, have ever been able to do. It is not occa-
sional acts of cruelty, it is not even a permanently

repressive system, that makes conquerors hated nearly

so much as coldness, hauteur, contempt, an incapacity
to appreciate or sympathize with a different set of
customs and ideas. Doubtless the English govern
India far better than the Russians do their Asiatic
dominions. That is to say, we do more to promote
the welfare of the people and administer a pure justice,
and we hold ourselves far more impartial in religious
matters. For though Russia does not interfere with
Islam, and has the prudence to respect the Armenian
Church, she is hostile to both Roman Catholic and
 TRANSCAUCASIA. IIQ

Protestant missions, and does her best to advance her

own church in every way. Nevertheless there does
not seem to be either in the Caucasian countries or in
the south and east of European Russia, where so

many strange races live beneath the sceptre of the

Czar, nearly so much bitterness of feeling among the

subjects as there is towards ourselves in India, or to

the French in Algiers now, and in the West Indies

formerly. Perhaps this is partly because the Russians

leave their subjects more to themselves, while we try
to improve them and the fact that in Georgia there
:

is no distinction of faith or of colour between the

two races has something to do with it. The Tatar
Mohammedans, however, do not seem to have any-
thing to complain of, either here or at Kazan on the
Volga, where so many of them live, and one never
hears that they are disaffected to the Czar, in spite
of the long strife of the middle ages and the fanati-
cism of the Russian peasantry. So that, after all,
there seems to be a good deal in the difference of
manner with which we and they behave to inferior
races. With us, every word and look betray a sense
of immeasurable superiority. Sometimes we are
brusque, sometimes we are politely condescending,
but we are always at bottom contemptuous, and con-
tempt makes deeper wounds than violence. In India
and China the fault naturally reaches its climax, but
the whole continent of Europe can hardly be wrong
in accusing us of a milder form of it indeed, every ;

Englishman who is honest with himself must admit

that whenever he travels in a foreign country, aye
I2O TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

even in France or Italy, he is conscious of some

stirrings of this haughty insular spirit. The Spaniards

are more offensive in this regard than ourselves ;

among the Romans there must have been plenty of

it in their era of conquest ;
the Americans, with all

their self-complacency, are comparatively free from it.

But the Russians have really very little of it.

Perhaps
they would be stronger if they had more ;
but at any
rate its absence largely covers or atones for some of
their defects as a conquering and governing power.
The upshot of this digression is that Transcaucasia
is on the whole a fairly contented and peaceable part
of the Czar's dominions, and that this is due partly to
the apathy of the Russians, partly to their good-
nature, partly to their being in religious matters in

sympathy with the faith of so large a part of their

subjects. Last autumn, when war with Turkey was

daily expected, no one seemed to have any fear of an
insurrection even among the Lesghians, though it is

only some twenty years since they used to swoop

down from the mountains and carry off landowners
from their country-houses a few stages out of Tiflis.
Since Shamyl's surrender in 1859, there has been but
one attempt at a rising in Daghestan, and that speedily
ended by the head of the leader being sent by his own
people to the Russians at Tiflis. As I write these
lines, news comes of a disturbance among the Moham-
medan Tchetchens, who live to the north of the Cau-

casus, south-east of Vladikavkaz. It is hardly likely

to prove serious and the idea which some people in
;

Europe seem to entertain of its spreading westward

 TRANSCAUCASIA. 121

to the Black Sea, where the Turks are said to have

effected a landing, and of a general rising among the
Caucasian tribes, is too wild to deserve refutation.
The Circassians, whom the Turks are supposed to be

endeavouring to excite, hardly exist in this country ;

they perished or emigrated in 1864; the Abhasians,

who are left along the coast about Sukhum, are few
and inert ;
the Imeritians, Mingrelians, and Gurians
towards Batum, are Christians, a people not much
anybody, and certainly not against
inclined to fight for
the Czar among the remaining tribes there is no
;

community in race, language, or religion which could

enable them to co-operate were they ever so dis-
affected. The only thing that could make an insur-
rection among any of them dangerous to Russian
movements would be a seizure of the Dariel military-
road, and of that there is no likelihood.
The same laws, the same mechanism of courts,
the same educational system, omitting diversities
of detail, obtain in these provinces as in European
Russia. The
great emancipation of the serfs, which
here took place on the 1st of December, 1866, was
carried out much upon the same lines as elsewhere ;

the peasantry of Georgia and Mingrelia, where serf-

dom prevailed from the middle ages downwards,
are now all free, and the ancient, semi-feudal juris-
dictions of the Mingrelian and Imeritian nobles have
been replaced by the new-modelled Russian courts.
Practically, indeed, education is still more backward
than it is in Europe. There are comparatively few
elementary schools ; the upper schools are said to
122 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
be poor, and are much hampered by difficulties of
language, for the school-books in every subject are
Russian, though Russian is a foreign tongue to the
immense majority of the pupils. There is no uni-
versity nearer than Kharkof or Odessa the necessity ;

for one in Tiflis is admitted, but the money is not

forthcoming, since considerable salaries would be

needed to tempt learned men so far from home, and
all the money that can be
got is wanted for the army
and railways. Of one of course expects to
literature,
find very little, and except in the capital there is no

public to care for it. Agriculture is much what it

may have been five centuries ago, witness the imple-
ments used. The plough is a ruder contrivance than
that which Hesiod describes ;
no wonder that a large
team needed to drag it through the hard dry earth.
is

Just outside the houses of Tiflis I have seen no less

than sixteen oxen yoked to a single plough. The
want of a market discourages improvements in tillage,

as well as trade generally, for although there is a rail-

way to the Black Sea, with steamers thence to Odessa

and Constantinople, as well as one or two great roads
through the country, such as that to Erivan, there are
no roads of the second order to bring produce to the
railway from places lying even a few miles away.
The manufactures, as already remarked, are mostly
of what we should call Persian goods, or of arms,
which the Georgians chase most tastefully, and other
articles in metal, silver flagons, belts, daggers, and so
forth. Things needed for ordinary life, such as cut-
lery, crockery, glass, paper, cotton goods, are mostly
 TRANSCAUCASIA. 123

brought from European Russia. What export trade

there is and it is not, considering the resources to be
drawn upon, of any great consequence is mostly in
carpets and silks, made in the Tatar country towards
the Caspian or among the Persians of Lenkoran,
naphtha from Baku, and woods, especially box-wood
and walnut roots, from Mingrelia and the south-west
slopes of the Caucasus. Nature has made the country
rich,but the course of events has not brought to it
that which a country needs to develop its riches, capital
and enterprise. Both must come from without, and at
present Russia can spare neither. Her capital is all
wanted at home her peasants, except some sects of
;

dissenters who have been deported hither by the

Czars, have not crossed the mountains to colonize,
nor are they the sort of colonists that change the face
of a ^country as Americans do. They are uneducated,
attached to their old ways, unreceptive of new ideas
even in a new land.
If it is hard to convey an impression of the general

character of Transcaucasia, the reason possibly is that

it has not one general character, but two or three. It
is like a mixed tissue, whose colour seems to vary

according as the light falls this way or that upon it.

There is no place in
Europe except Constantinople,
and probably few places in the world, where one feels
in the middle, so to speak, of so many cross-currents,
so many diverse associations of the past and possibili-
ties for the future.
Perhaps this puzzling, pleasing
complexity, creating a desire to predict as well as to
explain, and a sense of the difficulty of prediction, is
124 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

the thing which makes the country so full of interest.

It is Eastern Eastern not only in the dry, bare glow-
ing landscape (I speak chiefly of the Caspian, basin),
but in the look of the villages, the bazaars, the agri-
culture, the sense of immobility. Yet many Oriental
features are wanting. It is Christian, to begin with.
The ruined castles of the nobility, with peasants'

dwellings clustering beneath them, have an air of

Western feudalism. In the large towns, and along the
great roads, one feels the influence of Russia, and the
influence of Russia, superficially at least, suggests the
influence of France. The streets are filled with men
in uniform the hotels,
;
where the town
big enough
is

to have more than a wretched duchan, or public-house,

are kept by Frenchmen. You have intelligence and
polish in the towns, and in the country the blankest

ignorance and the most primitive rudeness. The

telegraphic wire runs along a road on each side of
which there lie regions almost unexplored, whose in-
habitants worship unknown deities and speak unknown

tongues. This contrast gives all the idea of a new

country, like Western America or one of our colonies ;

yet here one feels at every step that the country is old,
with a civilization which, though it never blossomed,
never quite withered up, a civilization older than our
own. Seeing the ancient churches and castles, most
of which have some legend attached to them (though
such legends are as seldom poetical as they are trust-
worthy), one has an odd sort of sense of being in a
country which has had a history, but a history that
never emerged from twilight, which nobody knows,
 TRANSCAUCASIA. 125

and which is perhaps hardly worth the knowing. In

Eastern Russia and Siberia you acquiesce in the fact
that there never was any history the past is a blank,
;

and must remain so. In Asia Minor, on the other

hand, you are within the circle of Greek and Roman
civilizationeverybody, from Herodotus downwards,
;

has something to tell of its cities and peoples. But

Georgia, and the regions immediately round it, have
been always the frontier land of light and dark-
ness, a battlefield of hostile empires and religions ;

first of the Roman

empire and the Persians, then of
Christianity and fire-worship, then of Christianity and
Islam, then of Persians and Turks, lastly of Russia

against both the Sultan and the Shah. One finds

traces in the buildings and the art of the people of
all these influences of the Greek traders who fre-

quented the markets of the Euxine of the Byzantine ;

emperors, who held sometimes more, sometimes less

of the country, Justinian having pushed forward his

garrisons as far as the Upper Kur and Heraclius as

far down as Tavriz ;
of the Genoese, who monopolized
the Black Sea trade in the later days of Byzantine
rule, and had their settlements all round its coasts of ;

the Persians and Armenians, who came as conquerors

or immigrants. There is a wonderful harvest awaiting
the archaeologist here, and the labourers are still few.
With this curious sense of a complex and almost
unexplored past, the traveller has a still stranger

feeling of perplexity as to the future. Transcaucasia

is so rich by nature, so important by position, that

nobody can doubt it has a considerable part to play

126 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

in history. What will that part be ? Are commerce

and culture likely to advance ? Can Russia maintain
her hold on these peoples ? Will they themselves be
melted down into one nation, and if so, what is the
element, out of the many now contending, that will
ultimately prevail ?
So far, little or no assimilation among the various
races of the country has taken place. In the towns

they get somewhat more mixed together as trade

grows and communications are opened up. But they
are not fused, and with one insignificant exception

they do not seem on the way to become fused. For

this there are several obvious causes. The chief races
are in point of numbers pretty equally balanced, so
that no one of them is able to absorb the other.
Neither is any one sufficiently superior in intellect
and force of character to take the lead and impress
its type upon the whole mass. The Russians, as
being the rulers and the most civilized, might be ex-

pected to be able to effect this, but it must be remem-

bered that they are not very numerous, consisting
only of the upper officials, of the soldiers, who are a
transitory element in the population, and of some
isolated settlements of dissenting peasants. Moreover,
they are not thoroughly civilized themselves, and
cannot impart what they have not got. Civilization
in Russia is like a coat of paint over unseasoned

wood ; you may not at first detect the unsoundness of

the material, but test it, and it fails. A further
obstacle is to be found in the differences of language
and manners between the various Transcaucasian
 TRANSCAUCASIA. I2/

peoples, differences greater than those that separate

Frenchmen from Spaniards or even from Englishmen ;

differenceswhich might of course yield to the influ-

ences of commerce and a common participation in the

working of free institutions, but which prolong them-

selves from generation to generation under a bureau-
cratic despotism which treats the people merely as
taxpayers to be kept in order, which does something
for them, but nothing by or through them. General
compulsory service in the army, which has not yet
been introduced here, might in time diminish this sense
of separation nothing else seems likely to do so.
;

Finally, and this is the chief cause of the mutual

repulsion of the atoms, there is the religious difficulty.
It of course greatest between the Tatars, the Les-
is

ghians, Tchetchens, and other Caucasian peoples, and

the Persians, all of whom are Mohammedans of the
Sunni or Shiah persuasion, and the Christians. So far
as one can see, there is not much active Mohammedan
fanaticism in these countries ;
even among the Les-
ghians it has very much cooled down from the
heat of Shamyl's days. No one in Tiflis seemed last
autumn to fear that the Czar might be embarrassed in
any war with Turkey by the disaffection of his own
Muslem subjects. The Persians hate all Turks worse
than they hate Christians, and may even, to the
extent of their very limited power, side with Russia
in the quarrel. The Tatars are a simple folk of shep-
herds, carriers, highwaymen, with no sense of the
"
solidarity of the Turkish race," and no desire to
draw the sword against the infidel. But since religion
128 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

isthe main influence that governs the lives of these

peoples, is indeed the only intellectual life they have,

and makes customs and sympa-
itself felt in all their

thies, it erects a barrier hardly to be crossed between

them and the Christians. The Armenian peasantry
of the Araxes valley seem to live much in the same
way as their Tatar neighbours their villages are ;
little

better, nor are they less illiterate. But one never

hears of intermarriages nor any sort of rapprochement
between them. Among the Christians themselves,
the separate existence and strongly national character
of the Armenian Church keeps its children apart not

only from Protestant Germans, but from those who

own the Orthodox Eastern faith. And it is really
only where such a religious repulsion does not exist,
as, for instance, between Russians and Georgians, that

any social amalgamation goes on.

An able traveller who visited these countries several

years ago, and has written some interesting remarks

1
upon them, suggests the probability of their growing
into a Transcaucasian state independent of Russia.

Admitting that the army and the administration

of the Caucasus have already a certain amount of
distinctive character, the facts above stated seem
to oppose themselves to such a prospect. To an
observer in Tiflis now there seems hardly more likeli-

hood of a Russian hero, however able or ambitious,

making himself the sovereign of a kingdom of the
Caucasus than there is of a Viceroy of India revolting
from the English Queen.
Mr. Ashton Dilke, Review,' some years ago.
l
L
in the 'Fortnightly
 TRANSCAUCASIA. 1 29

There is no unity among these races, no common

national feeling to appeal to, nothing on which a
national kingdom could be based. Nothing, in fact,
keeps them together but the Russian army and admi-
nistration, and the loyalty of both these to the Czar
is that which keeps Russia herself together, rising as
it does almost to the dignity of a national worship.
A very extraordinary concurrence of circumstances
must be imagined to make the rebellion of a Russian

general have any prospect of success, while a peace-

able separation of these provinces, so valuable in a

strategical point of view, is even less likely. More-

over, they are every day being brought nearer and
nearer to the heart of the empire. Since the comple-
tion of the railway from Rostof on the Don to Vladi-
kavkaz at the north foot of the Caucasus, the post
which leaves Moscow on Sunday night can reach
on the Friday morning, having to traverse only
Tiflis

126 miles of road from the terminus to Tiflis itself.

The project of a railway over the mountains to super-
sede even this piece of road travelling, and to enable

troops to step into a railroad car on the Neva and

step out of it on the Kur, is not likely to be carried
out for years to come, for its cost would be
many
prodigious, and other military communications, that,
for instance, from Orenburg to Tashkend, are more

pressing. But as Southern Russia fills up by the

movement of population which is continually going
on from north to south, the Transcaucasians will
seem less and less remote, and will be connected by
more active relations of trade and social intercourse
130 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

with the European side of the Caucasus. Already

the opening of the railway to Poti on the Black Sea,
whence steamers run regularly to the Crimea and
Odessa, has made intercourse with the mother country
easier and more frequent, and strengthens the unity
of sentiment between Holy Russia and her children in
these outlying provinces.

Improbable, however, as the separation of Trans-

caucasia seems, its Russianization, in anything more

than administration, seems almost as distant. It is

not well governed, being like so much else in the
Empire both over-administered and ill-administered.
In material prosperity, in the diffusion of light,

morality, refinement, it is
advancing very slowly.
Germans, or Frenchmen, or Americans, would pro-
bably have effected far more in seventy years of occu-
pation than the Russians have done. But compare it
with the condition of Georgia or Mingrelia under their
own princes, or, still better, compare it with that of
the neighbouring territories of the Sultan or the Shah,
which are daily going back, where there is absolutely
no security for life, honour, or property, and its

fortunes appear happy indeed.

 TIFLIS. 131

CHAPTER IV.

TIFLIS.

THE capital of Transcaucasia is a type of the country.

It isa city of contrasts and mixtures, a melting-pot
into which elements have been poured from half

Europe and Asia, and in which they as yet show no

signs of combining.
It stands on the Kur, which is here a swift, turbid

stream, just above the point where it emerges from

the upland country into the great steppe that stretches

away to the Caspian. High hills of a shaly lime-

stone and schist enclose it on all sides, those on the
south rising some 800 to 1200 feet above the river.
They are not very picturesque hills, especially after
May, when the herbage on them is utterly burnt away
by the heats, and they stand out bare, brown, and
stern,with no colour except when the setting sun
bathes them for a moment in a purple glow. Even
so,however, they give the city a character one would
not like to miss. Besides, they shelter it from the
cold blasts that rush down in winter from the Cau-
casus, so that the winter climate is one of the
pleasantest in these latitudes, warm and equable,
yet not nearly so damp as that of the Black Sea
L
132 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

coast. While the steppe of the Lower Kur is covered

1

with snow and swept by bitter north-easters, consump-

tive patients can here go out all the winter through.

The mean temperature of the year is a little lower

than that of Rome, which is in the same latitude, while
the mean of the adjoining steppe is that of Northern
France. On the other hand, Tiflis is intolerably hot
and close in summer. Down in this hollow, where not
a breath of can reach you from the mountains
air

you descry, where the sun's rays are reflected from

bare slopes and white houses, where often not a
shower months together, one gasps and
will fall for

pants, one not merely scorched, but stifled.

is I have

repeatedly seen thunderstorms play all round the

town, sheets of rain descending a few miles off, and
the streets lit up at night by the
scarcely flashes, when
a drop would fall in Tiflis itself. Add to this that
the water is scarce and indifferent, and the dust truly
Oriental, easy to understand that summer is
and it is

not the time to enjoy the Transcaucasian capital.

So in summer, pretty nearly every one who can afford

it, and can get free from his official duties, makes off
to the hills. The court, that is to say, the Grand
Duke, who is the sun of this system, and his attendant

planets, the adjutants, go to Borjom, a charming spot

among wooded mountains eighty miles to the west-

north-west, in the upper valley of the Kur. Others

cross the Caucasus to Pjatigorsk or Kislovodsk,
favourite watering-places at the northern base of
Elbruz a few go by way of Odessa to Europe.
;

Towards the middle of September they begin to

J
Tiflis is 1335 feet above the sea : its annual rainfall 19 inches.
 TIFLIS. 133

return, and by November society is again in full

swing.
The hills which I have mentioned break down
pretty steeply towards the river, and it is chiefly on
the lower slope of those lying on its right or south-
western bank, which are much the higher, that the
town is built, descending in terraces towards the
river, whose course is here (speaking generally)
south-east. At the east end of the city two rocky

spurs almost meet, the Kur forcing its way in

rapids and eddies between them. On the north-
east side stands the citadel, which is now also the

prison, and the ancient Georgian cathedral behind ;

it, on a sort of terrace, are the enormous barracks.

The opposite rocks are crowned by the picturesque
ruins of a Persian fortress, whence we discover- the
long wooded line of the outermost mountains ot
Daghestan, and, in clear weather, the glittering snows
of Kazbek, rising over the watershed which divides

Europe from Asia. These irregularities of surface,

with the swift stream rushing through between pre-

cipitous banks, give a great charm to Tiflis, and

make it look much larger than it really is. The
views over it are very striking, not that the in-
dividual buildings are fine, they are nearly all
for

modern, and, like so much modern Russian work,

handsomely uninteresting but the mass of houses

;

with groves and gardens interspersed, the stern

brown setting ofthe motley throng just visible
hills,

upon the bridges, the glimpses of far-away moun-

tains, make up a coup d'ceil not easily forgotten. I

L 2
134 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

cannot recall any European city that resembles it.

People have compared it to Prague, but Prague is as
much inferior in situation as it is superior in archi-
tectural Toledo, too, has been suggested,
beauty.
but the likeness seemed to me to begin and end with

grim brown hills and a turbid stream.

Seen from above, Tiflis is one continuous city, inter-

rupted only by public or private gardens here and

there. But in reality it consists of three perfectly
distinct towns, unlike in their origin, their buildings,

their population. First, there is the Russian town, all

new, bright, showy, and, externally at least, clean. It

is on the south-west bank of the river, rising steeply

towards the hills, and is, of course, the fashionable

residential quarter, as well as the region of the best

shops, the opera-house, public offices, and so forth.

The streets are wide and straight the houses high, ;

all new-looking, and all as like one another as

in Paris or Chicago. Rows
of trees are planted
in front of European shops with plate-glass win-
dows. This part, indeed, has only grown up within
the last sixty years. Here live the court the Grand
Duke has a handsome palace fronting to the prin-
cipal street, called, in Petersburg fashion, Golo-
St.

vinski Prospekt and, indeed, pretty nearly all the

officials, besides a certain number of rich Armenians.
You might fancy yourself in Odessa, or one of the
newer and better suburbs of Moscow.
To the east of this Russian town, and lying deep
down hollow along the river, is old Tiflis, a
in the

genuine Eastern city, with its narrow crooked streets,

ill-paved or not paved at all, and houses of one or

 TIFLIS. 135

two stories only, the whole horribly dirty, yet incom-

parably more picturesque than the smart propriety
of the modern town. Each of the principal trades
has a street or streets, or a covered arcade in the
bazaar, entirely to itself thus in one street you find
:

the dealers in arms, in a second the leather-sellers, in

a third the jewellers, in a fourth the carpet merchants,
in a fifth the furriers, on whose walls hang the skins

of Caucasian bears and Hyrcanian tigers. The ground-

floor room of the house is open to the street, from
which it is generally raised a step or two here the
;

dealer squats on a piece of matting, surrounded by his

assistants, with his wares hung or stowed round the

walls behind and in the room which is visible at the

back. If he practises a handicraft, he works at it

here in the sight of all men, just as in some old-

fashioned English villages the shoemaker may still be
seen sitting in his front room open to the air, and
hammering away at a solid boot sole, much more
solid than anything that comes from an Eastern last.

Thus, as you pick your way down the lanes, jostled

into the middle by the crowd, and in the middle

nearly run over by the impetuous droshkies, you can

see the whole industry of the place in full
swing ;

bread is
being baked in one swords forged in
street,

another, cloth woven in a third. There is no depart-

ment which the artizans are particularly strong,
in

except perhaps in the making of ornamental arms,

such as pistols and daggers, and of silver cups and
flagons, the designs on which are often very beauti-
ful. One sees- a great many exposed for sale, but
136 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
I fancy the best are of some considerable age ;
nor
is there much inventiveness in the modern work-
man he goes on repeating these old models as
;
if

he were a British architect, which is perhaps, in

the present dearth of invention, the best thing he

can do. The value of the old silver goods is well
known it is little use hoping for a bargain where so
;

many Russian buyers are about, and where the sellers

are mostly Armenian. Pretty things, especially belts,
are still made in what is called niello work. The
jewellery rather disappointed us. So near Persia one
expects to see splendid turquoises at least, not to
speak of gold work emeralds and rubies, quite
abundant. Though we spent hours in the jewel-
lers' street, it is possible we may have missed
the best shops, for out of the great number of tur-

quoises shown us, though some were big, very few

were of a specially fine colour. It is true that

the small ones were considerably cheaper than in

St. Petersburg ; perhaps the finest are bought up in

Persia to be sent direct thither or to Constantinople.

The settingsare mostly very simple and uniform.
What pleased us best were the great dark rooms,
running away back from the streets, in which the

carpet dealers, most of whom are Persians or Tatars,

keep their goods stocked, the darkness being not only

pleasant in summer, but a sensible advantage to the
seller. Here a wonderful variety of all kinds of rugs,

mats, and carpets may be seen, the best, perhaps,

Persian from Tavriz and Khorassan, but plenty of
other kinds, little, if indeed at all, inferior, from
 TIFLIS. 137

Shemakha and Nukha, on the road to Baku, and

from Kurdistan and the valley of the Tigris. As
everybody carries his rug with him when he travels,
and as the rougher kinds are also used for packing
bundles of more delicate goods, there is a consider-
able consumption of such articles beyond the needs
of house furnishing, and a pretty large import
trade in them from the east and south. We bought
several and priced a great many more. Comparing
these prices with those demanded in London for
similar articles, we concluded that carpets are at Tiflis
about forty per cent, cheaper, a difference which of
course represents a good deal more than the cost of

carriage thence to England.

The crowd, noise, and bustle of this Eastern town
are at their highest on the bridge which in the middle
of it spans the Kur, whose waves, breaking against
the cliffs that enclose it, are hardly heard over the din
of voices, loud and harsh as the voices of Orientals
usually are. Hard by is the road leading to the

neighbouring eastern gate, through which all the

traffic flows in from Armenia, Persia, and the steppe ;

now a string of camels, now troops of donkeys laden

with fruit or charcoal, now the rough, slow, solid-
wheeled bullock carts of the country, now a party of
mounted Cossacks clattering over the pavement.
Piles of fruit from the German gardens strew the
ground, mixed with huge bullock-skins full of Ka-
khitian wine. From the rocks above the grim walls
of the citadel frown down, and beside them appears
the grey cupola of the most ancient among the
138 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

Georgian churches nearer, and half hidden by the

;

confused mass of houses, you see the domes and

minarets of the rival mosques of the Sunni Tatars
and the schismatic Persian Shiahs. One can hardly
believe that a Russian Paris only half a mile away.
is

Quitting this district, ascending the southern bank

of the river, and crossing it by the principal bridge,
which adorned by a statue of Prince Woronzof, the
is

famous governor of Transcaucasia, one enters a third

quarter, equally unlike either of the two I have just
been trying to describe. You forget Russia, you
forget Asia you fancy yourself on the banks of the
:

Swabian Neckar. This is the German settlement,

"
still called by everybody The Colony," which was
originally quite a distinct town, and has only in the
recent growth of Tiflis become united toit by a con-

tinuous line of houses. It is inhabited by Germans,

the descendants of emigrants who came hither from

Wiirtemberg sixty years ago, driven from their homes

by a new hymn-book which their prince insisted on
forcing upon his subjects, and which they considered
too lax in its statements of doctrine. The Russian
government, always delighted to secure industrious
and peaceable colonists, received them warmly, placed
them first near Odessa, and ultimately, at their own
wish, transferred them hither. Here they have dwelt
ever since, not increasing much in numbers, though
some few have joined them from Germany, preserving
all their old ways and habits, cherishing their Protes-

tant faith, and singing out of their dear old hymn-book.

Rows of trees run along the principal street ;
breweries
 TIFLIS. 139

and beer- gardens border it, where the honest burgher

sits at night and listens over his supper to a band, as
his cousins are doing at the same hour in the suburbs
of Stuttgart. Tidy little Fraus come out in the

evening cool to the doorsteps, and knit and chat

among their fair-haired Karls and Gretchens. They
have their own schools, far better than any which
Russian organization produces they are nearly all
;

Protestants, with a wholesome Protestant contempt

for their superstitious Georgian and Armenian neigh-
bours. They speak nothing but German among
themselves, and show little or no sign of taking to

Russian ways or letting themselves be absorbed by

the populations that surround them. It was very

curious to contrast this complete persistency of Teu-

tonism here with the extraordinarily rapid absorption
of the Germans among other citizens which one sees

going on in those towns in the Western States of

North America, where as in Milwaukee, for instance
the inhabitants are mostly German, and still speak

English with a markedly foreign accent. But of course,

when one thinks about it, the phenomenon is simple
enough. Here they are exiles from a higher civili-
zation planted in the midst of a lower one ;
there they
lose themselves among a kindred people, with whose
ideas and political institutions they quickly come to

sympathise.
Unluckily these good Swabians have done less to
diffuse their superior civilization than might have
been expected. This is said to be the case with nearly
all the German colonies on Russian soil :
they have
140 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

most of them retained their ownindustry and thrift,

while some of them, particularly the Mennonites
(who may be compared with our Quakers or Moravian
Brethren), have thriven wonderfully. But they have
not leavened and improved the general population of
the country. The difference of religion is probably at
the bottom of this separation. It prevents intermar-

riages, for there is a most objectionable law in Russia,

comparable to those which the English formerly en-
forced in Ireland, which requires the children of a
mixed marriage to be brought up in the Orthodox
Eastern faith even if neither of the parents has
belonged to that communion. And where there can
be no intermarriage, there is, after all, but little
familiar intercourse. However, I do not attempt to
explain the fact, but mention it as a curious instance
of the disappointment of what seemed a statesman-
like plan. For it was chiefly with the view of teaching

her Russian subjects habits of thrift and better modes

of agriculture that Catherine II. tempted so many
German colonies into Southern Russia ;
as it was the

example of those colonies which induced these later

ones to follow.
The German population of Tiflis may, at present,
amount to some five or six thousand souls. Most of
them are artizans, or gardeners gardening is almost

entirely abandoned to them by the lazy Georgians

only a few are shopkeepers or merchants. Of course,
most of the men of science, and a pretty good propor-
tion of government employes, belong to the Culturvolk ;
but these are mostly stray wanderers from the Baltic
 TIFLIS. 141

Provinces, or from old Germany itself, not home-bred

colonists. They are friendly, pleasant people, among
whom an Englishman soon feels himself at home, and
who are ready to show him every kindness. I should
be ungrateful indeed not to acknowledge the help
and advice we received from several among them,
and which in some cases were given by persons to
whom we had not brought introductions.

Although there are but three distinct towns in

Tiflis, there are at least six distinct nations. Besides
the Russians and Germans, of whom I have spoken
already, the Georgians, Armenians, Tatars, and
Persians, all contribute sensibly large elements to the

population. The Georgians are at home, and may

probably be the most numerous amongst the motley
;

faces in the streets their type seemed the most com-

mon. Most of them are nobles, as has been said
already, and most of them are poor they form pro- ;

bably one-third of the day labourers and servants.

As the men generally wear European coats and
trousers in the town, though in the country a dress
much like the Circassian is common among the better
class, they are not so easily recognised for Georgians
as the women, whose singular head-gear a square
cloth cap ornamented with a kind of crown, from
which there hangs down over the shoulders a long
white gauze veil makes them wonderful ornaments
of the streets. Formerly they cultivated an Oriental
reserve. I remember to have read some traveller

who, writing forty years ago, says that in the town

he could see none but old and withered faces.
142 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

They have changed all that now : no belles of Scar-

borough or Saratoga promenade a public garden with

more nonchalance than the daughters of the first Geor-
gian families in Tiflis. They are certainly a splendid
race to look at, these Georgians, both men and women,
but I doubt if they are anything more. They have
never produced anything in literature or art they ;

have never had but one remarkable man, and that

was a woman I mean Queen Tamara
they fell into ;

the hands of the Russians because they could not

resistthe effete despotism of Persia and now though ;

they do not really like the Russians, and will give you
to understand as much on the sly, I do not suppose

they would ever raise a finger against them. Perhaps

their spirit has been broken by the long and unequal

struggle which they, always a small nation, had

to maintain against such bitter foes as Turks and
Persians. One ought
to compare them, not with

European peoples, but with semi-civilized races who

have been enslaved by foreigners. And it may well
be that they have mended since the Persian yoke
was broken, and will mend still further. Certainly
they have, if the account which Chardin gives of them,
in the seventeenth century, when Tiflis was held by a
Persian garrison, was a fair one, or anything more
than one of those proverbial bits of exaggeration by
which travellers, long before the days of sensation
writing, liked to heighten the effect of their narratives.
This is what he says of our poor Georgians :

" and would

The Georgians are naturally very witty,
be as learned men and great artists as any are in the
 TIFLIS. 143

world if they had the improvements of arts and

sciences : but having a mean education and bad
examples, they are drowned in vice, are cheats and
knaves, perfidious, ungrateful, and proud. They are
irreconcileable in their enmities, for though they are
not easily provoked, they preserve their hatred in-
violable. Drunkenness and luxury are such common
vices among them that they are not scandalous in
Georgia. The churchmen will be as drunk as others :

yea and they say that he that is not drunk at their

great festivals of Easter and Christmas cannot be a
good Christian, and deserves to be excommunicated.
The women are as generally vicious as the men, and
contributemore than they to that general debauchery
which overflows the country."
The most conspicuous figures in the streets, next to
the Georgian ladies, are the clerics, whose jolly faces
are surmounted by huge cylindrical hats, from which
depend long veils of a sort of black crape, while a robe
of black serge, with immense sleeves, covers the body
to the ankles. It is curious to any one who re-
members France, Italy, or Spain, to see so many
ecclesiastical countenances in which there is neither
asceticism nor priestcraft, nor indeed any professional
expression except a sort of vacuous and self-com-
placent good-humour, the good-humour of a lazy man
who has plenty to eat and drink. When there meets
you a keener or more restless glance, you may be sure
that it comes from an Armenian eye.

The Armenians are a large and apparently an in-

creasing element of the population, easily known by

144 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

theirswarthy complexion and peculiar physiognomy.

They are the most vigorous and pushing people in
the country, and have got most of its trade into their

hands, not only the shop-keeping, but the larger mer-

cantile concerns. A
good many, too, are in the Russian
service, and have thriven in it ;
in fact, more than half
the employes in Transcaucasia are said to be Arme-
nians. Like most successful people, they are envied
and ill-spoken possibly calumniated, by their less
of,

energetic neighbours. Sharp men of business they

certainly are, thrifty, able to drive a hard bargain,
and sticking wonderfully together. Among them
there are several persons of learning and ability, and
as their education improves and their wealth in-
creases, the number of such persons is likely to
grow ;
so that altogether one seems to see a con-
siderable future before them. Although they get on
well enough with the Russians, they do not much mix
or intermarry either with them or the Germans, but
have a society of their own, which is quite self-
sufficing.
The Persians in Tiflis are said to number 10,000,
all of whom the older part of the city,
live in

to whose picturesqueness those of the better sort

add a good deal by their long dark or yellowish
brown robes and pointed hats of black lambs-
wool. Tiflis was once under direct Persian rule,

and for a much

longer time under Persian supre-
macy, so that one may believe this Iranian popu-
lation has remained here ever since, and need not

suppose any recent immigration. A few are mer-

 TIFLIS. 145

chants, driving a trade in carpets, silks, and the

other goods of their country the rest are handi-
;

craftsmen. Some trades they have almost appro-

priated, particularly that of masons, in which they
are said to excel all the other workmen of these
countries. live upon next to nothing, are
They
steady workers, and have not yet learnt to organize
strikes.

The Tatars are probably about as numerous as the

Persians, but as many of them are carriers coming

to and from the Caspian coast and Persia, they
fro

are more a floating than a settled population. They

are all poor people, have a good name for industry

and sobriety, do a great deal of the unskilled labour,

and keep all the baths, an important profession in
an Eastern city. All are of course Mohammedans,
some of the Sunni persuasion but a probably large
;

number, especially of those from the Persian border,

are Shiahs.
Besides these six leading races, Tiflis is full of all

sorts of nondescript people from different parts of the

Caucasus. The nurses are all, we hear, Ossetes

Georgian women object to domestic service and

thus many children grow up able to speak that

interesting language, which used to be thought near

of kin to the Teutonic tongues, though their identi-
fication with the Germans, which rested only on two

or three words, and a taste for a liquor something

like beer, has now been abandoned.
Imeritians, Mingrelians, and even Abhasians from
the Black Sea coast, not unfrequently come here
146 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

looking for work ; occasionally one recognises the

delicate aquiline features and keen eyes of a Lesghian,
armed to the teeth, from the mountains of Daghestan.
Even Europe not wholly unrepresented, for although
is

there are very few Italians or English of the latter I

met three only one a Russianized photographer, the
:

second an agent of the Bible Society, and the third a

new arrival, who had started a general store, and was
doing a rattling business in cutlery and bitter beer
there are, besides Poles, plenty of Frenchmen, hotel-

keepers, upholsterers, dyers and cleaners of cloth, con-

fectioners, and, above all, hairdressers. So strangely
mixed a population it would be hard to
find any-

where, even in the East. You

never can guess what

language the men who pass you in the street are

talking it may be any one of some eight or nine
;

that are spoken almost equally. We of course could

only distinguish French and German, and sometimes

Russian, but the friends who walked beside us would
"
say from time to time : These fellows are talking
Armenian, or Tatar, or Georgian, or Osset, or Persian,"
as the case might be. The commonest is Russian,
not that they are the most numerous class, but because,

being the official language, it is the second language

most frequently learned by persons of every nation in
addition to their own. Thus pretty nearly all the
Germans, men, speak Russian, and fancy
at least the I

most of the Armenians also, as they are excellent lin-

guists, and more ambitious to rise than the Georgians.

On the shop names written in Russian,

fronts are seen

French, German, Armenian, and Georgian, more rarely

 TIFLIS. 147

in Persian. There are very few Jews ; perhaps the

Armenians leave no room for them.
Tiflis, whose native name, Tbilisi, is said to be de-
rived from a Georgian word meaning hot, and to refer
to the warm a place of some historical note.
springs, is

Tradition says that the first fort was erected here by

a lieutenant of the Sassanid kings of Persia in A.D.

380, and that at it, seventy-five years later, the reign-

ing monarch of Georgia, Vaktang Gurgaslan, founded
a city, to which, in the beginning of the following

century, his son Datchi transferred the seat of govern-

ment, attracted by the hot sulphureous baths. Com-
pared, however, to the antiquity of the former capital, .

Mtzkhet (twelve miles to the north-west), which was

founded by a great-great-great-grandson of Noah,
Tiflisappears a settlement of yesterday. Like most
cities in has been so often destroyed
these countries, it

in war that hardly anything remains from primitive

times nothing, indeed, except the old cathedral on

;

the citadel hill, already mentioned, called the Melekhi,

which is attributed to King Vaktang. Of these de-
vastations, the most ruinous were those which it

suffered from Timur in the fourteenth century, and

from the savage Persian Aga Mohammed Khan in
1795, in the invasion which led the last Georgian king
to cede to the Czar the country he could not defend.
When the Russians came, it was a very small place,
confined to the region round the lowest bridge, of
which I have spoken already ;
even in 1834 it had but
25,000 inhabitants. Latterly, what with the general
growth of the country, and with the concentration
M
148 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

of trade at this particular point, where several lines of

road meet' the railway to the Black Sea, it has grown
very fast, and may now have a population of 80,000
or more. Building still goes on, and house rents are
inordinately high.
Its newness gives the city one merit, which most tra-
vellers, whatever they may say, will secretly appre-
ciate. It has no sights. You have no picture galleries,

churches, monuments, museums, manufactories, arse-

nals, green vaults, and so forth, duly noted in your

guide-book, which a sense of duty, an odious feeling

that when you have returned home, you will be
ashamed not to have done them, drives you to see. It
is a place where you may settle down in your hotel and

do. just as you please, saunter forth in the morning to

buy grapes, and mingle with the many-tongued throngs

in the meat and fruit market, doze away the sultry

afternoon upon a sofa, and in the evening cool drive

out to call on some friend, or sit in the public garden,
under the mellow southern moon, and hear the band
discourse military music till near midnight. As there
are no buildings older than the seventeenth century,

always excepting the little old Melekhi church, and

nothing at remarkable since then, no collections,
all

except a museum^ which is interesting, so far as it

goes, and very nicely arranged and kept, but small
when one considers the resources of the country in
the way of minerals, animals, and antiquities ;
and a
botanic garden, also well managed by a German
botanist, but languishing for want of funds, there is

really nothing for the visitor to do except lounge and

 TIFLIS. 149

amuse himself by watching the dresses and manners

of the motley crowd. In fact, the town itself is a
museum ;
the inhabitants are the sight of Tiflis, quite
sufficient to keep curiosity alive for days and weeks
together.
Besides a multitude of caravanserais and due/tans

(= small inns or taverns) frequented by the natives,

there are three hotels, two of them and I fancy
at least,
the third also (which had only lately been set up), kept

by Frenchmen, and situated in the fashionable new

town near the market and the so-called Sololaki or new
residential quarter. One of the two older hotels has
an established reputation for good cooking and ex-
tortion ;
so we chose the other, and found it clean
and reasonably comfortable. The charges are high, as
usually in the East, but lower than those of St. Peters-
burg or Constantinople. Of the inner social life of the
city, Icannot say much, for the good reason that I did
not see it. All that any stranger could see would be
that of the Russians and Germans, which is much like

their life
anywhere else ;
and at balls, dinner parties,
and operas, one sees, after all, the merest outside of
life.Moreover, September not the season for society.
is

The magnates were mostly away in the country, and

to our vexation we found but few even of those men of
letters and science to whom we had brought introduc-
tions. Time, however, did not hang heavily on hand.
We had various preparations to attend to for our
journey into Armenia, preparations which involved
constant driving hither and thither through the town,
to see people and make purchases. Everybody drives
M 2
ISO TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

in Tiflis, down to the very beggars : a Georgian would

think himself demeaned by walking more than a few

yards while there were vehicles to be had. We had to

hunt up an interpreter or courier, an enterprise which
proved unexpectedly difficult in this city, which is

polyglott, but unorganized, so that, though there may

be twenty competent interpreters to be had, it is a
mere chance if you hear of any of them. Above all,
we had to obtain the requisite official permissions for
our journey, commendation and road pass-
letters of

ports, entitling us to call for horses at the post stations.

Without these documents you cannot go a step off

the great roads in the Russian dominions, and very

awkwardly even along them nor is the ordinary road

;

passport (what isa podorojnd) enough you

called

must, in order to get on fast, have a crown podorojna,

which gives special advantages. Fortunately, Russian
officials are usually civil and friendly, very official, no

doubt, yet less of martinets than Frenchmen or

Prussians. Moreover, we had taken the precaution of
bringing introductions from high authorities at St.
Petersburg, so that every facility was at once offered
to us, and, what is more, actually rendered.
When had been despatched, there remained
all this

he purchases to be made of articles to take back to

England. Now purchasing is in the East a very dif-

ferent and much more serious matter than any one

ho has not been there can imagine. It is not merely
that one must never give anything like the price
demanded for an article that goes without saying.
:

But the process of bargaining must be conducted in a

 TIFLIS. I
5 1

leisurely and dignified way, must be interrupted by

coffee or rather (in these countries) tea and conver-
sation, and, indeed, ought never to be concluded at the
or two, but adjourned from time to time
first sitting

for further consideration. Our stay was not long

enough to permit all this to be done in due and solemn
form ;
we paid more for the carpets, belts,
so probably

daggers, and silks which we bought than we ought to

have done. But, on the other hand, we had, at least
with most of the dealers, the great advantage of being
unable to speak their tongue. All the eloquent pro-
testations of the seller came to us only through the
reducing medium of a German friend who had kindly
undertaken to interpret whereas our curt and dogged
;

refusals to give more than a certain sum produced

their full effect upon him. Thus business went on
apace, and down in the cool, dark bazaar we spent
only three hours in buying as many carpets carpets ;

which were fortunate enough to be approved of by

connoisseurs among our friends in England.
It was too hot for walks or drives in the outskirts

of the city, even had there been anything to see ;

which there is not, for, once beyond the houses, you

are in an utterly bare and dreary land, especially

dreary at this season, when the crops have been lifted

from the brown soil. There is but one walk which is
really worth taking ;
a short walk which, as a guide-
book would say, no traveller ought to omit. The lofty
ridge of hills which rises behind Tiflis on the south-

west sends down a steep spur to the river, in the form

of a long, narrow, rocky ridge, called the Sololaki hill,
152 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
whose north side is turned to the town, while its back
slopes down to the valley of a small stream called
the Tsavkissi. Its bed is dry in summer, \vhat little

water there is being drawn off for the botanic garden

and the supply of the town. One of the highest and
best isolated tops of this ridge crowned by the ruins
is

of the Persian fortress which dominated the city ;

broken round and square towers connected by a line

of walls, that stand picturesquely up against the sky.

On another point are the remains of what local anti-
quaries pronounce to be a Persian shrine, a temple to
the Sun or to Fire, dating from the times of the
Sassanid kings, before the crescent of Islam was heard
of. One
climbs to the top of this ridge through the

shady walks of the botanic garden, which lies on the

declivity of it away from the town, looking across

the dry and desolate glen of the Tsavkissi, on the

farther side of which a multitude of tombstones stuck
in the ground, unfenced and uncared for, shews where
the Persians of Tiflis bury their dead. An ascent
which grows steeper when one has left the trees of the
garden ends suddenly at a sort of portal in the rocky
ridge, and through this one sees all Tiflis lying at one's
feet, the Oriental crowd on the bridge, the Russian
sentries at the Grand Duke's palace in the Golovinski
boulevard, the orchard-embowered houses of the
Swabian colony beyond the river, the rush of whose
waters one seems to hear amid the mixed hum and
stir that rises from the busy streets. Behind are the
wooded hills through which the Dariel road descends
from the valley of the Aragva, and, still farther, ridge
 TIFLIS. 153

beyond ridge rising towards the central line of the

Caucasus, where the snows of Kazbek glitter over all.
The mass of hills from which this Sololaki height is
an offset rises farther to the west into a sort of upland
plateau, where the pleasant
lies little summer retreat
of Kajori, the nearest to Tiflis of all those hill-stations
to which people retire during the heats. We went
its

there it was the only excursion we had time to make

who was then
to present ourselves to the general
Grand Duke Michael
acting as military adjutant to the
(the Lieutenant of the Caucasus), and who was there-
fore practically commander-in-chief and war minister
for the Caucasian provinces. 1 It was a drive of some

eight or nine miles ; so, in order that we might travel

with proper dignity, our hostess procured for us a

phaeton, which is the name in Tiflis for a two-horse

vehicle, those with one horse being merely droshkies.
I may say, in passing, that the Tiflis droshkies are
much better than those of St. Petersburg or Moscow,
and that there exists a regular tariff of charges, a

blessing which the stranger who has spent many

precious minutes in bargaining by finger-signs with a
St. Petersburg driver over the fare is heartily thankful
for. The road winds in a succession of curves up the
south of the city, and then turns to the west along
hills

a gently rising table-land, broken here and there by

valleys in which dwarf oaks shelter themselves, but

mainly covered by large corn-fields, where teams of

1
This distinguished officer, one of the ablest and most respected
men in the Russian service, is, I believe, now commanding one of the
divisions of the Russian army in Bulgaria.
154 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

twelve or sixteen oxen were ploughing up the

stubble. The air grew fresher and fresher as we
mounted out of the oven where Tiflis lies, till in a
couple of hours we reached Kajori, where, at 5000 feet
above the sea and 3700 feet above Tiflis, we were revel-
ling in a climate like that of the middle slopes of the
Alps, keen cool breezes making even the powerful sun
enjoyable. There is a good deal of wood about, which
adds to the sense of coolness, and away to the south
large masses and ranges of mountains, unknown to us,
rose up one behind another, parts of the chain which
has been called the Anti-Caucasus, and which divides
Armenia on the south from Georgia and Imeritia.
Eastwards we discovered, among the far-off hills of

Daghestan, the snowy peak of Basarjusi (14,722 feet) ;

northward lay the Central Caucasus, with Kazbek

conspicuous in the midst, overhanging the depression
where the Dariel road crosses into Europe. more A
delightful spot to be idle in can hardly be imagined
than this grassy upland, with its invigorating breezes
and prospects stretching over two hundred miles of
forest, dale, and mountain.
The prince Adjutant-General, however, to whom we
presented ourselves in his pretty little wooden villa,
was not idle. Mounted Cossacks were galloping up
with despatches, waiting outside, and galloping off

again down the steep road to Tiflis with that air of

important haste which the bearer of despatches loves
to assume. However, this did not prevent us from
receiving a cordial welcome, and enjoying a long and
leisurely conversation, resumed after dinner in the
 TIFLIS. 155

open air, in which our host showed a mastery not only

of European politics generally, but even of English

party politics and the views and sympathies of our

leading statesmen, which few of our own soldiers or
diplomatists could have equalled. Remembering that
conversation, I understand the temptation which an
" "
interviewer has to report what an eminent person

says to him. But I will resist it.

Kajori is but a small place as yet, though with the
growth of Tiflis it is likely to increase, and we visited
only one other person there, General Chodzko, the
distinguished engineer officer who in 1850 led a sur-
veying party up Ararat. From him and his secretary,
Mr. Scharoyan, I received a valuable suggestion for the
climb, which we were thinking
of trying, viz. to keep
to the rocks rather than trust the snow, and many in-

junctions on no account to ascend alone. In the

evening we returned to Tiflis, fortified with all the

recommendations that could be desired to convey us
along the road into Armenia, for which, on the next
day but one, we started accordingly.
I seem to have given in these few pages but a

meagre account of the sights of the Transcaucasian

wanting both in the practical precision of
capital,
Baedeker and the wealth of illustrative learning and
disquisition and quotation which
is the glory of our

great English series of guide-books. Even the pic-

turesque side of the place suffers in the hands of
a traveller who must own that he has no eye for
costume. My excuse is that in Tiflis it is not the

particular things to be seen in the city that impress

156 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

themselves on one's memory : it is the city itself,

the strange mixture of so many races, tongues,

religions, customs. Its character lies in the fact
that it has no one character, but ever so many
different ones. Here all these peoples live side by
side, buying and selling, and working for hire, yet
never coming into any closer union, remaining in-
different toone another, with neither love, nor hate,
nor ambition, peaceably obeying a government of
strangers who conquered them without resistance and
retainthem without effort, and held together by no
bond but its existence. Of national life, or muni-
cipal life, there is not the first faint glimmering :

indeed, the aboriginal people of the country seem

scarcely less strangers in its streets than do all the

other races that tread them. It is hard to say what

the future has in store for such a town ;
meantime it

prospers, delivered for ever from the fear of Persian

devastation, and, in spite of bran-new boulevards and
stuccoed shop-fronts, it is wonderfully picturesque^
 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. 157

CHAPTER V.

THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT.

IN this chapter I propose to give some account of the

route which leads from Tiflis through Armenia to the
foot of Ararat and the borders of Persia, and of the
ancient city of Erivan, the capital of a Russian
government (= province) of the same name. Let me
"
premise that the term Russian Armenia," which it is
often convenient to use, does not denote any political
division. Armenia merely a popular historical name
is

for the countries which at one time or another formed

part of the old Armenian kingdom.

On the 6th of September my companion and I
rattled out of Tiflis in a comfortable tarantass,

threading our way with difficulty for the first mile or

two through the crowd of carts, pack-horses, and
sometimes strings of camels which were entering the
city laden with merchandise. Perhaps, however, I
ought to say what a tarantass is. Two kinds of
vehicle are used here, as in the Russian empire
generally, for the conveyance of passengers the telega
and the tarantass. A
telega is simply a small four-
wheeled square or oblong cart, usually with sides,
which give it the air of a box upon wheels, but some-
158 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

times without sides, a mere flat piece of board, on the

edge of which you sit, letting your legs dangle over.
Of its capacities, or incapacities, for comfort, I shall

speak later on. The tarantass is in shape more like a

large Norwegian carriole, but with four wheels it is a :

seat,placed in the centre of a longish pole, which

again is set on the axles of the wheels. This gives it
a sort of elasticity ;
in fact, the pole acts as a spring,

just as in the American vehicle called a buckboard.

It holds three persons, one beside the driver, and two
on the seat proper, and is sometimes made with a
hood to come up behind, which gives shelter in winter-
time. There is just enough space in front of the
sitter's knees to hold some light luggage, with a little
box under the seat where you can stow away bread,

tea, and grapes, the supplies with which we had started.

Our tarantass, lent by a kind friend at Tiflis, had no
hood, but in summer, and for a comparatively short
journey, where there was no occasion to sleep much,
this was no loss ;
and otherwise it was satisfactory, and
went as smoothly as tarantasses ever do. From the
terrible sun one could get some protection by a white

umbrella and dark spectacles, but the dust was less

resistable penetrated everywhere, even to the
;
it

middle of our loaf of bread. Under any other cir-

cumstances> life in such dust would have been a
burden. However, we had just escaped from the
furnace of Tiflis into the clear, dry, exhilarating air
of the steppe we were going ahead into a really
;

curious and seldom visited country a country of

which we had all our lives known the name, and
 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. 159

little beyond the name and we were in excellent

;

health. So that even greater annoyances than this

would have been willingly faced.
There is something startling, at least to a traveller
fresh from Europe, in the suddenness with which, on
emerging from a great Eastern city, one finds one-
self in a wilderness. Here the country was already
desolate steppe, just like that which lies north of the
Caucasus between the Euxine and
Caspian seas.
However, I had better explain what the Russians
mean by the term steppe, which is one of those a
traveller comes to use so familiarly as to forget that
it isnot ordinary English. The
steppe is not neces-
sarily flat land, for the country north of the Sea of
Azof, for instance, is rolling nor low country, for
;

some of the so-called steppes beyond the Caspian are

on lofty table-lands. Nor is it barren ;
on the con-
trary, some parts are extremely fertile. It is simply
open, treeless land, whether covered with grass, or
with weeds, or with dwarf, thorny bushes, or only
with stones and sand. Sometimes the soil is a rich
loam, ready to produce magnificent harvests, and
such is most of the Black Sea and Azof steppe ;

sometimes it is so thoroughly impregnated with salt,

as in the part which lies round the west-north-western
bay of the Caspian, as to be useless for agricultural

purposes ; sometimes, again, it is blank, downright

desert, as useless as the sands of Sahara, or the

stony deserts of Iceland. Which character it bears

depends chiefly on the nature of the subsoil. If

this is porous, sand or rock, for instance, the little

l6o TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

rain that falls drains off at once, and the surface is

condemned in these intensely dry countries to per-

petual sterility. Here, in the valleys of the Kur and

Aras, there is but little of the pure desert steppe,

though the rainfall sinks sometimes to four or five

inches a year but on the other side of the Caspian,
;

in the plateau of Ust Urt and the parts of Turkestan

that south of the Aral Sea, desert is the rule, and a
lie

bit of cultivable land, with a spring or pond, the rare

exception. Along the road we were traversing the

steppe land is comparatively narrow. On the north
one sees a long line of low wooded "hills, outliers of
and hiding the great range of the Eastern Caucasus in
Daghestan to the south-west other hills, bare, brown,
;

and lumpy, rise up towards the edge of the Armenian

plateaux, in whose recesses the patient industry of
German colonists has here and there created, under

sheltering woods, a
little paradise of orchards. In the
middle, between the two lines of hill, which lie some
twenty or thirty miles apart, flows the Kur, in a wide,
shallow valley, its banks fringed by willows and by

gardens, irrigated from the stream by water-wheels.

With a little more irrigation, the whole plain might
shake with harvests, for now and then one finds a stream
descending from the hills, the waters of which could be
led in rills over this thirsty soil. At present there are
no inhabitants to attempt this. Once in six or seven
miles we pass a Tatar burying-ground, a dismal group
of stones stuck erect, though most have now fallen over,
in the bare steppe, with no enclosure round them nor

any sign of care. Not far from the cemetery you

 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. l6l

discover, with some difficulty, groups of low, round-

topped, earthen hovels, some like an English pigsty,
some mere burrows in the clay, with no windows, and
only a hole for a door. There is no wood close at

hand, and the people are too idle or too poor to fetch
it from a distance besides which I suppose they prefer
;

the troglodyte style of house for the sake of warmth.

These huts are all deserted the Tatars who inhabit
;

them during winter have now driven their flocks up into

the hills on the Armenian border to seek fresh pasture,
and will not return till the approach of winter. One
is puzzled to know how people so poor manage to live
at all probably the explanation is that they can live
;

upon infinitely little, far less than a Western labourer

needs. For the matter of that, they do not labour,
but simply idle, though their countrymen in towns like

Tiflis do and can work hard. Besides, they spend their

time pretty much in the open air and the race may ;

perhaps have grown accustomed to abstinence by long

ages of it. Silent and dreary as the steppe is, there is
plenty of traffic along the road strings of carts laden
:

with merchandise, vehicles with merchants or officials,

solitary riders, all armed to the teeth, with two or

three daggers, and perhaps pistols also, stuck in their

belt, and an extraordinary old gun of the matchlock

type slung over their shoulder. At first we bowed

or touched our hats to these wayfarers, whereat they
seemed and did not return the compliment.
surprised,
Our companion solemnly warned us to salute no more,
saying we should be taken for strangers ignorant of
the ways of the country, and likely to be rich men ;
1 62 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

and that even if none of those we met were thievishly

inclined, they might say something about us probably
a disagreeable something to other people along the
road who would be ready for mischief. In fact, the pre-
sumption here seems to be omnis ignotus pro periculoso ;
and instead of civility you do well to scowl at those
you meet, and let them see that you too are armed.
This piece of country between Tiflis and Erivan is
said to be the chief seat of Transcaucasian brigandage,
and many are the tales one hears about it. Some,
which have a slightly romantic, Robin Hood sort of
have given in an earlier chapter
flavour, I : I will add
two others which may be more historical. Not long
ago a band of less than a dozen mounted robbers seized
some merchants travelling along this road, disarmed
them, bound them, and led them into a hollow among
the hills. There they left them under the guard o;
two of the band, and returned to a spot near the road,
where they seized one party after another of wayfarers,
and carried them, similarly bound and disarmed, into
the same hollow, till at last more than fifty were
collected. Then they proceeded to search and rob all

this crowd of victims, and dismissed them, unarmed

but unhurt Only two or three years ago, the governor
of Erivan, who had been making efforts to clear his

government of these plagues, was encountered on a

journey by a troop of fully fifty brigands. Their
leader rode forward, and pointed out to his Excellency
that the escort of twenty Cossacks who accompanied
him need not attempt to resist the superior numbers
of the band. The governor admitted the justice of
 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. 163

this view, and surrendered, upon which they took from

him his favouritehorse, and sent him on his way

lamenting. A few weeks later, the horse was returned,

with a message from the chief that he had no wish to

injure the governor, and desired that nothing should

"
I took your horse
interrupt their friendly relations.
only as a lesson to you not to interfere with my people
as you have lately been doing see that you do not
:

l
repeat that mistake."
The discourses on brigandage wherewith, like Bun-

yan's pilgrims, we beguiled the way received some

point from our arriving, just as the shades of evening
were beginning to fall, at the Red Bridge, the most
favourite haunt of robbers on the whole road. Here,
some twenty-five miles from Tiflis, a considerable
stream comes down from the Armenian mountains on
the right to join the Kur, and winds along the precipi-
tous face of some low, bare hills that bound its valley
on the south. In among these hills there are ad-
mirable lurking-places, whence the robbers can pounce
out on you at a moment's notice when their scout has
seen you crossing the bridge, and in whose recesses they
could easily evade the pursuit of the Cossacks or the
tchapars (= gallopers) who are now stationed at the
north end of the bridge, where some of its dry, slightly

pointed arches have been turned into dwellings. These

tchapars are a sort of local police or militia, composed

give this story for what it is worth, having been unable to ascer-
1
I

tainwhat foundation there is for it. A high Russian official to whom

I mentioned it pooh-poohed it altogether (as, indeed, he could hardly

have helped doing) ; another well-informed semi-official friend after-

wards assured me that it was perfectly true.
N
1 64 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

not generally of Cossacks, but of the natives of the

district, Georgians, Tatars, or Armenians, as the case

may be, and about here probably Tatars. They are

supposed to scour the country, and act as escorts to
travellers whom the administration specially desires
to protect. Unless rumour does them great injustice,

they are often league with the thieves and if not,

in ;

they are so sure to ride off at the first shot that one
loses nothing (except a sense of dignity) by their

absence. Along the road, at intervals of a few

miles in themore hilly parts, there are placed little
wooden scaffoldings, some fifteen feet high, with a
ladder giving access to a small platform, where a

tchapar or Cossack is set to keep a look-out over the

adjoining slopes, and summon his comrades from the
nearest station if he sees any suspicious characters
about. We saw nobody aloft in any of these look-
outs as we passed, and supposed from this, and from
what people told us at the Red Bridge, that the
road was safe at present. However, at the next
station, which we reached about 9 o'clock P.M., the
"
air was full of stories of bad people," Tatars,
of course, who had been seen hanging about and ;

we were besought not to go on by a pompous

postmaster, who warned us that, as we were recom-
mended to his care by the government, we owed
it to him to be prudent, and that he would not be
answerable for the results if we proceeded further that

night. Whether there was really any risk, it was im-

possible for us to tell, but, anyhow, it was clear that

there would be considerable difficulty in getting horses;

 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. 165

so on our companion's advice we halted till about

" "
4 A.M., making ourselves comfortable in the one
room which the post-house provided. This process
consisted in spreading out on the dirty floor a small
Shemakha rug which we had bought in Tiflis, and
lying down upon it with a pair of boots for a pillow.
As the floor was hard as well as dirty, and the room
full of other travellers, who went to and fro, and would

not suffer the window to remain open, it may be

imagined that we rose little refreshed to continue our

journey, and appreciated less than we ought to have
done the splendour of the sunrise that broke over the
mountains of Daghestan, and lit up with a mo-
far-off

mentary glow the brown wastes of the steppe and the

desolate hills that enclose it. At the next station but
one (Akstafinsk), milk and eggs proved to be obtain-
able so here we halted for breakfast, and bade farewell
;

to the Kur, whose course towards the Caspian could

be traced far down through the widening plain by
a winding line of green willows, poplars, and brush-
wood of various kinds fringing its marshy banks, and
harbouring fevers and wild boars. Our road turned
sharp to the west, up the valley of the Akstafa river,
which, as we neared the
hills, grew verdant and cheer-

maize alternating with thickets, while the

ful, fields of

wild vine climbed among the oaks and planes, and

cottages raised above the ground replaced the Tatar

burrows. Still further up, the valley becomes a deep

and narrow glen between bold mountains, sometimes

of limestone, sometimes of schist, with masses of
columnar basalt and porphyry interjected. At one
N 2
1 66 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

point they come down to the river, and form a striking

gorge. Nothing could be prettier, or less like the
country we had just left. Bare reddish mountain
tops rose nearly 4000 feet above us, and 6000 or
7000 feet above the sea their ; densely wooded
sides descending steeply into the valley, along whose
narrow but level floor the clear stream rippled along
in little runs and pools, where surely trout must

play, the sunlight breaking hrough the bushes on

its sparkling shallows. Wemight have fancied our-
selves in the Jura but for the intense dryness of the
hillsides and the paucity of life and cultivation for ;

there was but one small village in the twenty miles

between Akstafinsk and Delijan, a little town high
up among the hills, 4200 feet above the sea, where
we were forced to halt some hours to repair the
damaged wheels of our tarantass.

Delijan, to which some of the wealthier residents in

Tiflis retire during the summer heats, is not only an
exquisitely pretty spot, but of some consequence in
a military point of view, for here the main road to
Erivan, which we were joined by a road
following, is

which runs west through the mountains, north of the

great mass of Ala Goz, to the fortress of Alexan-
dropol, or Gumri, on the Turkish frontier, the principal
stronghold of Russia in these regions, where a large
force is always kept on foot, and the autumn ma-
noeuvres usually take place. This second road is now
of great military importance to the Russians, who
have sent along it most of their troops operating
against the Turks in Armenia ;
so it is the more sur-
 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. l6/

prising that it should be unfinished in parts. Either

they did not intend to fight Turkey so soon or they
have been strangely remiss. Delijan itself, which lies
scattered up and down the steep hillside, at a point
where two glens meet, is inhabited partly by Arme-
nians, partly by Molokans, a sect of Russian Dissenters
who have been deported hither by the Czars. Though
a Transcaucasian German whose acquaintance we had
made gave a bad account of them, declaring they
"
were nearly as bad as the Armenians, full of deceit,
making a great pretence of religion, but using it as a
cloak for treachery and greed," I believe that they are

really a good sort of people, steady and industrious,

something like the Shakers of America, or what our

own Quakers may have been in their first days,
though, no doubt, far less intelligent and more super-
stitious. They are said to have neither baptism nor
the Lord's Supper, nor any regular clergy and at ;

their religious meetings follow up the singing and the

extempore prayers which constitute the service with

an odd sort of dance and kissings all round. They
cling to all their old Russian habits, marry only
among themselves, and build their cottages of wood,
so that one easily distinguishes their settlements from
those of Armenians or Tatars, even before seeing their
beards and characteristically Russian physiognomy.
It is a
pity there are not more of them in the
country.
From Delijan, which we left at seven o'clock in
the evening, the well engineered road mounts steeply

through a superbly wooded glen, whose beauties,

1 68 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

however, we lost in the darkness. It was mid-

night before we reached the post-house at the top
of the pass, where we halted in the hope of a
little sleep, having had none to speak of the night
before. Sleep, however, was out of the question.
It was bitterly cold, for we were at a height of

7000 feet above the sea, the room was small, and
foul beyond description, and the stony floor one had
to lie down upon swarmed here, however, let a veil
be dropped. called
up many disagreeable
Memory
nights nights in rock-holes on the Alps, nights under
canvas amid Icelandic snow-storms, nights in Tran-
sylvanian forests, nights in coasting steamers off the
shores of Spain, nights in railway waiting-rooms in

England, but no night so horrible as this. Descend-

ing under the opening eyelids of the dawn from the

pass, which lies among green and rounded hills, we

were refreshed by the sight of a. magnificent inland
sea stretching away fifty miles to the southward,
surrounded by high volcanic hills, all absolutely bare
of trees, and in most places even of grass, but with a
few small patches of snow lying here and there in
1
their upper hollows. It was the lake which the

Russians call Goktcha (a corruption of the Tatar

name, which means blue lake), and the natives Sevan,
the Lychnitis of the ancients ;
and we were now fairly
in Armenia. Unlike the two other great lakes of that
country, that of Van in the Turkish dominions and
that of Urumia in the Persian, its waters are fresh,

1
The top of the pass is 7124 feet above the sea. A little bit of the
summit of Ararat is said to be visible ; we, however, did not see it.
 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. 169

and it discharges by a small river, the Zenga, into

the Aras. Of the various legends relating to it, one
1
is as old as the time of Marco Polo, viz. that no fish
are found in it during the whole winter till the first

day when, for the benefit of the faithful, who

in Lent,

in the Eastern world observe the fasts of the Church

more rigorously than any other of her ordinances,

they appear in immense numbers, and continue till
Easter Sunday. The mountains round it are all of
volcanic origin, and rise some 4000 to 5000 feet above
its surface, which is over 5870 feet above the sea.
Great part of it freezes in winter. The beach, at the
place where I bathed, was composed of large volcanic
pebbles, glued together by and incrusted with a thick
calcareous deposit, which forms all around the shores
a white line, marking the difference between the
summer and winter level of the water. Grand and
solemn as the view over it was something
was, there
so dreary in these stern, dark brown mountains, and
long lines of shore, unrelieved by a tree or a spot of
cultivation, that one could understand why the people
of Tiflis prefer the woody hollows of Delijan or Bor-

jom to a place otherwise so well fitted to become a

health-giving mountain retreat. The only village we
could descry lies just opposite the only island, whereon
is the ancient and famous Armenian monastery of

Sevan or Sevanga. Here a great fishery is carried on,

and, I grieve to say, at other times as well as during

Lent ;
in fact, Tiflis gets most of its fish from the lake,
which is a hundred miles nearer to it than is the
1
See the fifth chapter of the second part
I/O TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

Caspian. Even the Armenian fathers of the little

monastery in the lake, which at one time claimed to

be the seat of the Patriarch of the Armenian Church,
own with a sigh that the age of miracles is past.

Passing by the Molokan settlement of Elenovka,

situate at the point where the river issues from a
shallow arm of the lake, we came to another station,
where it was necessary to
quit the post-road in order
to present ourselves to the vice-governor of Erivan,
who was then residing at a mountain nook called
Daratchitchak, the Simla of Erivan, whither its

upper classes escape from the frightful heats of the

Araxes plain, and whose name
interpreted to mean
is

Valley of Flowers." It a drive of about eight miles

is

up a steep and rocky road into this pleasant little

recess among the hills, on whose higher slopes the

yellow corn had not yet been reaped, for they are full
7000 feet above the sea-level. Hamlets lie scattered
in the glens, and here and there woods of dwarf oak
hang on the steep sides of the glens, giving the land-
scape a softer and more cheerful look than this part
of Armenia generally has. At the top of the long,
steep slope down which the village of Daratchitchak
meanders stand three curious old churches, built of

huge blocks of a reddish volcanic stone, the masonry

exquisitely finished, as it usually is in the ancient
ecclesiastical edifices. The two larger of them have
been partly destroyed some of the numerous Tatar
in

irruptions ;
but the smallest is entire, covered, like all
Armenian churches, by a high polygonal cupola, and
has a pretty little portico, whose doonvay is divided
 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. I/ 1

intotwo by a miniature, elegantly carved, Romanesque

column, supporting two slightly pointed arches, a
charming piece of work, which reminded us of Western
forms more than anything we had yet seen in these
countries. It is said to have been built by a Moham-
medan who had been converted to Christianity by
listening, as he stood outside, to the sweet music of
the mass, a legend which becomes credible only if it
be supposed that Armenian church music has greatly
degenerated during the last few centuries. He who
listens to-day to its plain song will experience very
differentimpressions from those attributed to the
musical Muslim.
We were courteously welcomed by the vice-governor
and his wife, a lady from St. Petersburg, and received

from him a batch of letters commending us to various

authorities further on. He smiled when we asked,
through the lady, who acted as interpreter, about
Ararat, told us that had never been really ascended,
it

though several travellers professed to have got up,

and evidently thought the enterprise hopeless. After
dinner we regained the post-road, and, when fresh
horses had been obtained, drove on between two
tremendous thunderstorms, the one shrouding the
mountains round the Goktcha lake towards the east,
the other hanging over the huge mass of Ala Goz,
which now came into view on our west. This moun-
tain consists of three sharp, rocky peaks, apparently

parts of the rim of an ancient crater, rising out of an

immense swelling upland some forty miles in circum-
ference. The peaks, one of which is said to be inac-
1/2 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

cessible, and certainly looks as though it might afford

nice bits of climbing, are too abrupt to bear snow, but
we afterwards saw patches of white in the bottom of
the extinct crater between them. It is even said that

there is a small glacier there ;

I cannot think, however,
the snow is quantity to feed one. Ala
sufficient in

Goz is a curious instance of the untrustworthiness of

one's impressions about the height of mountains.
After Ararat, it is the loftiest summit between the
Caucasus and the Persian Gulf, 13,436 feet above
the sea, as high as the Schreckhorn or Piz Bernina.
If we had judged by our eyes, we should have put
it down at 9000 feet. I have never seen so high a
hill look so inconsiderable, so perfectly mean and

trivial. It is true that the point whence we first

caught sight of it was 5000 feet above the sea ;

but
afterwards, looking at from the plain of the Aras,
it

and from the top of Ararat, it seemed no higher,

owing, no doubt, to the gentleness of its lower slopes
and to the way one miscalculates distance in this
clear, dry atmosphere.
The rolling plateau which we were traversing is

mostly cultivated, partly by Armenians, partly by

Russian Molokans, and in a few places by emigrants
belonging to the Finnish tribe of Mordvins, who were
transplanted hither from the Middle Volga at their
own wish, and are said to be well satisfied with the
change. At one
village where we stopped to change
horses, wasiteasy to recognise the peculiar Finnish
physiognomy, broad and smooth faces, long eyes, a
rather flattish nose. The harvest had just been got in,
 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. 1/3

and at every village the corn was being trodden out by

bullocks (unmuzzled, we were glad to see), who are
driven round and round on the hard earthen threshing-
floor,dragging a piece of wood the bottom of which is
studded with bits of iron or hard stone, and on the top
of which the driver, usually a woman, stands. It is a bare
and dreary country, like all the interior of Armenia,
perfectly brown, and apparently almost waterless but ;

the volcanic soil is very rich, and would support a

population far larger than that which now occupies it.

Everything is primitive to the last degree there was :

not even a morsel of food, nor a drop of vodka (the

common Russian spirit), to be had at the post-station,
where hunger forced us to stop for a sort of meal at
IO P.M. and we supported life entirely upon a huge
;

lump we had brought with us from

of bread which
Tiflis, and hard-boiled eggs, which we had managed
to pick up at one of the more sumptuous stations
some way back. Fortunately tea was obtainable, even
abode of famine, and tea had become a solace
in this %

and support which the traveller in more favoured

regions can hardly understand. You can always have
it, and that promptly, if you carry, as everybody does,

the raw material about with you. Every post-house,

however simple, possesses a samovar, a huge brazen
urn with a cylinder in the middle, into which hot
charcoal is put to boil the water. As soon as you
enter the station, you call for the samovar ;
in fifteen

or twenty minutes the hot water is ready. Then you

put in the tea, slice down the lemons, and tumble in
the sugar, which articles you have, of course, brought
174 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

with you, and in five minutes

your wretchedness all

is forgotten. One soon acquires, and on returning to

England is loth to relinquish, the two characteristic
Russian habits, of pouring out the tea the moment
it has been made, without letting it stand to grow

stronger by brewing, or "masking," as they say in

Scotland, and of drinking tumbler after tumbler of it.

(It is always taken by the Russians in glasses, not

cups, and with incredibly large quantities of sugar.)
Of course it is weak, but then it does your nerves
no harm, and the flavour is usually so much finer
than that of English tea that one cares little about
the strength. Tea
the universal beverage of these
is

countries, just as coffee is of the Levant and the

Mediterranean generally ;
it is drunk by Armenians,
Persians, Tatars, Turkmans, Kalmucks, Mongols,
Tibetans, in fact,by the whole of Northern and Cen-
tral Asia, all the way to China, just as much as by
the Russians themselves.Of course, the kinds which
the poor, and the nomad races, consume are very
coarse. These commoner kinds come across Siberia
or the desert in flat cakes or bricks cakes so hard
as to need a strong knife or hatchet to cut them ;
and
in some parts they pound it up and drink it with
butter and salt.
The last part of this third day's journey to Erivan
was performed in the dark. The thunder-clouds had
rolled away, and the moon appeared, a waning moon
that feebly lit up the bleak landscape. At last, as we
topped a hill, something like a faint white cloud ap-
"
peared in the southern sky. Look there," said one
 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. 1/5
"
of rousing his nodding companion
us, do you see ;

that, the white thing yonder ? high up ? Do you know

what that is ? " " No," said the other, sleepily ; " what
"
is it ? To which the first whispered in answer,
"
That is Ararat." Then we both dropped asleep
again, at imminent peril to me on the box-seat of fall-

ing off, and were only awakened by the unutterable

jolting of the vehicle over the masses of loose volcanic
rock which form the principal street of Erivan. It

was no easy matter to find quarters, for the only inn

was not only shut up at 2 A.M. (the hour when we
arrived), but had closed itself altogether and ceased
to receive guests. Nothing but the argument which
overcame the unjust judge induced its people, when
all the dogs in the city had been roused by our

knockings, to open their courtyard door, and let us

sleep the sleep of utter weariness upon an ancient sofa
and a dismantled bedstead.
1
Erivan, the capital of Russian Armenia, which next
morning stood basking in a sun that made it dan-
gerous to go out except under an umbrella, is a
thoroughly Eastern town, with just a little Russian
varnish in one or two of its streets. It is Eastern of
the Persian type, which is very different from the Arab
Orientalism of Cairo or Tangier, or the half French,
half Osmanli Orientalism of Stamboul. Lying in a
hollow at the foot of the plateau which extends north-
wards towards the Goktcha lake, yet a little above

1 '
Pronounced almost Yeryevan.' The stress of the voice is on the
last syllable, as in Tiflis (Teeflees), Etchmiadzin, Tavriz, and most of
these names.
1/6 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

the level of the Aras plain to the south, it covers with

its 30,000 people an area nearly as large as that of

Brussels or Sheffield. The streets are wide, the houses,

except a few modern Russian ones, of one story only,

round an open court-
built of clay or plastered brick,

yard, with no windows towards the street. Many

of them, especially in the outskirts, open off narrow
lanes between high mud walls,and are surrounded by
groves and vineyards. There are no shops, for all the
buying and selling goes on in the bazaar, a complex
of long straight brick arcades, in which the dealers
and handicraftsmen sit upon divans behind their
wares, sipping tea, or smoking out of their kalians,
or long flexible water pipes, and scarcely conde-
scend to answer you when you ask the price of an
article. Each trade has an arcade or two to itself;
the bakers are in one, the fruit-sellers in a second, the
shoemakers in a third ;
in a fourth, carpets ;
in a fifth, .

leather goods, and so forth. Persians, Tatars, and

Armenians are all represented, the last being de-
cidedly more anxious to do business than the other
two. The bazaar begins to be crowded about 5 A.M.,
and thins off in the forenoon, reviving a little in the

quarters where food is sold towards the time of the

evening meal. In front of it lies the great Meidan, a
sort of square or open space, where the road to Persia
meets the road to Tiflis and Europe. Standing here
at 6 A.M., when the bazaar is at its height, one sees
the life of an Eastern town in its
picturesque simpli-
city. The busy parti-coloured crowd is vibrating in
and out of the mouths of these arcades men in ;
 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. I//

sheepskin hats, shuffling along in their loose, low-heeled

slippers, and women covered from head to foot with a
blue checked robe, are flocking hither to buy food from

every part of the city, and clustering like bees round

the stalls which bakers and have set up
fruit-sellers

here and there through the Meidan, and where heaps

of huge green and golden melons, plums, apples, and,
above grapes of the richest hue and flavour, lie
all,

piled up. Hard by stand the rude country carts or

pack-horses that have brought the fruit, with the
Armenian peasant in his loose grey cotton frock ;

while strings of camels from Persia or the Caspian

coast file in, led by sturdy Tatars, daggers stuck in
their belts, an old matchlock slung behind, and a

huge sheepskin cap overshadowing the whole body.

Sometimes a swarthy, fierce-eyed Kurd from the
mountains appears ;
sometimes a slim and stealthy
son of Iran, with his tall black hat and yellow robe.
Eastern scene, just such as any city
It is a perfectly

beyond the frontiers would present, save that in Persia

one would see men crucified along the wall, and both
there and in Turkey might hear the shrieks of wretches
writhing under the bastinado. One forgets Russia
till a mounted Cossack is seen galloping past with
despatches for Alexandropol, where the Grand Duke,
attended by the governor of Erivan, is now holding a

great review. It is just such a scene as Ararat, whose

snowy cone rises behind in incomparable majesty, may
have looked down upon any day for these three thou-
sand years. As noon approaches, the babbling rills of
life that flow hither and thither in the bazaar are stilled ;
1/8 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

the heat has sent every one home to slumber, or at

least to rest and shade the fruit-sellers have moved
;

their stalls, the peasants have returned to the country ;

Ararat, too, has hid his silvery head in a mantle of

clouds. Only the impatient Western traveller braves
the arrows of the sun, and tries to worry his Armenian
driver into a start across the scorching plain.
The
population of Erivan is greatly mixed, and, of
course, no one knows the proportions of the various
elements. Till 1827, when Paskievitch captured it,

and won for himself the title of Erivanski, it belonged

to Persia, and a good many Persians still remain in
it, fully a quarter of the whole number of inhabitants.

Nearly as many more may be Tatars, less than a

half Armenians the balance consists of Russian
;

officials and troops, w ith a few Greeks and other

r

nondescript foreigners, including, of course, several

Germans. Go where you will in the world, as a
friend said to me who
has traversed nearly every

part of youit, always find a German

will they are ;

more ubiquitous than the English themselves. Al-

though it is the capital of a government which includes
nearly all Russian Armenia, it is a
stagnant sort of
place, with little trade and hardly any manufactures.
Life flows on in the old channels, little affected either

by Russian conquests or by the reviving hopes of

the Armenian nation. Like most towns in a country
which has been so often the theatre of destructive
wars,it has few antiquities, though it claims to have

been founded by Noah, and appeals to its name, which

"
in Armenian is said to mean the Apparent," as evi-
 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. 179

dence that it was the first dry land the patriarch saw.
Another tradition goes still further back, holding
that was Noah's dwelling before the Flood took
it

place. Be this as it may, it has now no sights to show

except the mosques and the ancient palace of the
Shah, or rather of his lieutenant, the Sardar of Erivan.
This palace included within the citadel, a Persian
is

fortress, strong by its situation on the top of a basaltic

cliff, which rises over the river Zenga strong also, ;

according to Asiatic ideas, in its high brick walls

running along the top of the cliff, though I do not

suppose they could resist modern artillery for a day.

Part of the fortress is now occupied by barracks, part

is in ruins, but two or three chambers have been care-

fully kept up, and even to some extent restored in

genuine Persian style, and give one a lively idea of the

architectural style and taste of the only Eastern nation
among which art can still be said to live, if indeed it

lives even there. The roof, as well as the floors inside,

are covered with bright blue, green, of yellow tiles, the
older ones of which you may pick them anywhere
out of the ruins are wonderfully vivid in colour.

The walls and

ceiling of the principal chamber, which
is supposed to have been the audience chamber of

the Sardar, are decorated with a profusion of small

mirrors, or rather pieces of looking-glass, stuck to-

gether in a kind of mosaic, arranged alternately with

paintings in excessively bright colours, representing
the Shah chasing the lion and the stag, together with
various emblematic devices, and patterns of roses
and other flowers and shrubs, repeated all round. A
O
ISO TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

sort of stalactite ornament in coloured plaster is in a

Alhambra
style similar to that of the ceilings in the ;

indeed, it has been supposed that some of the work

there bears traces of a Persian hand. The drawing is
stiff and conventional ;
and though the tints are well

harmonized, they are almost too bright the effect is ;

rather gaudy than gorgeous. One is glad to refresh

the sated eye by looking through the one window
which opens to the south upon the -stream foaming
down its rocky bed below, the women washing clothes
along its banks, Tatar carriers driving their teams over
the bridge, and beyond it the well -watered banks of
the Aras, an oasis of delicious green in this parched
and dusty land, with the two cloud-girt peaks of
Ararat rising five-and-thirty miles beyond.
The principal mosque lies behind the bazaar in a
maze of lanes separated by gardens and courtyards.
Itforms one side of a square enclosure planted with
orange and other trees, with a tank in the middle, over
which four tall elm
trees bend, the whole not unlike
in arrangement although smaller than, the famous
to,

garden of that masterpiece of Mohammedan art, the

mosque at Cordova. Here, however, the mosque
itself, so far from being a vast and complicated
structure is more like what would be called in Italy

a loggia, open on one side to the garden, with a deep

and lofty horseshoe-shaped recess (the mosque proper),
much a large round apse, or the half of a dome,
like

in the middle of this gallery, part of the interior of

which is covered with handsome tiles, and adorned

with texts from the Koran. The floor is bare and
 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. l8l

open there is, however, a small wooden pulpit,

;

whence the officiating mollahs read or preach. A

little way from the dome that surmounts the mosque,
an elegant minaret rises, round and decorated with
coloured tiles, those of Turkey and Morocco,
like

whereas at Cordova and Seville the minaret is a square

brick tower. The rest of the gallery which surrounds
the enclosure is appropriated to the mollahs attached
to the mosque, or made to furnish resting-places for
pilgrims, or school-rooms where boys are taught to
read the Koran. This mosque belongs to the Mus-
lims of the Shiah persuasion, that which prevails in
Persia and here they come to worship all day .long,
;

bowing and prostrating themselves towards the centre

of the apse, which is of course in the direction of
Mecca. Its ample proportions, the
rich yet soft colours
of its walls, the silence, the shade, the rustling of the

boughs and murmuring of water in the adjoining

garden, make it one of the most beautiful and im-
pressive houses of prayer that I have ever seen.
In the same
part of the town, not far from the
bazaar, are placed most of the caravan-serais, as well
as the baths. An Eastern bath has been so often
described that he would be a bold traveller who
should attempt to describe it again, though here in

Persia not quite the same thing as in Constan-

it is

tinople or London. The caravan-serai (bower on

resting-place of the caravan) is very unlike an inn
according to our notions. It is a round or elliptical
enclosure between high walls with a strong gate or

gates to it. Round the inner wall runs a sort

O 2
1 82 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

of gallery, roofed, but open to the air, where the

traveller encamps with his cart or camels, providing
himself from the market with bread and wine, fodder-

ing his beasts himself, and getting nothing from the

innkeeper except space, a sort of shelter, and protec-
tion against nocturnal thieves. Till lately there was a
European inn of some pretensions in the city, but
its landlord, according to the story told us, had some
months before been thrown into prison on a charge of

murdering one of his guests, a Greek banker, whose

imprudent display of money had roused his cupidity,
and the hotel was therefore closed. The cries and
groans of the victim, whose throat was being cut, had
been heard by various people in the house, none of
whom stirred to help him. Nobody doubted the inn-

keeper's guilt, but justice moves slowly in these

countries,and he may not have been tried, much less
executed, even now. The inn in which we stayed
had, as I have mentioned, also been closed, and when
we returned to Erivan from a journey to Etchmiadzin,
it refused to admit us, till compelled to do so by the

police authorities. Having been recommended by the

vice-governor to their attentions, we thought it would
be a pity to make no use of them, and accordingly
by their means forced an entrance and got a night's
shelter.

The most trivial details of Eastern life are fascinat-

ing to those whose childish imagination has been fed

by the Bible and the Arabian Nights. To see people

sitting or sleeping on the flat roofs, or talking to one

another in the gate through which a string of camels
 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. 183

ispassing, to visit mosques and minarets and bazaars,

watch the beggar crawl into the ruined tomb of a
Muslim saint, and ramble through a grove of cypresses
strewn with nameless, half fallen gravestones, to stand
by the baker or the shoemaker as he plies his craft in
his open and listen to the stories told by the
stall,

barber, even when one does not understand a word,

with the sacred mountain of the Ark looking down

upon all, this seems like a delightful dream from far-

off years, and one wakes with a start to perceive that
it is all real, and that in the midst of it stands an un-

sympathetic Frank, unable to rid himself of a sense of

"
mingled contempt and pity for the natives," anxious
to examine what he has come so far to see, and then

press on to something further. One considers how long

it would take to tame down a restless Western spirit to
the apathy, the acquiesciveness, the sense of boundless
time before and around which these people have been
steeped in for so many generations, Nevertheless, the

light of common day does not wholly disenchant the

East. True it is that every-day life here must be un-
speakably dull, duller than in the quietest provincial
town of France or England. For romance, in the
novelist's sense of the word, there is infinitely less

opportunity than among ourselves. The great move-

ments of the European world seem much farther
away than they had seemed to me six years before
in America ;
for the inhabitants, even those of the
better class, had not the smallest interest in them.
Even of the approaching rupture with Turkey, which
was to bring war into this very plain, and of the forces
1 84 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

that were urging it on, no one (so far as we could

ascertain) knew had any means of know-
anything, or
ing, except what might be given in some stray Russian
newspaper, brought here weeks after it had appeared.
Nevertheless, in spite of, perhaps indeed because of,

and sameness, this want of literature

all this stillness

and discussion and news, the East retains its power of

fascination. Setting aside the view of Ararat, and
one or two picturesque bits like the bazaar and the
mosque garden I have described, Erivan is not beau-
tiful. Its streets, not only the three new Russian

ones, but those that date from Persian times, are dull
or ugly with their long blank walls of brick or baked

clay, unbroken by a window, or a gable, or a shop.

They are as colourless as Bolton or Wolverhampton,

and not one-tenth so animated, for a vehicle is rarely
seen, and a foot passenger not often the women ;

steal along silent and shrouded. But not only are

there here under one's eyes all those externals of
Oriental lifeto which literature, legend, and history,
from the book of Genesis downwards, have attached
so much romance there is also a deep impression
;

received from the sight of a society so unlike our

own, a society which has preserved that very old-
world character which seemed old-world even to the
Greeks more than two thousand years ago, a society
immovable in its beliefs, ideas, usages, with its funda-
mental conceptions so different from our own that
one hardly sees how it is ever to be carried along
in the general stream of the world's development, and
hardly wishes that it should.
 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. 185

With the end of our pilgrimage full in sight, and

the moon, on whose light we must depend for night
marches, waning fast, we had no wish to linger in

Erivan, especially as the letters we bore enabled us to

get horses without trouble or delay. Both in Tiflis

and all the way along from Tiflis to Erivan, we had
enquired about Mount Ararat, the side from which
to approach the modes or chances of ascending
it,

it. Little, however, could be learnt except that the

point we must make for was the frontier military

station of Aralykh, lying on the right (western) bank
of the Araxes, 1 about twenty-five miles from Erivan.
It was to the colonel commanding a detachment of
Cossacks at this point that our letters of recommenda-

tion from the Russian authorities were addressed. So

far, then, our course was clear. Whatever might
happen afterwards, whatever difficulties man or nature

might oppose to the ascent of the mountain, we must

make for Aralykh. Accordingly, on the morning of
September the Qth, we drove off from Erivan under
the blazing noon, having purchased and stowed away
in the tarantass agood stock of bread, tea, and deli-
cious grapes, grapes well worthy to have grown on
Noah's vine. The road combined in a singular manner
two apparently incompatible evils, roughness and soft-
ness. It was strewn with rocks, over which we jolted

with a violence that obliged one to hold on for fear

of being thrown out it was deep in dust, which rose
;

1
Aras is, form of the name, Araxjtjie Russianj
I believe, the Persian

but quite as well known under the ancient name Araxes, which is
it is

at least as old as Herodotus. He, however, confounds our river with the

Volga and the Oxus.

1 86 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

round us in blinding clouds. The hilly ground was

mostly steppe, unoccupied waste, which is doubtless
browsed on by Tatar flocks in spring, but in Septem-
ber was grey stony soil, covered with withered weeds.
Cultivation did not appear till we began to approach
the Araxes, where not only is the soil deeper, but

tiny canals from the river or the few tributary streams

which it receives from the left diffuse fertility.
This Araxes plain is much the richest part of Ar-
menia, being both hot and well watered, while the
rest of the country is high, cold, and dry. It is, in

fact,a country of lofty open plateaux separated by

ranges of bare mountains the plateaux 5000 to

;

7000 feet, the mountains 8000 to 12,000 feet above

the sea. The climate is therefore mostly a rigorous

one, running into violent extremes of winter cold, and

unrelieved in summer by the sheltering or moistening
influence of forests. The plateaux I have mentioned,
like that on which Erzerum stands, are covered with
snow till April, the passes of the mountains much
later ;
and of course little but corn and other distinc-
tively northern crops can be raised on them. But this
great valley of the Araxes which intersects the moun-
tain land is here only 2700 feet above the sea, and as
the latitude is that of Seville or Baltimore, one is not

surprised to find the heat overpowering even in Sep-

tember, and to see fields of cotton and tobacco border-
ing the road. A prettier crop than cotton makes it
would be hard to name, with its yellow flowers, abun-
dant low leafage and pods snowy white as they burst.
Here, too, one comes again upon the maize which we
 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. 187

had parted from in the valley of the Akstafa, on the

other side of the mountains. The people make of it a

kind of pudding or porridge something like polenta.
Lines of lofty poplars sometimes enclose the road,
and give a temporary defence against the sun for
which we are duly grateful, though they hide Ara-
rat, on which we had been keeping our eyes fixed
since morning, hoping that the clouds which were
shifting themselves uneasily round his top would part
sufficiently to let us have a glimpse of it. The vine-

yards, loaded with purple fruit, would have been too

great a temptation to men so hot and thirsty but that
they were enclosed by high walls of mud, with a sort
of crow's nest on a scaffolding in the centre, where
a peasant was perched to watch for and scare away
depredators.
In the villages we passed, the houses were all of

clay, which looked as if it could scarcely resist a

moderately energetic thunderstorm; their walls spotted
with lumps of mud which have been stuck on wet
where the original structure had begun to show holes
or chinks. An Armenian house gets renewed in this
fashion like an Irishman's coat, till there is none of
the first fabric left. These houses are usually built at
the side of or round a small courtyard, enclosed by a

high mud wall with one door in it round two or three

;

sides of the yard the rooms are placed, which have no

apertures for light one can hardly say windows
except into the yard, and little or no furniture. In
some the cattle are housed with the family; those of a
better sort have a byre on the other side of the yard,
1 88 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

distinct from the living-rooms, and sometimes many

such small subsidiary erections. The interior is dark,
and with scarcely any furniture, perhaps a low stool
or two, and a rough carpet or piece of matting to sit
or sleep upon. In summer life goes on chiefly upon
the flat roofs, also of clay, where the men sit smoking
or eating melons, and where, or else in the gardens,

they sleep at night. These villages in the middle of

fields,surrounded by vineyards and by groves of the
elaeagnus, with its handsome brown fruit, and apricot
or willow', are mostly inhabited by Armenians, who
labour on the soil, getting water from the Araxes
by a multitude of channels that run hither and thither
through the tilled land. Of the Tatars many are
shepherds, accustomed in summer to wander up to
the hills with their flocks ; some, however, have per-
manent dwellings in the plain, and do a little hus-
bandry. Their hamlets are generally even ruder and
meaner than the Armenian, and their way of life
more repulsive. All are, of course, Mohammedans,
and most of the Shiah persuasion, having been brought
over to it by the Persians, who so lately held these
regions. They are reputed to be more fanatical than
the Sunnis, often unwilling even to give the passing
traveller a bowl of water, and, if they give it, likely to
break the vessel he has drunk from lest his unclean-
ness should pollute them. Of course, they never in-
termarry with their Armenian neighbours, and never
speak their tongue. When communications have to
be made, Tatar is the medium, not only because
it is the lingua franca of all these countries, but
 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. 189

because the Armenians, who are quick at languages,

learn it more readily than the Tatars do Armenian.
far

A good deal of traffic goes on along this road, which

1
is the only highway from Tavriz, the chief commercial

city of Northern Persia, to Erivan and Russia gene-

rally. As far as the Persian border at Djulfa, it is fit
for wheeled carriages ; beyond that, one must take
horses for ninety miles on to Tavriz. The people
whom we met were mostly either Tatar carriers with
camels or high piled carts of merchandise, or else
Armenian peasants. They wear a simple dress, which
consists of a brown cotton shirt, loose, rather short
cotton trousers, and a prodigious hat of brown sheep-
skin, something like a Guard's bearskin, only bigger,
which overshadows the whole man. It is, of course,
an excellent non-conductor against the sun, but what
a weight to carry !
Except for the trouble of winding
it on and off, a turban would be far more agreeable :

turbans, however, are rare in these parts, even among

Muslims, and, I fancy, still less common in Persia.
After five hours' driving from Erivan, and changing
horses twice, we suddenly turned to the right off the

post-road, with double line of telegraph wires, 2

its

and, passing through some thickets, emerged on to

a long stretch of open ground, marked here and there

1
Pronounced Tavreez, and commonly spelt Tabriz. The Russian b
is pronounced nearly as our v. '
2
One of these lines belongs to the Russian Government the other :

is our own Indo-European, along which the Viceroy of India and the

Secretary of State conduct their discussions.- It is kept in order by

Messrs. Siemens Brothers, and, I need hardly say, is kept in much better
order than the Russian line.
 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
with wheel tracks, across which we came in two or
three miles to the banks of the Aras. Things have
not changed much here in the last nineteen hundred
years. The Araxes flan tern indignatus Araxes is

spanned by no bridge all down its course, and he who

would cross its historic flood must swim, or wade, or
ferry. Wondering how we were to get over, we looked
with some concern as well as admiration at the wide
stream, as wide as the Thames
Bridge, thatat London
swept along between banks of clay which rose ten or
twelve feet above the present level of the water, but
which in winter are no doubt often covered. The
driver, however, promptly ran his horses down the bank
and plunged in when to our astonishment the stream
;

turned out to be only two feet deep. The water, the

muddiness of. which had prevented us from seeing

how shallow it was, scarcely rose to the horses' knees,

and did not come into the bottom of our low tarantass ;

though flow was so rapid that fording may be

its

pretty dangerous after heavy rains above. On our

way back, some days afterwards, we crossed in a ferry-
boat stationed a little lower down, which is worked
by a rope, and
had then the pleasure of a plunge
I

into this river, whose water is not cold enough

famous
to do the most exhausted bather any harm. It

seemed to have a fuller current than the Kur at Tiflis,

yet a wonderfully scanty one, considering the length

of its course ; this, of course,
easily explained byis

the great dryness of the country it drains.

Passing through a crowd of picturesque Kurds who

had been driving their cattle through by the same ford,
 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. IQI

and envying the big greyish-white buffaloes which were

cooling themselves in the water, we crossed a tract inter-
sected by numerous channels drawn from the river for

irrigation, bordered with tall reeds, and enclosing fields

of rice, already reaped, and cotton whose pods were just

bursting with white fluff. In the reedy marshes which

these channels feed, there is abundance of wild hogs.
They come out at night, and ravage the rice-fields of

the Tatars ;
and as the Mohammedan scruples of the
latter prevent them from touching, and practically
therefore from hunting down, this unclean animal, the

hogs have a fine time of it. If ever that Araxes valley

railway to India, whereof the Russians talk, comes to
be made, perhaps some of our military pig-stickers
will halt here on their way and give the Armenians

a lesson in that exciting sport. At last, after three or

four miles' driving, a cluster of bushes told us that a

village was near, and through them we discovered

the trim cantonments of our destination, the Russian
station of Aralykh. Here there is always kept a
detachment of Cossacks, and the colonel in command
is the chief military authority over the skirts of the
two Ararats, charged to guard the frontier and look
after the predatory bands that are said to hang about
it. The summitof Little Ararat is the meeting-
point of the Russian, Persian, and Turkish empires,
and every one knows that border lands have been
from time immemorial the haunts of dangerous or
turbulent characters, since they can find an easy

escape from the jurisdiction against which they have

offended into another that knows nothing-; about them.
1
92 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

Where, as here, there are three such jurisdictions,

these risks are of course intensified, especially as
there is no attempt made to keep order in the Turkish
or Persian dominions, nothing that deserves to be
called a police. So I dare say there would be a good
deal of brigandage if there were anybody to rob, but
the villages of the Aras valley are almost too poor
to be worth plundering, and travellers, except on the
main road to Tavriz, are veiy rare. The mountains
are inhabited only by a few wandering Kurds. It
will appear in the sequel that we saw, with our own
eyes, no trace whatever of banditti. But as the
colonel, who was a very sensible
man, particularly
begged us not to ramble more than a mile from the
station, offering an escort if we wished to go farther,
one could not but suppose there must really be some
hidden dangers in these apparently deserted slopes.
Robbers have for many generations been made an
excuse for not exploring the mountain to find the
Ark. In hearing about them, we were often reminded
of the lines in Bishop Blougram's Apology

" Such a traveller told

you his last news,
IJe saw the Ark a-top of Ararat ;
But did not climb there since 'twas getting late,
And robber bands infest the mountain's foot."

Aralykh is not fortified, for there is no attack to be

expected from these wretched banditti, whoever they
are, nor does Russia appear to fancy an invasion
from Turkey or Persia likely enough to be worth
guarding against. It is merely a row of wooden

barracks, neatly painted, with a smith's and carpenter's

 (
u^
THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. \ *93
"'

shop, cottages for the army followers, and so

scattered round it, and a few trees, giving a little
shade in summer and shelter from the violent winter
winds. The situation is striking. It is exactly on

the line where the last slope of Ararat, an extremely

gentle slope of not more than two or three degrees in

inclination, melts into the perfectly flat bottom of the
1
Aras valley. Looking up this slope, the mountain
seems quite close, though in reality its true base, that

is, the point where the ground begins to rise sharply,

is fully four hours (twelve miles) distant. On this its
north-eastern side, one looks right into the great black
chasm, and sees, topping the cliffs that surround that

chasm, a cornice of ice 300 or 400 feet in thickness,

lying at a height of about 14,000 feet, and above,
a steep slope of snow, pierced here and there by rocks

running up to the summit. A

little to the west of

south, and about seventeen miles distant, rises the

singularly elegant peak of Little Ararat, appearing

from this point as a regular slightly truncated cone,
which in the autumn is from snow. 2
In the plain,
free

and only a few miles off to the south-west, a low

rocky eminence is seen, close to the famous monas-
tery of Khorvirab, where St. Gregory the Illuminator,
the apostle of Armenia, was for fourteen years con-
fined in a dry well by his cousin, King Tiridates. So
1
Aralykh is 2602 feet above the sea-level.
2
The view of the two Ararats in the frontispiece is taken from
Syrbaghan, a Tatar village about two miles south-west of Aralykh, and
therefore shows the mountains in what is practically the same aspect
as that described in the text. This view is drawn after one of Parrot's,
with some alterations for which I am responsible.
IQ4 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
at least says the Armenian Church. The very ancient
ruins on it are sometimes taken to be the site of the
famous city of Artaxata, which, according to Strabo,
was built for King Artaxias (who, revolting from
Antiochus the Great, founded an Armenian kingdom)
by Hannibal, after he- had left Antiochus, and before
he sought his last refuge with Prusias of Bithynia. 1
Others place Artaxata nearer to Erivan on the river
Medzamor, and at some distance from the present
bed of the Araxes, which, according to Tacitus
(Ann. xiii. 41) flowed under the walls of Artaxata.
It was one of the two capitals of Digran or Ti-

granes, the great Armenian conqueror, and captured

by Lucullus, when, after defeating Mithridates of
Pontus, he carried the Roman arms against Tigranes,
the son-in-law and ally of the latter, into these remote

regions, which even Alexander had not entered. A

century and a half later it was again taken and razed
to the ground by Corbulo, one of the generals of
Nero, and was subsequently rebuilt by Tiridates, a
protege of Nero's, under the name of Neronia. When,
about A.D. 370, it was again taken and burnt by the
Persians, it is said to have contained a population of

200,000, 40,000 of them Jews.

cf. Plutarch Lucull. c. 31. The story is doubted
1
Strabo, xi. p. 528 :

by some historians,and among others by Mommsen (Rom. Gesch.

b. iii. c. ix.). If it be a fable, the evidence it gives of the fame of
Hannibal through the East is all the more striking. I may, however,
remark (l) that the alleged building of Artaxata by Hannibal took
place only a century and a half before Strabo's time ; (2) that it does
not appear that any alibi can be proved for Hannibal at the time as-
signed for his visit to Armenia ; and (3) that there is apparently no
other instance of Hannibal's name appearing in Oriental legend, like
Alexander or Semiramis, as the reputed author of great works.
 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. 195

At Aralykh we were received with the utmost

courtesy by the officer in command, Colonel Temirhan
Aktolovitch Shipshef, a Mohammedan noble from the
Kabarda, on the north side of the Caucasus, and a
man of many and varied accomplishments. To our
West European language,
great regret, as he spoke no
and we no Russian, our communications were com-
paratively limited ;
but even the conversation carried
on through an interpreting friend enabled us to per-
ceive that he was well read, not only in military

matters, but in general history and literature. He

had a particular admiration for Cromwell, about the
recent lives of whom he questioned us, and dis-

coursed with great acuteness as well as knowledge

on European politics and literature, including the
works of two writers who seem to be favourites in
Russia, the late Mr. Buckle and Mr. Herbert Spencer.
Although a strict teetotaller himself, as a good Mus-
lim ought to be, his table was well supplied with
the choicest wines of Transcaucasia, as well as with
a liquor to which the prohibition of the Prophet is

supposed not to apply, and which, in spite of its high

price, is largely consumed in these countries, English
bottled porter. His house was spacious, with large,
low rooms, on the ground floor, and by closing the
all

shutters we were able to get some cool during the

day, especially as a slight breeze rose in the after-

noon. At night, however, it was terribly hot, for we
were enjoined to keep the windows shut to avoid
the fever-producing miasma from the adjoining
marshes. Even our concentrated solution of carbolic
P
196 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

acid, though it was strong enough to burn a hole in

my forehead, did not wholly repel the mosquitoes

whom these marshes rear. The pleasantest time was
the evening, when we sat on the verandah beside
our genial host, sipping tumbler after tumbler of deli-
cious lemon-flavoured tea, and watching the exquisite
colours of sunset die away in this lucent air into the

balmy vivid night. Concerning Ararat we had much

discourse, the upshot of which was that nobody at

Aralykh knew anything of former ascents, nor of how

it ought to be attacked, but that we should have
horses and Cossacks to take us to Sardarbulakh, a
small military outpost high up on the way which leads
over the pass between Great and Little Ararat to

Bayazid, and as much farther as horses or Cossacks

could go. We could desire no more, so this was

settled, and we were grateful. Though the colonel

doubtless marvelled in his heart what could be our
motive for a difficult and fatiguing expedition, the
success of which was so uncertain, he was too polite
to say so, talking as gravely about the matter as if

he had been president of an Alpine club sending out

hfs explorers with instructions. A day, however, was
needed to make preparations, and while these went
forward, we got the heads and spikes of our ice-axes
fitted with shafts by a German carpenter attached to

the station, and rambled out under umbrellas over the

slope that rose almost imperceptibly to the south-

east, an hour's walking on which seemed to bring us
no nearer to the mountain. It was an arid waste

of white volcanic ash or sand, covered with prickly

 THROUGH ARMENIA TO ARARAT. 1
97

shrubs (the commonest of them being that Calligonum

polygonoides which supplies fuel to the Kurds in
winter), among which lizards and black scorpions
wriggle about. We ought, of course, to have gone

any energetic traveller would have gone to examine

the ruins of Artaxata, but the overpowering heat and
the weariness of the last few days and sleepless nights,
which began to tell as soon as we began to rest, made
us too languid even for so obvious a duty. So we
dawdled, and panted, and dozed, and watched the
clouds shift and break and form again round the
solemn snowy cone till another evening descended
and it glittered clear and cold beneath the stars.

P 2
198 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

CHAPTER VI.

ARARAT.

NONE of the native peoples that behold from the sur-

rounding plains and valleys the silvery crest of Ararat

know it
by that name. The Armenians call it Massis,
"
or Massis Ljarn (Ijarn meaning mountain "), a name
which we may connect with the Masius of Strabo
(though his description of that mountain does not
suit ours) the Tatars and Turks, Aghri Dagh, which
;

"
is interpreted as meaning curved mountain," or
"painful mountain"; the Persians, Koh Nuh, "the i

mountain of Noah," or, according to Sir John Chardin,

Sahat Toppin, which he interprets to mean " the
Happy Hillock." It has received among geographers
the name of Ararat, which the Russian use is now

beginning to spread in the neighbourhood, and which

the ecclesiastics at Etchmiadzin have taken as the
title of a monthly magazine they publish, only from
its identification with the Biblical mountain of the

Ark, an identification whose history is curious.

The only
topographical reference in the Scripture
narrative of the Flood is to be found in the words,
"
Genesis In the seventh month, on the seven-
viii. 4,

"
teenth day of the month," the ark rested upon the
 ARARAT. 199

mountains of Ararat," which may be taken as equiva-

"
lent to on a mountain of (or in) Ararat." The word
Ararat is used in three, or rather two, other places in

Scripture. One is in 2 Kings xix. 37, and the parallel

passage in Isaiah xxxvii. 38, where it is said of the
sons of Sennacherib, who had just murdered their
"
father, that they escaped into the land o Ararat,"
rendered in our version, and in the Septuagint,
" "
Armenia." The other is in Jeremiah li. 27, Call
" "
together against her (i.
e. Babylon) the kingdoms of

Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz." The question then

is, what does this Ararat denote Clearly the Alex-
?

andrian translators took it for Armenia so does the

;

Vulgate when it renders in Genesis viii. 4 the words

which we translate, " on the mountains of Ararat,"
"
by super montes Armeniae." This narrows it a little,
and St. Jerome himself helps us to narrow it still
further when, in his commentary on Isaiah xxxvii. 38,
he says that "Ararat means the plain of the middle
Araxes, which lies at the foot of the great mountain
Taurus." Besides, Moses of Chorene, the well-known
Armenian historian of the fifth century, speaks of a

province or district he calls Ajrarat, lying on the

Araxes, and which some have tried to identify with
the name of the Alarodians in Herodotus. Now
as our modern Mount Ararat, Aghri Dagh, is by far
the highest and most conspicuous mountain of that

region, no one who looked at it, already knowing the

story of the Flood, could doubt that it was the first
part of the dry land to appear as the waters dried up,
so much does it rise above all its neighbours.
200 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
The identification, therefore, is natural enough :

what it is of more consequence to determine is how

early it took place for as there is little or no trace

;

of an independent local tradition of the Flood, we

may assume the identification to rest entirely on

the use of the name Ararat in the Hebrew narra-
tive. Josephus (Ant. Jud. bk. i. ch. iii.) says that the
Armenians called the place where Noah descended
the disembarking place (aTro/Sarrfpiov), " for the Ark

being saved in that place, its remains are shown there

by the inhabitants to this day," and also quotes
"
Nicolas of Damascus, who writes that in Armenia,
above Minyas, there is a great mountain called Baris

(is this word the Armenian Masis ?),upon which it is

said thatmany who escaped at the time of the Flood
were saved, and that one who was carried in an ark
came ashore on the top of it, and that the remains of
the wood were preserved for a long while. ThisNmight
be the man about whom Moses, the law-giver of the
Jews, wrote." This dTrofiaTrjpiov has usually been
identified with the town of, Nakhitchevan (called

by Ptolemy Naxuana), which stands on the Araxes,

about thirty-five miles south-east from our mountain,
and whose name the modern Armenians explain as
" *
meaning he descended first," which would seem to
show that in the first century of our era and how
much sooner we cannot say the Armenians living
round the mountain believed it to be the Ark moun-
'
Noldeke, however, to whose
1
Untersuchungen zur Kritik des
'
alien Testaments the curious reader may be referred for a learned
discussion of the subject, is informed by a competent Armenian scholar
that this etymology is, as might have been supposed, impossible.
 ARARAT. 201

tain. They might have heard of the Bible narrative

from Jews, who were already beginning to be scattered
through these countries (there is a story that some of
those carriedaway by Shalmanezer were settled in Ar-
menia and Georgia) they might know the Chaldaean
;

legend of the Flood, which was preserved by Berosus,

to whom Josephus so often refers, and a version of
which has been found on clay tablets in the ruins of
Nineveh and deciphered by the late Mr. George Smith.
The curious thing is that this Chaldee legend fixed
the spot of Noah's landing in a quite different region,

although one which was sometimes included in the

wide and loose name Armenia, viz. in the mountain
land (called by the Jews Qardu) which rises to the
east of the Upper Tigris, that is, north-east of
Nineveh and Mosul, in the direction of Urumia.
This country was called in ancient times Gordyene,
a name which appears in the flebrew Qardu, and
in our modern name Kurds, as well as in the
Karduchi of Xenophon. As its mountains, although
far less lofty than our modern Ararat, are of great

height, and visible far away into the Assyrian plain

(Mr. Layard saw Aghri Dagh from the summit of one
of them), it was natural for the inhabitants of that

plain to assume that they were the highest on earth,

which the Deluge would be the last to cover, and
where the vessel of safety would come to land. The
Jews also, probably at the time of the Captivity, took
up this notion, and it became the dominant one among
them, frequently given in the Talmud, and by
is

Josephus himself, in a passage (Ant. Jud. xx. ii. 2)

 2O2 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

where he mentions that in the country of Adiabene,

and Carrae (others read " of the

in the district of

''J Cardi
"
=
Kurds), there were preserved the remains
of the Ark. Probably he thought that the disem-
barking place mentioned in the beginning of his
treatise was here, for he quotes Berosus as stating
that it was among the Kurds, who in those days are
not mentioned so far north as they wander now.
Berosus' words are, " It is said that there is still
some part of this ship in Armenia at the mountain
of the Cordyaeans (TTJOO? rw opei rcov KopSvaiwv), and
that some people carry off pieces of the bitumen,
which they take away and use chiefly as amulets for
the averting of mischief." But probably Josephus'
ideas of the geography of these regions were vague

enough, and he may not have known that from the

land of Ajrarat, on the middle Araxes, to Gordyene
it is more than 200 miles. From the Jews, this idea
that Gordyene was the Biblical spot passed to the
Syrian Church, and became the prevailing view
throughout the Christian East, as it still is among the
.
^estorians, who dwell hard by. It passed also to the
Muslims ;
and Gudi, the mountain where the Ark
rested according to the Koran, is usually placed by
them in the same Kurdish land, near the spot where
there seems to have stood for several centuries (it was
burnt in A.D. 655, but may have been rebuilt later) a
convent to which tradition pointed as the guardian of
the sacred fragments. Those who assume, as many
Oriental scholars do, that the original tradition of the
Flood is to be found in Assyria, naturally prefer this
 ARARAT. 2O3

latter identification, since the mountains of Southern

Kurdistan, the Oardu land, are quite high enough to
satisfy the narrative, and must have been always
familiar to the Chaldees, whereas the Araxes valley
lies far away to the north, and the fact that its

summits are really loftier would in those times be

little known or regarded. Without the aid of our
modern scientific appliances, men's ideas of relative
height are even vaguer and less capable of verification
than their ideas of distance. On the other hand, the
view which holds the Ararat of the Bible to lie in

Northern Armenia, near the Araxes, can appeal not

only to the undoubted fact that there was in that
region the province called Ajrarat, but also to the re-
"
ference to a " kingdom of Ararat in Jeremiah li. 27,

which could hardly apply to Gordyene. 1 And one

does not see why the Old Testament writers, whose

geographical knowledge was in some points a good

deal wider than is commonly assumed, should not
have heard of the very lofty summits that lie in this

part of Armenia. Full liberty is therefore left to the

traveller to believe our Ararat, the
snowy sovereign of
the Araxes plain, to be the true Ararat, and certainly
no one who had ever seen it rising in solitary majesty
far above all its attendant peaks could doubt that its

summit must have first pierced the receding waves.

The modern Armenian tradition of course goes for
nothing in settling the question, for that tradition
cannot be shown to be older than our own era, and is
easily accounted for by the use of the word Ararat in
1
See Noldeke, ut supra.
204 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

the book of Genesis, which the Armenians, when Jews

or Christians came among them, would of course

identify with their Ajrarat. Once established, the

tradition held its ground, and budded out into many
fantastic legends, some of them still lingering in

Armenia, some only known to us by the notices of

passing mediaeval travellers. Marco Polo, whose
route does not seem to have led him near it, says
"
only, in speaking of Armenia Here is an exceeding
:

great mountain : on which it is said the Ark of Noah

rested, and for this cause it is called the mountain of
the Ark of Noah. The circuit of its base cannot be
traversed in less than two days ;
and the ascent is

rendered impossible by the snow on its summit,

which never dissolves, but is increased by each suc-
cessive fall. On the lower declivities the melted snows
cause an abundant vegetation, and afford rich pastures
for the cattle which in summer resort thither from
all the surrounding countries." But the Franciscan
friar, William of Rubruk, who, in 1254, a little before

Marco Polo's time, had on his return from Kara-

korum passed under Ararat, says that here
upon the
higher of two great mountains above the river Araxes
the Ark rested, which mountain cannot be ascended,

though the earnest prayers of a pious monk prevailed

so far that a piece of the wood of the Ark was brought
to him by an angel, which piece is still preserved in a
church near by as a holy relic. He gives Massis as
the name of this mountain, and adds that it is the
"
mother of the world super Massis nullus debet
:

ascendere quia est mater mundi."

 ARARAT. 2O5

Sir John Maundeville, of pious and veracious

memory, has also a good deal to tell us. After
speaking of Trapazond (Trebizond), and stating that
from there " men go to Ermonye (Armenia) the
Great unto a cytee that is clept Artyroun
(Erze-
rum), that was wont to ben a gode cytee and a
plentyous, but the Turkes han gretly wasted it," he
proceeds: "Fro Artyroun go men to an Hille that is
clept Sabisocolle. And there besyde is another Hille
that men clepen Ararathe but the Jews clepen it
:

Taneez, where Noes Schipp rested and zit is upon :

that Montayne : and men may see it a ferr in cleer

wedre : and that Montayne is well a 7 Myle high. And
sum men seyn that they have seen and touched the

Schipp and put here Fyngres in the parties where

;

the Feend went out whan that Noe seyd Benedicite? '

But thei that seyn such Wordes seyn here Wille, for
a man may not gon up the Montayne for gret plentee
of Snow that is alle weyes on that Montayne nouther
Somer ne Winter so that no man may gon up there
;
:

ne nevere man did, sithe the tyme of Noe: saf a

Monk that be the grace of God broughte on of the
Plankes down, that zit is in the Mynstre at the foot
of the Montayne. And besyde is the Cytee of Dayne
that Noe founded. And faste by is the Cytee of

Any, in the whiche were 1000 churches. But upon

thatMontayne gon up to this Monk had
gret desir;
and so upon a day he wente up and whan he was up-
ward the 3 part of the Montayne he was so wery that
he myghte no ferthere, and so he rested him and felle
to slepe ;
and whan he awoke he fonde himself
2O6 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

liggynge at the foot of the Montayne. And then he

preyede devoutly to God that he wolde vouche saf to
suffre him gon up. And an Angelle cam to him and
seyde that he scholde gon up and so he did. And
;

sithe that tyme never non. Wherfore men scholde not

beleeve such Woordes."
This laudable scepticism of Sir John's prevailed,
for it has
long been almost an article of faith with
the Armenian Church that the top of Ararat is in-
accessible. Even the legend of the monk, which,
as we find from Friar William, is as old as the
thirteenth century, is usually given in a form which
confirms still further the sacredness of the moun-
tain. St. Jacob (Hagop), as the monk
named, was
is

consumed by a pious desire to reach and venerate

the holy Ark, which could in seasons of fair weather
be descried from beneath, and three several times he
essayed to climb the steep and rocky slopes. Each
time, after reaching a great height, he fell into a deep
sleep, and, when he woke, found himself at the foot of
the mountain. After the third time, an angel ap-
peared to him while he still lay in slumber, and told
him that God had forbidden mortal foot ever to tread
the sacred summit or touch the vessel in which man-
kind had been preserved, but that on him, in reward
for his devout perseverance, there should be bestowed
a fragment of its This fragment he placed on
wood.
the sleeper's breast, and vanished it is that which is
;

still preserved in the treasury at Etchmiadzin, or, as

others say, in the monastery of Kjeghart and the ;

saint is commemorated by the little monastery of

 ARARAT. 207

St. Jacob, which stands, or rather stood till 1840, on

the slopes of Ararat, above the valley of Arghuri,

the spot of the angel's appearing. Every succeeding
traveller has repeated this tale, with variations due to
his informant or hisown imagination so, though the
:

reader has probably heard it, I dare not break through

a custom so long established. Among these repeaters

isSir John Chardin, who travelled through Armenia
and Persia towards the end of the seventeenth century,
and whose remarks upon it are as follows. They
show the progress which criticism had been making
since the days of the earlier Sir John.
"
This is the Tale that they tell, upon which I shall
observe 2 Things. First, that it has no coherence with
the relations of ancient authors as Josephus, Berosus,
or Nicolaus of Damascus, who assure us that the Re-
mainders of the Ark were to be seen, and that the
people took the Pitch with which k was besmeared as
an Antidote against Several Distempers. The second,
that whereas it is taken for a Miracle that no Body
can get up to the Top I should rather take it for a
:

greater Miracle that any Man should climb up so

high. For the Mountain is altogether uninhabited,
and from the Halfway to the Top of all, perpetually
covered with Snow that never melts, so that all the
Seasons of the Year it appears to be a prodigious
heap of nothing but Snow."
Whether Chardin himself believed the Ark to be
still on the top of the mountain, does not In
appear.
two views ofit which he
gives, showing also Erivan
and Etchmiadzin, the Ark appears, in shape exactly
208 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

the Ark of the nursery on Sunday afternoons, poised

on the summit of Great Ararat. But this may be
merely emblematic indeed I have not found any
;

author who says he has himself seen it, though plenty

who (like the retailers of ghost stories) mention other

people who have.

Religious fancy has connected many places in the

neighbourhood with the Biblical narrative. Not to
speak of the sites which have been suggested in the
Araxes valley for the Garden of Eden, the name of
Arghuri itself is derived from two Armenian words
"
which mean, " he planted the vine ;
it is taken to
be the spot where Noah planted that first vineyard
which is mentioned in Genesis ix. 20: and till 1840,
when the village was overwhelmed by a tremendous
fall of rocks, shaken down by the great earthquake of
that year, an ancient vine stock, still bearing grapes,
was pointed out as that which had been planted by the
patriarch's hands. The town of Marand, the Marunda
of Ptolemy (in Armenian = the mother is there "), is
"

said to be called after the wife of Noah, who there died

and was buried ;
and
(as has been mentioned already)
the name of another still considerable town, Nakhi-

tchevan, in the Araxes valley, is explained to mean,

"
he descended first," and has therefore been identified
with the aTrofiaTijpiov of Josephus aforesaid. There too
was shown, perhaps is still shown, the tomb of Noah.
Modern historiansand geographers have been hardly
less fanciful than Armenian monks some derive the
:

Tatar name Aghri or Arghi Dagh from the word

Area. Some imagine a relation between this and
 ARARAT. 209

the Argo; others connect the word bar is (men-

tioned above as an ancient name for the mountain)
with a supposed Oriental word meaning "boat" (see
Herodotus, ii. 96), or with the Armenian bariz ( exit) = ;

in fine, there is no end to the whimsical speculations

that attach themselves to the mountain. What is

certain is word Ararat, though it is a genuine

that the
old Armenian name for a district, and is derived by
Moses of Chorene from Araijarat, "the fall of Arai,"
a mythical Armenian king slain in battle with Semi-
ramis, has never been the name by which those who
lived round the mountain have known it, albeit it is

found in the Armenian version of the Bible just as

in our own.
Of the other legends that cluster round the moun-
tain, I mention only two. One of them connects
shall

it with the so-called Chaldaean worship of the stars,

and affirm that upon it stood a pillar with a figure of
a star ;
and that before the birth of Christ twelve wise
men were stationed by this pillar to watch for the

appearing of the star in the east, which three of them

followed, when it appeared, to Bethlehem. The other,
of a very different kind, relates to a spring which
bursts forth on the side of the Great Chasm, above
the spot where the convent of St. Jacob stood. There
is a bird called by the Armenians tetagusk, which

pursues and feeds on the locusts whose swarms are

such a plague to this country. Now, the water of this
sacred spring possesses the property of attracting the

tetagush, and when the locusts appear, the first thing

to be done is to fetch a bottle of it, and set it on the
210 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

ground near them, taking care not to let it touch the

ground upon its way. The bird immediately appears ;

the locusts are devoured, and the crops are saved. It

is a pity the Canadians have no tetagush to set at their

destroying beetle.
Before finally quitting the realm of fancy for that of
fact, I will repeat an observation by which more than

one orographer of distinction, struck by the remark-

1
able geographical position which Ararat occupies,
has suggested a sort of justification for the Armenian
view that it is the centre of the earth. It stands in
the centre of the longest line of the old continent,

stretching from the Cape of Good Hope to Behring

Straits. the line of the great deserts and
It is also in

of the great inland seas from Gibraltar to Lake

Baikal, that is, in a line of almost continuous depres-
sions. almost exactly equidistant from the
It is

Black Sea, the Caspian, and the northern end of the

great Mesopotamian plain, which at no distant period
was probably also part of the ocean bed.
Taking the two Ararats together, they form an
elliptical mass of about twenty-five miles in length
from north-west to south-east, and about half that
width. This mass rises on the north and east out of
the alluvial plain of the Aras, whose height is here
from 2800 to 2500 feet above the sea, and on the
south-west sinks into the valley or rather plateau of
Bayazid, which between 4000 and 5000 feet above
lies

sea-level, and also discharges its waters towards the

Erdkunde,' vol. x., who quotes K. von Raumer

1 '
See Ritter,
on the point
 ARARAT. 21 1

Aras. It is therefore quite isolated on all sides but

the north-west, where a depression or col about 7000
feet high connects it with a long ridge of volcanic

mountains, which, under the names of Pambak, Synak

Dagh, and Parly Dagh, runs away to the westward
between the basins of the Aras and Murad Su
(Eastern Euphrates), and connects itself south of
Erzerum with the great range of the Bingol Dagh, or
north-eastern Taurus, as well as with the southern
offsets of the Anti-Caucasus. Over against it to the

north, nearly forty miles away, rise the three volcanic

pinnacles, fragments of a broken crater rim, of Ala

Goz (13,436 feet); to the east, beyond the wide
valley of the Aras, is the great plateau of the Kara
Bagh, some of whose highest volcanic tops exceed
11,000 feet, while on the south, beyond Bayazid and
the Upper Euphrates, ranges nearly equally lofty run
away down towards the Lake of Van in the south and
the Lake of Urumia in the south-east. Geographically
and geologically, Ararat is connected with all these,

but the plain immediately around it is wide enough to

give it that air of standing quite alone which so greatly
contributes to its grandeur, and speaks so clearly of
its volcanic origin.
Out of the great elliptical
mass I have described
risetwo peaks, their bases confluent at a height of
8800 feet, their summits about seven miles apart. The
higher, Great Ararat, is 17,000 feet above the sea-
1
level, the lower, Little Ararat, 12,840 feet. They are
1
The different measurements of the height of Ararat vary a little.

Parrot, by the barometer, made it 17,325 English feet; Fedorof, by

Q
212 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

very similar in geological structure, but sufficiently

dissimilar in appearance, like the sisters in Virgil
Facies non omnibus una
' '

"
Nee diversa tamen, qualem decet esse sororum

to enhance the effect of one another. For while Little

Ararat is an elegant cone or pyramid, rising with

steep, smooth, regular sides into a comparatively
sharp peak, Great Ararat is a huge, broad-shouldered
mass, more of a dome than a cone, supported by
strong buttresses, and throwing out rough ribs or
ridges of rock that stand out like knotty muscles from
its solid trunk. The greatest length of this dome is
from north-west to south-east. Towards the north-
east, that is, on one of its long sides, it descends very
abruptly towards the Aras plain, forming in places
ranges of magnificent black precipice, capped with ice-
beds many hundreds of feet in thickness, and pierced

by a profound glen or chasm. On the opposite or

south-west side the fall is somewhat less rapid ;
to-

wards the south-east, where the peak faces Little

Ararat, it is steep indeed, but in most parts not pre-
cipitous (this is the side up which I ascended) while ;

towards the north-west the declivity is longer and

more gentle, a succession of terraces, separated by
moderately difficult slopes, falling away into an im-
mense fan-shaped base, which spreads far into the
Araxes plain. This is, therefore, the side on which
occur the only considerable fields of snow or rather
neve (the others being too abrupt for much snow to

trigonometry, 17,130 feet; some other observer gives 17,260 feet,

which has been commonly adopted in England General Chodzko,
;

who ascended in 1850, makes it 16,916 feet..

 ARARAT. 213

lie), and it was by advancing over them that Parrot

effected the first ascent of the mountain. The upper
slopes, where not snow-covered, are extremely rough
and broken, seamed by gullies, the larger of which are
no doubt volcanic fissures, the smaller probably pro-
duced by winter storms, rising here and there into
lofty towers and ridges of rock, and strewn with pro-
digious masses of loose stone, broken by the weather
into wildly fantastic shapes. All this part, above
10,000 or 11,000 feet, is almost wholly bare of vege-
tation. The middle part of the declivity is somewhat
lessrugged, and the lowest slopes of all, by which the
mass subsides into the plain, are singularly smooth and
uniform. On the north-east side these basal slopes,
as I may call them, are two. First comes one which
rises from the Aras marshes at an angle of about
2^ degrees for some six miles, and then another,

which rises for, say, four miles, at an angle of 4^ de-

grees. After this second, the steep part of the moun-

tain begins. Its average angle on the north-west

declivity is about 17 degrees, on the south-east 25 to

30 degrees.
Both peaks are entirely composed of igneous
rock, and there is no question that they belong to
what may be called the
grand volcanic system of
North-western Asia, the main lines of whose action
are indicated in a general way by the direction of the
chief mountain chains, such direction being supposed
to correspond to axes of elevation, or, as it is some-
times expressed, to lines of fissure. Along these lines of
fissure, continuously or at intervals, the igneous masses

Q 2
214 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

forming the highest part of such chains were from time

to time ejected. One such line, or perhaps more than
one, represented by the Caucasus, where, besides
is

the granitic mountains on the axis, there are several

comparatively modern volcanic summits, such as

Elbruz, Kazbek, and Basarjusi. Another line of
elevation, marked by volcanic outbursts, appears in
the north-eastern ranges of Taurus another in the ;

range dividing the upper valleys of the Kur and Aras.

Still nearer to Ararat, the great mass of Ala Goz, on

the north, and the continuation of that mass to the

east and south-east in the mountains that surround
the Goktcha lake, are all volcanic, composed chiefly
of trachyte rock. The valley of the Aras itself is
filled by recent alluvial deposits, out of which rise iso-

lated palaeozoic hills composed of carboniferous lime-

stone or Devonian strata, which appear again farther
to the south, in the hills through which the Aras takes
its way to Nakhitchevan and the Persian border ;

while farther to the south and west, newer sedimentary

rocks range southwards, pierced here and there by the
volcanic outbursts which reach as far as Lake Van.
The only geologist of eminence who has carefully
examined Ararat is Hermann Abich, now one of the
patriarchs of the science ;
and probably the best
thing I can do is to abridge his view of its structure
and history, so far as I can gather it from the various
papers which he has contributed to different scientific
journals.
1
He holds the inner and original part of
1
See in particular his paper, "Ararat in seiner genetischen Bildung,"
in the Transactions of the German Geological Society for 1870, in which
 ARARAT. 215

the mass to be composed of trachyte and trachytic

tuffs, poured out at a comparatively early period in

dome-shaped hills, three of which, placed along a line

of fissure running nearly north-west and south-east,
were Little Ararat, Great Ararat, and the rounded
plateau called, from a small pond or pool upon it

(gholl= lake, in Tatar), Kip Gholl, which lies about

four miles north-west by west of the top of Great
Ararat. The eruptive forces which raised these hills
having, after an interval of quiescence, resumed their
activity in comparatively recent times, probably in

what we call the pleiocene age, violent splittings and

burstings of the trachytic rocks went on, mainly along
the old lines of fissure, and vast quantities of lava of
a doleritic or basaltic character were poured out from
various points along these fissures. The pressing-up
from beneath of the edges of the fissures gave to the
summits of both Great and Little 'Ararat their present
form no eruptions taking place from the actual tops,
;

although some of the fissure-vents which discharged

streams of doleritic lava were not far below these
summits, while a number of minor cones were raised
and craters formed along the sides of the mountain,
especially to the south-east of Great Ararat, and on
Kip Gholl, where several large and well-marked cra-
teriform hollows may be still made out. Along with
this splitting, there went on a process of elevation,
by which the southern edge of one huge cleft was
raised to be the present summit of Great Ararat,

the views expressed in his paper contributed to the Transactions of the

Geological Society of Paris in 1850 are slightly modified.
2l6 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

while its other side remained at, or sank to, a much

lower level ;
were also formed at right
other rifts

angles to the principal axis, one of which was the

origin of the remarkable chasm on the north-east
side of the mountain, which bears much similarity to
the famous Val del Bove on Etna. Its present shape
and dimensions nearly 9000 feet deep, and
it is

surrounded by monstrous precipices are probably,

like thpse of the Sicilian valley, due to subsequent

erosion ;
but there may well have been eruptions
from it some earlier stage. A somewhat similar,
in

but smaller, chasm penetrates deep into the mountain

on the opposite or south-western side.

According was a great

to this theory, there never
central crater at the summit of either Great or Little
Ararat. The forms of those two peaks are due to
the elevating and rending forces which, operating
on pre-existing trachytic masses, squeezed up the
edges of the they opened into comparatively
clefts

sharp points, while prodigious and long-continued

eruptions sometimes from these clefts, sometimes from
cones of eruption built up round the principal orifices

along their line, increased the external volume of the

mountain, and in the case of Great Ararat turned it
from a comparatively sharp cone, similar to Little
Ararat, into the broad-shouldered, grandly buttressed
mass which it now presents. Unlike these two loftier
summits, Kip Gholl would appear to approach more
nearly the normal type of a modern volcano, having
been built up, not so much by a general upheaval, as
by external accretion from the lava, scoriae, and ashes,
 ARARAT. 217

ejected from its craters; and the gentler inclination

of the northern slope of the peak of Great Ararat

would be accounted for by the fact that behind Kip
Gholl to the south-east, in the direction of that peak,
there were other similar craters which filled up the
depression between and Kip Gholl, and gave to the
it

north-west face of the mountain its present appear-

ance of a series of descending terraces. Subsequent
denudation continued through many thousands, or
millions, of years, and that process of decay and
levelling which all mountains undergo has worn down
the inequalities of the sides, has given to Little
Ararat its figure of a wonderfully regular pyramidal
cone, has filled up some and scooped out others of
the fissures on Great Ararat until the former seem to
be merely shallow troughs running down the moun-
tain face, while the latter are profound gorges such as
the great chasm, has obliterated .many of the lateral
craters by breaking down their rims and raising the
level of their bottoms.

To criticise this theory, which perhaps retains too

much old upheaval doctrines of von Buch
of the
and Elie de Beaumont to be altogether acceptable to
British geologists, would require far wider geological
knowledge than I possess, as well as a more careful
study of Ararat itself than I had time for. The
existence, however, of the great fissures to which Herr
Abich attributes so much is unquestionable ;
one in

particular, on the south-east side of the mountain,

runs down for many thousand feet, bordered by lofty
cliffs of black or reddish porphyritic trachyte, and has
2l8 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

every appearance of having discharged currents of lava.

I can also confirm what he says as to the absence of

any trace of a crater on the summit of Great Ararat.

The top (which I shall describe in the following
chapter) forms a small undulating plateau of snow,
with two rounded heights or bosses rising out of it ;

there is no appearance of a circular hollow, and

although the cap of neve" is thick enough to obscure
in some degree the structure of the rocky ground
beneath, it could hardly have its present form if there

really lay underneath it sharp cliffs surrounding a

basin, such as are seen in most volcanoes. Nothing,
for instance, could be less like the snowy summit of
Hekla, where there is a beautiful crater almost sur-
rounded by an than
the top of Ararat.
arete, is

Similarly, the top of Little Ararat is nearly flat, with

many vast blocks and masses of rock on it, but no
central depression, no rim of would, how-
cliffs. It

ever, be rash to infer from the absence of a crater now

that none ever existed on these summits, for many
volcanoes might be cited whose central crater has
been almost or even quite obliterated, though the
general structure of the mountain enables us to con-
clude its former existence. 1 It may therefore be that
on Great Ararat the crater had been, at the time
when volcanic action through its chimney ceased,
almost filled up within by the ejection of solid matter
from that chimney, so that the crateral form had

1
Instances may be found referred to in Mr. Scrope's treatise on
Volcanoes, and Professor Judd's book on Volcanoes, where this

question is particularly discussed.

 ARARAT. 219

almost disappeared. Or, again, it is possible that,

in the immense period that has elapsed since the
last eruption from the summit, the sides of the
crateral basin which then existed have been com-

pletely broken down by decay, the destructive action

of the atmosphere being doubly powerful at this
prodigious height, where frosts and storms are con-
stantly raging. Or, lastly, the summit, as we now
see it, may be the remains of one side of a large
crater, the other sides having been destroyed by
some paroxysmal eruption, as the one side of Somma,
the ancient Vesuvius, was destroyed in the tremen-
dous outburst of A.D. 72.
Supposing that there once existed a central vent of
eruption, opening at the top of Ararat, it would be in
the usual order of volcanic phenomena for this main
vent, whose presence had determined the height and
original shape of the mountain, to' pass into a state of
quiescence while the minor eruptive points on the
flanks still remained active, and perhaps became more
numerous. A great volcano has been compared to a

great tree, which dies down from the top. When the
explosive forces become weaker, they are no longer
able to raise the molten masses from within to the

height of the central orifice, but produce a crack

somewhere in the sides this becomes a crater, is
;

perhaps raised into a cone, and through it minor

eruptions go on. The repetition of the process mul-
tiplies these secondary vents all round the great
central chimney, which probably continues to emit
steam and light ashes, but no longer discharges molten
22O TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

rock, while the parasitic cones and craters cover the

skirts of the mountain with large deposits of scoriae and
ash, and send into the plain below far-reaching streams
of lava. This is the process now going on in many
famous volcanoes, of which I may again take Hekla
as an instance. Although the soil of its central crater
is hot in some places, and emits a little sul-
still

phurous vapour, no eruption has issued thence for a

long time and the last one, that of 1845, was from a
;

chasm about 1000 feet below the top. So, too, most
of the lava flows of Etna have taken place from lateral

vents ;
no less than 700 of which have been counted
on its sides. Such parasitic craters are very con-
spicuous on Ararat. On the north-west there are
several on the large dome-shaped heights of Kip
Gholl on the south-east, a good many lie close
;

together on the ridge which unites Great to Little

Ararat, behind the spring and station of Sardarbulakh,
some of them looking as fresh as if they had been

burning last week. The most conspicuous secondary

cone of eruption is one which rises boldly on the east-
south-east slope, between Sardarbulakh and the top,
and from the plain below looks like a huge tooth
1
stuck on the mountain side. Its top is about 13,000
feet above the sea-level. From these craters all sorts

of volcanic materials have been ejected, trachytes,

andesites, and basalts of various descriptions, with
pitchstones, ashes whose consolidation has formed

1
It appears in the frontispiece as a black projection from the snowy
east-south-eastern side of the mountain, and goes by the name of Tach .

Kilissa.
 ARARAT. 221

tuff beds, scoriae like the slag from a furnace, pumice,

and in some places at the south-western foot of the

mountain, obsidian, a sort of volcanic glass, black

or dark green like the glass of a bottle. remark- A
able bed or dyke of this obsidian is also to be found
between Erivan and Daratchichak, where it crosses
the high-road ;
it is made by the workmen of Tiflis
into handsome ornaments, but is less clear and glossy
than that of the famous obsidian mountain Hrafntin-
nuhryggr, in Iceland.
When the fires of Ararat became extinct is mere
matter of guess it may have been six thousand or
;

sixty thousand years ago. All that can be said is

that no record exists of any eruption in historical

times. Stories indeed there are in the Armenian

historians of mountains emitting fire and smoke
this is alleged to have happened in A.D. 441 and
of darkness prevailing for thirty days, but they do
not point to Ararat in particular, and are too vague
to enable us to set any store by them. German A
traveller named Reineggs alleges that in February
1785, from a great distance to the north-east, smoke
and flames were seen to from Ararat, but nobody
issue
has believed entirely unconfirmed
his assertion.
No other volcano in these countries, or indeed in
Western Asia at all, can be shown to have been active
within time of human memory, although, as has been
said already, there are hundreds of extinct volcanic

chimneys between Constantinople and Afghanistan.

It is only in hot springs, naphtha wells, sometimes

in those bubbling pools of mud which are called

222 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

mud volcanoes, and which occur at both ends of the

Caucasus, and now and then in a solfatara, 1 a hollow

or crevice emitting vapours which deposit sulphur,

and, above all, in earthquakes, that the presence of the

terrible subterranean forces reveals itself,

One of the most remarkable features of Ararat is

the. surprising height of the line of perpetual snow.

This, which in the Alps averages 8500 to 9000 feet,
which in the Caucasus varies from 10,000 feet on the
south-western to 12,000 feet on the northern slopes, rises
here to nearly 14,000 feet. 2 It is, of course, different on
different parts of the mountain ;
lower on the north-
west, not only because the sun does not strike there
with such force, but also because the slopes are more
gentle. They descend, as I have said, in broad
terraces, which are covered with glittering fields of
unbroken #/#/, while on the steeper south-east de-

clivity the snow appears chiefly in vast longitudinal

beds, filling the depressions between the great rock
ridges that run down the mountain, giving it, as Parrot
has remarked, the appearance, from a distance, " of a
beautiful pointed collar of dazzling white material on
a dark ground." One at least of these rock ridges
continues bare of snow to within a hundred feet of the
summit, a fact which cannot be completely explained
by their inclination, since it not always too steep
is

to permit snow to lie, nor even by the fact that they

are mostly covered by loose volcanic blocks, off which
1
Such a solfatara is said to exist among the mountains to the south-
west of Little Ararat.
2
One observer puts it as high as 14,200 feet : this seems to me a
trifle too high.
 ARARAT. 223

snow melts more readily than from a smooth, solid

surface ;
it is probably, therefore, to be also referred,
asAbich suggests, to the decomposition of the minerals
contained in the rock. The lowest point at which I
noticed a permanent snow-bed on the exposed south-
east side is about 12.000 feet above the sea; but in
the deep dark valley on th e^ijipi^^east of the moun-
tain, which is
sometirr&gViiapelrinpS^ Great Chasm,
sometimes the Valley IMnSt.
^^cob^-rapm the little
monastery aforesaid, theVsngW ^SBCfi^a even lower.
Here is to be found the->on^{\true) glfccier on the
whole mountain, those
glacie^^Awa^ch the older
travellers talk as seen on its upper sides being either

mere beds of neve or, in one or two instances on the

north-west slope, what are sometimes called glaciers
of the second order. In the chasm, however, there is
not merely an accumulation of masses of .half melted
ice that have fallen from the prodigious ice-wall that

fringes the top of the cirque in which this chasm ends,

but really a glacier, small and almost covered with
blocks and stony rubbish, but with the genuine glacier
structure, and united to the great snow mass of the
mountain above by one or two snow-filled glens which
run up from its head. It is nearly a mile long, and
from 200 to 400 yards wide, with its lower end about
8000 feet, its upper nearly 10,000 feet above the sea-
level, and bearing a moraine.
The great height of the snow-line on Ararat, which
seems extraordinary when we compare it with the
Alps or the Caucasus, which lie so little farther to the
north Ararat is in latitude 39 42', Elbruz in latitude
224 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

432i', Mont Blanc 45 50' becomes easy of

in latitude

explanation when it is remembered how many causes

besides distance from the equator govern the climate
of any given spot. The most powerful influence
in determining the point at which snow remains
through the year is the rainfall. It is the greater
moisture of the air that fixes the snow-line on the
outer Himalaya, immediately north of the Bay of
Bengal, at about 14,000 feet above the sea, while, as
one advances north into Tibet, it rises steadily in the
drier air, till it reaches 19,000 feet. So on the part of
the Caucasus which looks towards the Black Sea, and
receives the south-western rains coming thence, the
snow-line is 2000 feet lower than on the colder, but far
drier, north-eastern slopes. Now Ararat stands in an
exceptionally dry region, whose rainfall is only 10
or 1 2 inches in the year :
l
there is, therefore, much
less snow to fall than in the Alps. Besides, it is

isolated, with only a small area of very great height,

whereas Elbruz and Mont Blanc are surrounded by
large snow masses little less elevated than themselves.
The great Araxes plain, hemmed in on the north and
east by bare and lofty mountains, which reflect, like

the walls of a garden, every ray of light and heat,

may be called a sort of huge bath or caldron filled

with hot dry air, which is continually rising out of
this caldron along the sides of Ararat and these

other peaks, melting its snows and absorbing what-

ever moisture the storms of the higher regions have

1
The annual rainfall at Aralykh is 6'o8 inches ; at Alexandropol,

90 miles to the north-west, 14/68 inches.

 ARARAT. .
225

deposited on it. Hence it is that, while in winter the

whole country, except the Aras valley below Erivan,
is covered with a thick mantle of snow, this has in

September melted off every exposed summit except

Ararat himself, though upon some of the others, and
especially on Ala Goz, it may still be discovered
sheltering itself in northward-lying hollows.
The upward rush of air from the plain produces
another phenomenon on Ararat which is the first

thing to strike every observer.The top is generally,

at least during the months of summer and autumn,

perfectly clear during the night and till some time

after dawn. By degrees, however, as the plains begin
to feel the sun, their heated air mounts along the
sides of the mountain, and, when it reaches the snow
region, condensed into vapour, and forms clouds.
is

Springing out of a perfectly clear sky, usually about

three or four hours after sunrise, 'these clouds hang
round the hill till sunset, covering only the topmost
3000 feet, constantly shifting their places, but never
quite till
disappearing,sunset, when they usually
vanish, the supply of hot air from below having

stopped, and leave the peak standing out clear and

sharp in the spotless blue. So it stands all night,
next morning brings the envious clouds again.
till

The phenomenon is just the same as that which those

who climb the Southern Alps, to gain a view over the

plains of Italy, have so often noted and reviled one ;

sees it to perfection in Val Anzasca, where the south-

east face of Monte Rosa is nearly always cloud-
wrapped after II A.M. Here, however, it seems even
226 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

stranger, for the other mountains round the Araxes

plain, being unsnowed, remain perfectly bare and
clear; through the whole sky there is not a cloud
except round this one snowy cone. It is a pheno-
menon which the explorer of Ararat has to lay his
account with, and which makes it useless to hope for
a perfect view, except in the early morning.

Although the snow-fields on the mountain are not

very extensive, they are quite large enough to supply
streams to water its sides and the want of such
;

streams isdue to the porous character of the volcanic

soil. At the height of about 13,000 feet, one finds
plenty of lively little brooks dancing down over the
rocks from the melting snows. But as they descend,

they get lost in the wilderness of loose stones that

strew the middle slopes of the mountain, and are only

faintly heard murmuring in its deep recesses, mocking

with sweet sounds the thirsty wayfarer. Towards
the base these streams sometimes, though rarely,

reappear in fountains, as they usually do in limestone

countries but they are then even more quickly
;

swallowed up in the alluvial soil of mud and consoli-

dated ash which, sloping gently eastwards, extends
from the foot of the rocks to the bed of the'Aras.
Hence Ararat is painfully dry throughout ;
one finds
it hard to imagine dripping and steaming after a
it

flood. Sometimes you see a gully whose torn sides

and bottom strewed with rounded blocks show that
in winter a torrent rushes down but all autumn long
;

you may wander round and round it, meeting scarcely

a brook and rarely even a spring. This is strange
 ARARAT. 227

and dreary to a traveller accustomed to the mountains

of Western Europe, all alive with streams, or even to
one coming straight from the Caucasus. Neverthe-
less, the middle zone of Ararat is covered with good
pasture, greener than on Armenian
most of the
mountains, for here the proximity of the snows mode-
rates the temperature, and there is a reasonable dew-

fall, besides the showers which the great mountain

gathers. This middle zone extends from about 5000
feet above the sea to 1 1 ,000 or 1 2,000 feet. Below it,

towards the valley of the Aras (I speak particularly

of this north-eastern side, because it is the only one I
know from personal observation), the lower declivities
composed of whitish clay or sand, strewn here and
there with lumps of grey or yellowish trachyte, are
covered by a sort of steppe vegetation almost of the
desert type dwarf shrubs or bushes, often prickly,
with few leaves and a much branching stem, some
herbaceous flowering plants, and one or two grasses
growing in stray tufts, especially Dactylis littoralis,
on which a cochineal insect lives. Being utterly
parched and quite without continuous herbage, this
region is unprofitable, touched neither by plough nor
spade, and without inhabitants. On the other hand,
the upper slopes, from 1 1,000 or 12,000 feet upwards
the limit varies a little in different parts of the moun-

tain are bare of vegetation, except that a few of the

hardiest species creep up to the snow-line it is all :

loose gravel or bare rock, perfectly dry, and with

nothing bigger than a lichen growing on it. Between
these two re'gions of barrenness and solitude lies a
R
228 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

tract over which the nomad Kurds wander with their

flocksand herds, seeking the upper pastures during
the heat of summer, and in winter retreating before
the snow to the edge of the steppe land. Here and
there they have planted two or three little fields of
wheat or barley, and by them built sorry grass-covered

huts, but by far the greater number live entirely on the

milk and flesh of their cattle, and, when the winter cold
becomes too severe, migrate quite down into the
valleys that surround the mountain, where, at least
on Turkish soil, they often quarter themselves on the
Armenian villagers. Their favourite summer camping
grounds on the mountain are two, the high open plain
which lies between Great and Little Ararat, 7000 to
8000 feet above the sea, whereof more anon, and
the before-mentioned alpine plateau of Kip Gholl, a

comparatively level tract, where waters descending

from the snow-beds above have formed a small lake
or rather pond, about half an acre in size, and made an
oasis of fine herbage at a height of nearly 12,000 feet.
Enormous blocks of stone, which have fallen from the
sides of the neighbouring extinct craters, lie around,
and give good shelter it is the pleasantest high
:

station on Ararat, and the best from which to ascend

the summit with tolerable comfort. Except these
Kurds, a few Tatars at New Arghuri, where there
is a of cultivation, and possibly some casual
little bit

Persian robbers straying upon the slopes, there is not

a human being all over the vast area of the two
mountains.
Not only this pastoral zone, but the whole moun-
 ARARAT. 229

tain, is, like Central Armenia generally, singularly

bare of wood. Here and there a single tree, of no
great height, may be discerned in sheltered situa-

tions, about 5000 or 6000 feet above the sea ;

but the

only wood of any extent is on the skirts of Little

Ararat, at a height of 7500 feet, and is composed of

low birches. The Kurds cut it down for firewood, so

perhaps it may be merely the relic of a much larger

forest. No coniferous tree is to be seen anywhere ;

nor even an isolated birch at a greater height than

8000 feet. In the month of September, when I
visited the mountain, everything is parched ;
the
flowers which love the middle slopes have nearly all

withered, and most even of the alpine plants have

lost their petals. It is, therefore, an unfavourable
time for botanizing ;
and as I passed over the best
botanical region, between 8ooq and 12,000 feet, in

the darkness of the night both going and returning,

there was little chance of observing or gathering rare

species. Those which I saw mostly belonged to the

same genera as the alpine plants of Europe such as ;

Gentiana, Campanula, Saxifraga, Draba, Cerastium.

One Cerastium in particular ascends to an enormous
height, fully 14,000 feet. On the whole, the flora,

though interesting, seemed to be scanty. This is

usually the case on volcanic mountains, partly be-
cause so large a part of their surface is covered by
bare stones or rock, partly because they are so dry,

partly, perhaps, owing to the presence of iron or

sulphurous ingredients in the soil. The Cryptogamia,

except lichens, are particularly poor, as always in a
R 2
230 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

dry air very few mosses were to be seen, and no

;

ferns, except two scrubby bits of our common English

Lastrea Filix mas. In full summer the show of

plants is doubtless finer, especially in the middle part

of the mountain, where I passed for a mile through
thickets of rose-bushes hanging on the steep sides of
a rocky buttress.
Of wild creatures, other than human, there is no
great variety, which is natural enough when one con-
siders the want of wood and perhaps not
shelter, but is

what might have been looked for by those who hold

that on this spot all the species of animals were once
seen together, descending to disperse themselves over
the globe. On the upper crags, the ibex, or wild
goat (it
not quite clear which), as well as the wild
is

sheep (Ovis Mtisimon], are found and a small species

;

of fox has been seen on the snows 1 5,000 feet above

the sea. Lower down
there are wolves and lynxes,
and in the marshes of the Araxes abundance of wild
swine. The botanist Tournefort says he saw tigers,
but nobody has believed him ; perhaps they were
wild cats or leopards. The tiger is found on the
south-west shore of the Caspian, round Lenkoran,
but there is no evidence of it so far west as this.

So far as my own
observation goes, the mountain is

very ill supplied with life I saw no quadrupeds,

:

scarcely any birds, except a few vultures and hawks,

not many insects even. Of lizards and scorpions,
there is great plenty on the lowest slope, but these,

of course, belong rather to the fauna of the plains.

From what has been said already, the reader will
 ARARAT. 231

probably have gathered how utterly unlike Ararat is,

not only in details, but even in general effect, to any

great mountain in those ranges, such as the Alps or

Pyrenees, with which we are most familiar. It is so

dry, so bare and woodless, so generally uniform in its

structure, having neither spurs running out nor glens

running in, even the colours of its volcanic rock have
so little variety, that a traveller, especially an artist,

might think it
unpicturesque and disappointing. Even
of scenery of the sterner sort, precipices and rock

gorges, there is not much to be seen on the mountain

itself,save in the Great Chasm, whose head is sur-
rounded by appalling cliffs, and on the upper south-
eastern slope, where ranges of magnificent red crags
run down from the summit. The noble thing about
Ararat not the parts but the whole.
is I know

nothing so sublime as the general aspect of this huge

yet graceful mass seen from the surrounding plains ;

no view which the beholder with a profounder

fills

sense of grandeur and space than that which is unfolded

when, on climbing its lofty side, he sees the far-

stretching slopes beneath, and the boundless waste of
mountains beyond spread out under his eye. The
very simplicity, or even monotony, of both form and
colour increases its majesty. One's eye is not
diverted by a variety of points of interest all the :

lines lead straight up to the towering, snowy summit ;

which is steep enough on the upper part to be beauti-

ful, while broad-spread base and rocky buttresses
its

give it a sort of stately solidity. The colour is as

simple as the form. From a gently inclined pedestal
232 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

of generally whitish hue, formed, as has been said, of

volcanic sand and ashes, the steep slopes rise in a
belt of green 5000 feet wide above this is another
;

zone of black volcanic rock, streaked with snow beds ;

highest of all the cap of dazzling silver. At one

glance the eye takes in all these zones of climate and
vegetation from the sweltering plain to the icy pin-
nacle, ranging through more than 14,000 feet of
vertical height. There can be but few other places in

the world where so lofty a peak (17,000 feet) soars so

suddenly from a plain so low, 2000 to 3000 feet above

the sea, and consequently few views equally grand.
The great summits of the Himalaya, like those of the
Alps and the Atlas, rise from behind high spurs and

outliers, atsome distance from the level country ;

while the giants of the South American Cordilleras

and of Mexico, all of them, like Ararat, volcanic, rise
out of high plateaux, and therefore lose to the eye a

good deal of their real height. Orizaba, for instance,

though 17,000 feet high, stands on a base of 7000 feet
in height Chimborazo reaches 21,000 feet, but the
;

plateau of Riobamba beneath it is nearly 10,000 feet

above sea-level. The Peak of Teneriffe springs up
out of the sea, but its height, 12,000 feet odd, falls
considerably short of that of Ararat, and this seems
to be true, also, of the lofty volcanoes along the coast
of Northern Japan. Any one who is familiar with
the Alps, which I take as best known to us, must
have been surprised to notice how seldom he saw,
near at hand, any single unbroken mountain slope of

great vertical elevation. A few points one remem-

 ARARAT. 233

bers,such as Courmayeur, where nearly 12,000 feet of

Mont Blanc are seen or Val Anzasca, where, from a
;

valley about 4000 feet above the sea, Monte Rosa

ascends, in what the eye thinks a precipice, to 15,000 ;

or Randa, below Zermatt, where the peak of the

Weisshorn, 1 1,000 feet above the spectator, seems to

hang over his head. These instances, however, are
instances of a view from a valley, where other hardly
inferior heights lie round ;
here in Armenia the
mountain raises himself, solitary and solemn, out of a
wide, sea-like plain.
The only exception, so far as I know, to the admira-
tion which it has excited in the minds of the modern
travellers who have seen it is supplied by the famous
French botanist Tournefort (in the beginning of the
"
eighteenth century), who says, This mountain, which
lies between the south and south-south-east of the

Three Churches (the Tatar name for Etchmiadzin) is

one of the most dismal and disagreeable sights on the
*
face of the earth." One wonders whether a time will

again come when men of taste will think so differently

from ourselves.
Ararat has, at present, another claim to import-
ance, in which, so far as singular among
I know, it is

famous mountains. meeting-point, the

It is the
cornerstone, of three great empires. On the top of
its lower peak, Little Ararat, the dominions of the

Czar, the Sultan, and the Shah, the territories of the

three chief forms of faith that possess Western and
Northern Asia, converge to a point. From this point
1
I quote this from Parrot.
234 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
the frontier between Persia and Turkey trends off to
the south-south-west, while that of Turkey and Russia,

running along the ridge that joins Little to Great

Ararat, mounts the latter, keeps along its top in a
north-west direction, and then turns west, along the
watershed of volcanic mountains, Pambak and Synak,
which divides the Russian province of Erivan, includ-
ing the middle valley of the Aras, from the Turkish
pashalik of Bayazid. This is no accident, nor has
Ararat been taken as a boundary merely because
it was a convenient natural division ;
it is rather
a tribute to the political significance of the name
and associations of the Mountain of the Ark. When
in 1828 the Czar Nicholas, having defeated the Per-
sians, annexed the territory round Erivan, his ad-
visers insisted on bringing Ararat within the Russian
border, on account of the veneration wherewith it is

regarded by the surrounding races, and which is

all

reflected on the sovereign who possesses it. To the

Armenians it is the ancient sanctuary of their faith,

the centre of their once famous kingdom, hallowed

by a thousand traditions. He who holds Ararat is

therefore, in a sense, the suzerain of the most vigorous
and progressive Christian people of the East. To the
Mohammedans, Persians, Turks; Tatars, and Kurds,
the mountain, though less sacred, is still an object of
awe and wonder from its size, its aspect, and the
general acceptance among them of the tale of the

Flood. In these countries one still sees traces of that

tendency, so conspicuous in the ancient world, but

almost obliterated in modern Europe, for men of one
 ARARAT. 235

race and faith to be impressed by the traditions and

superstitions of another faith, which they may even
profess to disbelieve and hate. No Irish Protestant

venerates the sacred island in Lough Derg ;

but here
the fanatical Tatars respect, and the Persian rulers

formerly honoured and- protected, Etchmiadzin and

many another Christian shrine while Christians not
;

unfrequently, both in the Caucasus and farther south

through the eastern regions of Turkey, practise
pagan or Mohammedan rites which they have learnt
from their neighbours, and even betray their awe for
the sacred places of Islam.
A remarkable result of this superstitious reverence
for Ararat is to be found in the scarcely shaken per-
suasion of its inaccessibility. A Persian Shah is said
to have offered a large reward to any one who should
get up but nobody claimed it.
;
There is also a story
told of a Turkish pasha at Bayazid who was fired

with an ambition to make

the ascent, and actually
started with a retinue for the purpose. He meant
however to do on horseback, and in fact went no
it

would carry him, which was

farther than his horse
of course a long way below the snow-line. The
first recorded ascent was made, in A.D. 1829, by
Dr. Frederick Parrot, a Russo-German professor in
the university of Dorpat, whose name is attached to
one of the pinnacles of Monte Rosa. He was beaten
back twice, but on the third attempt reached the top
with a party of three Armenians and two Russian
soldiers. The description he gives is perfectly clear
and intelligible ;
and its accuracy has been in most
236 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

respects confirmed by subsequent observers. There

is and ought never to have been, any more doubt
not,
about his ascent than about De Saussure's residence
on the Col du Geant ;
and the enterprise, considering
how was then known about mountain climbing,
little

the most modern of all our arts or sciences, and how

much superstitious prejudice he had to overcome in

order to persuade the natives to aid or accompany

him, was not unworthy to be compared with that of
the great Genevese. Nevertheless, in spite of the
evidence he produced, that of two Russian soldiers
who had gone with him, in spite of his own scientific
attainments, and the upright and amiable character
which shines through every line of his book, Parrot's
account was disbelieved, not only by the people of the
neighbourhood, but by several men of science and
and elsewhere, and he died before
position in Russia
justice had been done to his success. Two of the
Armenians whom he took with him to the summit, on
being examined, declared that they had ascended a
considerable distance but had seen much higher tops

rising above them and this became the conviction

;

of the whole country-side. When Herr Abich made

his ascent in 1845 it was the third, the second having

been that of Spassky Aftonomof, who went up in 1834

in order to ascertain whether it was really true that

the stars are visible at noon from the tops of the

highest mountains he reached the eastern summit,

which is only a few feet inferior in height to the
western, and six minutes' walk from it, and finding
the weather threatening, returned without going on to
 ARARAT. 237

the western. The consequence was that, when, anxious

to destroy the popular superstition, he produced his

companions as witnesses before the authorities at

Erivan, to make
a regular deposition, they turned
round on him, and solemnly declared and swore that
from the point which they had reached a great part of
the horizon was covered by much more lofty moun-
tains. This of course actually strengthened the
Armenian belief, nor did it yield to the fact that
General Chodzko, while conducting the triangulation
survey of Transcaucasia, reached the top with a large
party,moving slowly upwards from August II to
August 1 8, and stayed there three days in a tent
pitched on the snow. A
party of Englishmen who
ascended in 1856, from the Turkish side, were assured
by Turks and Kurds that the mountain was inacces-
sible, and considered themselves the first to climb it,

evidently doubting both Parrot and Abich. And at

this moment, I am persuaded that there is not a person

living within sight of Ararat, unless possibly some

exceptionally educated Russian official in Erivan, who
believes that any human foot since Father Noah's has
trodden that sacred summit. So much stronger is

faith than sight ;

or rather, perhaps, so much stronger
is prejudice than evidence.
As I have mentioned these ascents, a word or two
may be said regarding the routes taken. Parrot had
his head-quarters at the then existing monastery of
St. Jacob, on the edge of the great chasm of Arghuri ;

he mounted from this to the west encamped on the

;

second occasion at Kip Gholl, on the third and sue-

238 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

cessful one at a point somewhat higher than Kip

Gholl, just under the perpetual snows, and reached
the summit by a long march over the terraces and

generally gentle slopes of neve, which sink from it on

the north-west side. This way is not to be recom-
mended to a solitary climber, because the ice slopes
are occasionally steep enough to require some step
cutting they repulsed Abich on his third attempt
and here and there a crevasse may be met with ;

however, a solitary ascent is not to be recommended

in any case. But I believe it to be, on the whole, the
easiest and least fatiguing route, and the best for

a party. Notwithstanding which, it seems to have

been only once followed since Parrot's time. Abich's
fourth and successful ascent in 1845 ne deserves
scarcely less credit than Parrot for the tenacity with
which he clung to his purpose under so many diffi-
culties was made up the south-eastern face from
Sardarbulakh and it was on this side that both
;

Chodzko and the Englishmen of 1856 mounted. As

I shall have to describe it in giving my own experi-
ences, nothing more need be said of it here, further
than to remark that it is probably the best route for
a single man
or a very small party, since it involves,
at least in the autumn, very little snow work. No
one seems to have climbed the south-western slope
looking towards Bayazid and the alpine lake Balykh
Gholl ;
but Herr Abich, who has reconnoitred this
side, told me in Tiflis that he believed it to be quite

practicable. The chief advantage of the south-eastern

route, besides the scantiness of snow, lies in the fact

 ARARAT. 239

that it is entirely in Russian territory, so that one

need have apprehension of robbers, and can use
less

the Cossack station at Sardarbulakh (of which more

anon) as a base of operations.
The last event of importance in the history of
Ararat is the great earthquake of 1840. I have more

than once spoken of the profound chasm which, on

the north-east side of the mountain, over against

Aralykh, runs right into its heart. This chasm ends

in a sort of cirque hemmed in by tremendous walls of
black or grey lavas and tuff conglomerates, capped
by other precipices of ribbed blue ice, while at the
bottom of the cleft, almost covered by masses of
stone that have fallen from above, is to be found the

only true glacier on the hill. Near the mouth of this

chasm there formerly stood a pleasant little Armenian
village of some two hundred houses, named Arghuri,
or Aghurri, whose inhabitants, raised above the heats
of the plain, and out of the track of war, had led a

peaceful pastoral life for many generations, dwelling

in the midst of their orchards and vines, feeding

their flocks in the alpine pastures above them, and

cultivating a few fields where the generally stony soil
permitted the spade or plough to be used, and the
stream from the glacier spread vegetation over the
slopes. They boasted not only of the Patriarch's
vine, bearing grapes delicious to eat, but which
Heaven, in memory of the fault they betrayed him
into,had forbidden to be made into wine but also of ;

an ancient willow trunk, which had sprung from one of

the planks of the Ark. Not far above the village, on
240 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

the spot where the angel of the legend had appeared

to the monk, stood the little monastery of St. Jacob,

eight centuries old, higher was a tiny shrine

and still

beside a spring of bright clear water, the spring of

the tetagusli legend while on the opposite side of the
;

glen the Persian Sardar or viceroy had erected a

sumptuous summer villa to which he was accustomed
to retire from the scorching heats of Erivan. Setting
apart the wandering Kurds, this was the only inhabited

spot on the mountain, the place in which its traditions

and where they were faithfully preserved.
centred,
Towards sunset in the evening of the 2Oth of June
1840 (old style), the sudden shock of an earthquake,

accompanied by a subterranean roar, and followed by

a terrific blast of wind, threw down the houses of

Arghuri, and at the same moment detached enormous

masses of rock with their superjacent ice from the cliffs
that surround the chasm. A
shower of falling rocks
overwhelmed in an instant the village, the monastery,
and a Kurdish encampment on the pastures above.
Not a soul survived to tell the tale. Four days
afterwards, the masses of snow and ice that had
been precipitated into the glen suddenly melted, and,
forming an irresistible torrent of water and mud,
swept along the channel of the stream and down
the outer slopes of the mountain, far away into the
Aras plain, bearing with them huge blocks, and covering
the ground for miles with a deep bed of mud and
gravel. Even now, after thirty-seven years, the traces
of this convulsion are distinctly visible ;
in some
places the precipices from which the masses fell show
 ARARAT. 241

a fracture mark fresh as of yesterday. The direction

of the shocks, which were felt as far as Tiflis, the

Caspian, and the Lake of Urumia, was from the centre

of Great Ararat, towards the north-east. It was re-

ported in Europe at the time that Ararat had broken

out in eruption but for this story there is no founda-
;

tion the dust which accompanied the great rock fall

:

was probably mistaken for smoke by those who saw

it from a distance. Doubtless the blast was produced
by the fall of the rock masses. Since then a few huts
have again arisen somewhat lower down the slope
than the site of Old Arghuri and without the mouth
of the chasm ;
here dwell a few Tatars for the Arme-
nians (several, happening to be away from the village,

escaped) do not seem to have returned to the deso-

lated spot and pasture their cattle on the sides of
the valley which grass has again begun to clothe.
But Noah's vine and the primeval willow, and the
little monastery where Parrot lived so happily among
the few old monks who had retired to this hallowed
spot from the troubles of the world, are gone for
ever no Christian bell is heard, no Christian service
;

said, upon the Mountain of the Ark.

 242 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ASCENT OF ARARAT.

AT 8 A.M., on the morning of the nth of September,

we set out from Aralykh to ascend the mountain.
We had arranged to start at sunrise, knowing how
terrible the heat would be for the first part of the

road, but to get a large party under way is always

troublesome, and certainly not least so in these

countries, where there is no sense of the value of

time, and no conception of the conditions of a suc-
cessful mountain expedition. Indeed, what with the
collecting of the soldiers, the packing of provisions,
the hundred little things that occur to one's mind at

the last moment, a compass, snow spectacles, warm

gloves, and, above all, the indispensable lemons, more

than three hours would have been consumed had we
been any hands but those of our genial and ener-
in

getic host. The last thing was to write a few lines

home, wondering what the next lines would have to
report, and then we filed out of the cantonment amid
adieux and good wishes given in strange tongues.
We were nine in all, six soldiers of the Cossack detach-
ment, the gentleman who had undertaken to interpret,
and our two selves. The soldier in command was a
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 243

Kurd named Jaafar, a man of great mental as well as

bodily force, in whom the colonel reposed full con-

fidence, and whose singularly keen and expressive
glance made us wish that we could have held some
direct communication with him. Remembering that
on the same day of the year, years ago, I had
five

started to climb the Schreckhorn, and three years

before, the Maladetta, it amused me to think how
unlike this cavalcade of ours was to the parties of
loud-voiced Englishmen and stalwart guides that issue
from an Alpine inn before daylight to "do" some stimu-
lating peak or pass. We were
all mounted, though

certainly on no fiery chargers, and might rather have

been taken for a reconnoitring or marauding party,
sent to plunder some village across the Persian border,
which lay six miles off. The Cossacks were of course
fully armed and ^equipped, while my friend and I, in
addition to pistols stuck in the belt, brandished heavy

ice-axes, the management of which, together with

that of the bridle and a big white umbrella, required
some dexterity. An umbrella and a horse do seem
rather incompatible, not only with one another, but
with a mountain ascent ;
but we would willingly have
looked even more ridiculous for the sake of some
protection against the fiery shower of beams that
descended from the cloudless sky, and was reflected
from the whitish wastes over which we took our way.
We were traversing, in a southerly direction, the
outermost and extremely gentle slope of Ararat, a
region of fine sand or hard yellowish clay, covered
with dwarf, prickly, almost leafless bushes, but no
S
244 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

grass, and with no creatures save butterflies and lizards

of every hue scuttling about. Each mile was like the
last the want of landmarks on the almost level ex-
;

panse prevented us from noticing our progress ;

and
the air was so clear that, when we had marched for

three hours, the mass of the mountain seemed no

nearer than had done from Aralykh. Looking up
it

the smooth and featureless slope, we had, of course,

grossly underestimated the distance which separated

us from the base of the cone. Such heat we had
never felt before. Probably it was only the thrice
blessed umbrellas that saved us from a sunstroke,
since we had no better head protection than light felt

wide-awakes, whereas the Cossacks cover their solid

skulls with thick caps of sheepskin. Yet it was not
an enervating heat the air had that fresh stimulating
:

quality which is said to make travelling in the Arabian

desert so healthy and the sight of the glittering
;

peak above, which was now, like an Eastern beauty,

beginning to draw over its face the noonday veil of
cloud, seemed to shoot a thrill of coolness through
our burning veins.

After a time the ground became rougher as we

came to a region where winter torrents had cut deep
the slope, too, grew steeper,
gullies in the volcanic soil ;

and the air was fresher as we mounted, while a stray

cloud or two, detached from the mountain, deigned
us a passing shadow as it sailed across the blue.
About noon we were fairly on the side of Ararat him-
self, and felt that every step was a gain. Here
there projects from the body of the mountain, as a
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 245

glance at the frontispiece will show, a huge rounded,

dome-shaped spur or buttress, 7091 feet in height,
and evidently formed by eruptions from one or more
volcanic vents rising through it it is, in fact, one of
:

the largest of the parasitic cones, or groups of cones,

mentioned in the preceding chapter. Its name is

Takjaltu, not to be confounded with another Takjaltu

much farther to the north-west, in the upper Araxes
valley. We made for the point where this mass

joins Great Ararat, following a path which mounts

between them, and crosses a succession of rocky
ridges that descend steeply from the east side of
the latter.

Pursuing our way along the hillside, we had to dip

into more than one rocky ravine, but nowhere was
there a stream at the bottom everything dry as a
:

chalk down in Sussex. This path brought us out

on a little grassy plain, hemmed in by two of these

ridges,and on the third or eastern side by the heights

of Takjaltu, where to our surprise several tiny fields

appeared, and one or two men and women at work

in them, with a cluster of huts, built of stones and
eafth, standing near.Jaafar rode across to the men
to inquire if any Kurds could be got to take our

baggage up the mountain, on the backs of oxen, while

we halted in the hope of a drink from the well that
was said to be somewhere near. At last a man came,
carrying a rude bowl, but as it was filled with liquid
mud instead of water, we preferred thirst. The men
were Kurds, and this was one of their few autumn or
spring settlements on the mountain. As it lies 6000 feet
246 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

or more above the sea, they do not stay in it through

the winter : at this season they were beginning to de-
scend hither from the higher pastures. Remounting, we
continued to coast round the mountain towards the
south, scaling several more of the black rocky ridges
that descend its flank, the path being in some places
so steepand rugged that we were obliged to dis-
mount and lead the horses. Among these rocks there
grew rose-bushes enough to have inspired all the
poets of Persia. They were pretty even in berry, but
imagine what the scene must be in July, when the
whole mountain-side is gay with these delicate pink
blossoms, whereof I saw only one left now in Sep-

tember, and the sweet scent fills the keen mountain

air. Onrounding the last ridge, the conical peak of
Little Ararat came in view, its base about two miles

distant, across an openand just beneath us,

slope,

nestling under the ridge, was a Kurdish encampment.

Four or five tents stood side by side on the greensward,
supported on low poles or stakes, and covered with
curtains of black goat's hair, the ends loosely fastened
to the tops of these stakes, and the centre raised on cross

poles. The walls, if one can call them so, are formed
of matting or plaited reeds, and a similar strip of
reeds, with sometimes a rug or a piece of cloth thrown
over it, runs along between, and purports to divide
the women's apartment in each tent from that of the
men. It is more for the sake of form than to secure
privacy, for every corner of the establishment is
clearly visible to a person standing outside. To
slake our thirst, they brought us bowls of sourish
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 247

milk mixed with water, a frequent drink in these

countries, and we found it refreshing, if less palatable
than the fresh milk of a Swiss clidlet.
Five minutes' more riding up the grassy slope

brought us to the spot for which we had so often, and

latterly, time drawing on, so anxiously, enquired, the
well of Sardarbulakh. As the only high permanent
camping-ground on the mountain, and the place
which will be chosen for an alpine hotel, if such a
thing ever comes into existence on Ararat, Sardar-
bulakh is entitled to a few words of description. 1 It

stands nearly in the middle of a wide semicircular

valley, or rather a sloping plain, between the two
Ararats. Towards Great Ararat, which bears about
west, the ground rises, at first gently, then steeply,
in a series of rocky ridges of nearly equal height,
separated by long, narrow hollows, and mostly running
nearly west-north-west and east-south-east. About
five miles, as the crow flies, from this plain these ridges

merge in the great cone, whose summit may be some

six or seven miles from Sardarbulakh in a straight
line through the air, though more than twice that
distance to walk.
On the opposite or south-south-east side of this
small plain, Little Ararat springs up 5000 feet, in an
almost perfect truncated pyramid, with steep, smooth
sides, grassy,except where they are seamed by deep
cuts,running 'from top to bottom, into the sand and
gravel with which those smooth sides are covered. Its
1
Sardarbulakh does not appear in the view, as it lies back, just
behind the top of the buttress which shows between the two Ararats.
248 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

base may be two,top about four, miles distant in

its

a straight line drawn along the earth. If Great Ararat

is the most majestic, Little Ararat may claim to be the

most elegant of mountains the eye is never tired of

;

its beautiful lines. The two peaks are connected by

a rough-topped ridge which forms the back of the
sloping plain I have described, and also marks the
frontier between the Russian and Turkish empires.
Over the path to Bayazid, 1 distant some nineteen
it is

miles to the south-west, while five miles to the east,

on the north-eastern side of Little Ararat, one enters
the territories of the Shah. The place is therefore
particularly well suited for predatory operations, since,
when the marauders are attacked on any one of the
three soils, they can promptly retire into one of the
other two, and snap their fingers at justice, just as
evil-doers in England used to be fond of establish-

ing themselves on the boundary between two counties,

where they could slip away from the sheriff of either.
Hence Russia, who cares more about the security
of the subject than her neighbours do, has placed
here a sort of small frontier guard, consisting of seven
or eight armed Cossacks, who remind the mountain

Bayazid, a decaying town with a half ruinous citadel, was the first
1

Turkish fortress which the Russians captured in the present war. They

approached it from the east, through Persian territory, as the snow was
then (early in May) too deep both on the pass between the Ararats, and
the other passes west of Great Ararat which lead to it, to permit the

passage of an army. As everybody knows, the garrison they placed

there was surrounded by a large Turkish force, consisting mainly of
Kurds, who butchered a great part of this garrison, while it actually was
surrendering under an agreement, and beleaguered the few who saved
themselves in the citadel till they were relieved by General Tergukasof.
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 249

Kurds of the existence of the Czar, and keep an eye

on the border depredators, who, lurking about in
Persia or Turkey, now and then swoop down on the
Aras valley for a little booty. Before 1828, when
Persia still held all of what is now the Russian side
of Ararat, this plain of Sardarbulakh was a regular
stronghold of the robber Kurds, who not only spoiled
and murdered travellers attempting to pass this way
to Bayazid, but constantly plundered the villages of
the plain and the two highways of commerce which

pass along the two sides of the mountain, one of them

from and Erivan to Tavriz, the other from
Tiflis

Trebizond and Erzerum to the same place. Now all

is changed. The Kurds recognize the Czar as a power
that makes for righteousness they probably regret the
:

good old times, but so long as they are on this side

the mountain, they spare the Armenian peasant and
the traveller, well knowing that on the other side they

may play what pranks they please.

The height above the sea of this sloping plain varies
from 8818 feet, which is given as the height of the

pass leading to Bayazid, and 7000 feet ;

and Sar-
darbulakh in the middle is 7514 feet Its lumpy
volcanic hillocks I have called a plain, but it
it is far

from being level and

are covered with good grass ;

about a mile off, near the foot of Little Ararat, appears

the only bit of wood on the whole mountain a grove
of low birches, whose dimensions the wasteful Kurds
are rapidly reducing. Near the birch trees is a sort of
subterranean village, huts formed by hollowing out
the ground and laying a few boughs, covered with
250 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

turf, across the top, through which comes such light

as can penetrate. These huts are often uninhabited : I

I fancy it is mostly when cold weather comes on that

the Kurds take to them. There is a tale told that

they were once an Armenian village, inhabited by

people whom the Sardar had transported hither, but
who forsook the place when his power ended. Sardar,
or Sirdar, a name with which Anglo-Indians are
familiar,means general or governor, and was the title
of the Persian governor of Erivan. Sardar-bulakh is
therefore translated as the Sardar's well. It is, of

course, the presence of drinkable water that has made

the Kurds and Cossacks fix themselves here, for (as has
been said already) there is no other constant spring
nearer than the valley of Arguri, four hours' journey.

Probably some Persian viceroy may have stationed a

garrison here in the old days when they carried on
constant wars with the Turk. A pleasanter frontier
post to be sent to out of the hot valley of the Aras
could not be imagined exquisitely keen fresh air,
;

noble prospects over the plains and mountains to

the east, and a superb peak on either hand. It is

just the place which those who love the Riffel or the
Aeggischhorn would enjoy. However, we thought
more of these charms than probably the Persian
little

officersdid long ago, when they grumbled at being

banished from the luxuries of the city, for it was two
o'clock, and we were still many hours from the base
of the cone. Every one who had spoken to us about
the ascent had wound up with the same advice :

" "
Whatever chance of success you have only one
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 251

of our informants (Mr. Scharoyan, in Tiflis, who

ascended with General Chodzko) thought we had
"
any depends on your sleeping very high up, close
to the snows, and starting before dawn to try the
main peak." Knowing that we were out of training,
and that, as we should have to find our own way up,
plenty of time would be needed, we recognized the
force of this advice, and were most anxious to get to
the foot of the cone, a point n,ooo feet high, by
nightfall. To push straight on was impossible, for
horses could go no farther, and the Cossacks abso-
lutely refused to carry even the few things we needed
for a bivouac it was therefore necessary to procure
:

Kurds for the purpose, and that was a slow business.

Minutes and half-hours slipped away while they were
being found and brought to Jaafar, who had been
charged by the colonel with the arrangements for our
expedition. When they came, the bargaining began,
and that seemed interminable. We knew nothing of
what was going on, for even with Jaafar, who spoke
Russian, we could not communicate directly, and
were, of course, one remove further from the Kurds,
whose tongue the companion who was interpreting
did not understand.
It is always vexatious to be checked by difficulties

and delays of merely human origin in a mountain ex-

pedition and here we were in full sight of our goal,
;

the glorious snows seeming to beckon us on, while the

minutes which might make all the difference to suc-
cess were being wasted in wranglings we could not

abridge or even understand. Once or twice we struck

252 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

in to urge that, at all hazards and whatever the cost,

a start should be made ;
but to little purpose, for the
Kurds, like true children of nature, found difficulties

in every course proposed, and were, so far as I could

make out, not so much
pleased by the prospect of

earning what to them was a fortune as anxious to

improve the occasion by squeezing out more. Per-
haps the idea of working at all was distasteful to them :

one generally finds in wild and simple people a greater

disposition to prefer their inclination to their interests,
and in particular more disinclination to earn money
by doing anything they are not accustomed to,
than in civilized man. Jaafar's plan had been to
send our baggage on the backs of Kurdish oxen as far
up as a place which they call the Hermitage, where,
however, there is no anchorite's cell, but only a grassy
hollow among the rocks with sometimes a little water,
and us either sleep there, 2000 feet higher than
let

Sardarbulakh, or else, leaving the animals there, get

on as much farther as we could before nightfall.
But these discussions had now brought us to half
past four o'clock. At least half an hour more would be
consumed in packing and preparations for departure.
There would then remain little more than an hour's
daylight to reach a higher camping ground, where, of
course,we should have much less chance of sleep than
here below in the tent which the Cossacks had vacated
for us. Yielding, therefore, most unwillingly to cir-

cumstances, and believing that we were practically

abandoning our chances for the morrow, I suggested
that we should remain and sleep at Sardarbulakh,
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 253

and make a start upwards as soon as the moon

This idea, like anything
rose, shortly after midnight.
which delayed a move, was accepted. Jaafar en-
gaged four Kurds to go with us and carry what
baggage we had, some wrappings to sleep in, and a
little food it would have been a load for one Swiss

porter and a half and told off no less than seven

Cossacks to act as a guard, not merely a guard of
honour, seemed, but an actual guard to defend us
it

against these four ferocious Kurds, who looked to me

wild indeed, but by no means terrible. However,
so it was Whether, having really no say in
settled.

the matter, we ventured to suggest that seven Cossacks

were not needed, I hardly remember, but believe we
were told that the Cossacks refused to go at all unless
they were allowed to go in that number. The terrors
of the mountain and the Kurds would have been too
great for a smaller detachment.
While all this was going on, there was another scene
in progress which served to appease our impatience.
The two Cossack on a grassy slope, about
tents stood

forty yards above the well which gives its name to the
place and to this well there now came, driving their
;

flocks before them, another band of Kurds, who had

just crossed the flanks of Little Ararat from Persia in
search of fresher pasture. The well is an elliptical
hollow, about ten feet long by five broad, surrounded
by a sort of rude, loose wall of lumps of lava, with the
water in it, when we first saw it, about three feet deep.

One could see where the spring rose into it from under
the wall, sweet, clear, and cool. As the water lay too
254 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

deep sunk for cattle to reach it, troughs were set up

allover the pasture round Kurdish boys and girls
;

brought brazen bowls and carried the water in these

to fillthe troughs, whence the patient creatures drank.
The sheep, whose bleatings filled the air, were mostly
either light brown, or black, or white, not much larger
than those of the Scotch Highlands the goats, how-
;

ever, were thoroughly Oriental, mostly white, with

long, soft hair, and large, pendant ears, just like the

scapegoat of Mr. Holman Hunt's

picture. For nearly
two hours the process of watering went on, boys and
girls and women coming and going round the well,
and ladleing out the water till hardly any was left in
the bottom, permitting us sometimes to help them, but

scarcely looking at the strangers from Frangistan, so

incurious were they, or so intent on the work of the
hour. All were wonderfully hardy and sinewy, the
women mostly scorched and withered, but the girls' and
boys' faces pretty and full-coloured, the carriage of all
perfectly graceful. The men, of whom there were but
few, wore a sort of coat coming nearly to the knee,
sometimes woollen and
striped, sometimes, oddly

enough, of a coarsely printed chintz, with trousers that

reached well below the knee, leaving the lower part of
the leg to be covered by wrappings and the strings
of the shoe or sandal. Every one was armed with a
knife or sword, at least, sometimes huge old pistols,
sometimes a musket or matchlock besides. On the
head was a woollen cap, having strips of silk or cotton
cloth wound round it to form a rude kind of turban.
The women's dress was rather brighter in colours, and
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 255

their striped or embroidered short petticoats, below

which cotton drawers descended to the ankle, were ex-
tremely pretty the cap was generally of scarlet cloth
; ;

in their nostrils and ears jewels were hung, while round

their necks they bore a profusion of ornaments, strings

of gold and silver coins and beads, and coloured
stones ;
even the bareheaded girls, whose plaited locks
fellover the shoulders, had always such a necklace.
Unlike their Mohammedan sisters of the plains, their
faces were unshielded by a veil, and they showed no
shyness or timidity in the presence of the Cossacks
and ourselves. Each, like the Fates in Catullus, bore
a distaff in one hand, with a lump of wool upon her
wrist, and thisthey plied as they drove the flocks
before them.
So picturesque a scene, or one that brought so

vividly to mind the first simple life of the world, un-

changed in these earliest seats of mankind, we had

never seen before. In the foreground were the beau-
tiful flocks, the exquisite colours of the women's
dresses and ornaments, their own graceful figures, the
stir and movement beside the clear pool, the expanse
of roiling pasture around with patch of tender little
its

birchwood. On each side a towering cone rose into

heaven, while in front the mountain slope swept down
into the broad valley of the Aras, and beyond stern
red mountains ranged away, ridge over ridge, to the
eastern horizon, all bare and parched, with every

peak and gully standing sharp out through the clear

air, yet softened by distance into the most delicately

rich and tender hues. Here, where a picture of primi-

256 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

tive life close at hand was combined with a vision of

broad countries, inhabited by many peoples, stretching
out to the shores of the inland sea of Asia, one seemed
at a glance to take in and realize their character and
unchanging in the midst of change. Through
history,
the empires of Assyria and Persia, and Macedon,

through Parthian Arsacidae, and Iranian Sassanidas,

through the reigns of Arabian Khalifs, and Turkish
Sultans, and Persian Shahs, these Kurds have roamed
as they roam now, over the slopes of the everlasting
mountains, watering their flocks at this spring, pitch-
ing their goat's hair tents in the recesses of these
lonely rocks, chanting their wildly pathetic airs, with
neither a past to remember nor a future to plan for.
When our plans for the ascent had been settled
there was just time left for a stroll up the slope
towards the pass leading to Bayazid. I scrutinised
the south-east face of the great cone, which looked in
the marvellously clear air much nearer than it turned
out to be, and sketched out mentally a line of attack
for the morrow. Clouds still clinging to the summit
made it difficult to say whether there might not be
impracticable precipices in the upper part. There
was, of course, no light to be had from either Kurds
or Cossacks : the former never go higher than the
limits of pasture, and the latter have no motive to
go nearly so high. One could therefore only rely on
the general structure of the ridges, which seemed to

promise a route either up the edges of the snow-beds

or along the rocky crests that rose between them.

Returning at sunset to the tent, we found some

 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 257

Cossacks sent out to meet us by the watchful Jaafar,

who feared we might be picked off by stray marauders,
and looked rather reproachfully at us for having gone
forth alone. It was very odd suppose now that
;
I

there really may have been a risk, but the habit of

security was so strong
that, in gazing about on those
silent slopes, we
could no more expect robbers than
we should have done on the Wengern Alp.
Supper was prepared, the Cossacks cooking theirs
and ours in a big pot over a fire kindled on the hill-
side, which lit
up their figures and the still more pic-

turesque figures of the Kurds, who crouched round it

just like the brigands in an opera scene. The Russian
has a turn for cooking ;
the Cossack, though his taste

may be less refined, rivals the Zouave in the power of

getting on After the meal, which con-
in a bivouac.

sisted of boiled mutton and milk, both procured from

the Kurds, we had some of the unfailing tea, and lay
down Four years before we had
for a little sleep.

shared a tent under the snowstorms of Iceland, an

experience which somewhat diminished the romantic
pleasure young travellers find in life under canvas.
Here, to be sure, we were twenty-five degrees nearer
the equator but then we were 7500 feet above
;

the sea, with a breeze shaking the tent walls and

forcing us to cover down their bottom, piling up

stones and hay outside, and to turn every shred of

clothing into account. One feels little inclined for

sleep on these occasions; we stayed long outside
watching the Cossacks and the stars, by whose light
it was just possible to make out the lines of Little
258 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

Ararat in front. The silence of the mountain was

astonishing. No calling of torrents to one 'another,
such as one hears the Alps, no rippling of rills or
in

rustling of boughs, not even the noise of a falling

stone, only the whistling of the west wind, the home

wind, over the pass. About nine we crept into the
tent and fell asleep. Waking at midnight, which was
lucky, for the rest were deep in slumber, we roused
them by degrees, and packed up what we needed,
while they gathered the food and the rugs as well as

they could in the darkness, making four bundles, one

for eachKurd. The moon had risen over the Kara-
bagh mountains beyond Aralykh, but she was so far
gone in waning that there was only sufficient light to
see a yard or two around you.
About i A.M. we got off, thirteen in all, and made
straight across the grassy hollows for the ridges which
trend up towards the great cone, running parallel in
a west-north-westerly direction, and enclosing between
them several long narrow depressions hardly deep

enough to be called valleys. The Kurds led the

way, and at first we made pretty good progress. The
Cossacks seemed fair walkers, though less stalwart
than the Kurds ;
the pace generally was better than
that with which Swiss guides start. However, we
were soon cruelly undeceived. In twenty-five minutes
there came a steep bit, and at the top of it they

flung themselves down on the grass to rest. So did

we all. Less than half a mile farther, down they
dropped again, and this time we were obliged to
give the ^signal for resuming the march. In another
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 259

quarter of an hour they were down once more, and

so it continued for the rest of the way. Every ten
minutes' walking it was seldom steep enough to
be called actual climbing was followed by seven or
eight minutes of sitting still, smoking and chattering.
How fhey did chatter ! It was to no purpose that
we continued to move on when they sat down, or
that we rose to go before they had sufficiently rested.

They looked at one another, so far as I could make

out by the faint light, and occasionally they laughed ;

but they would not and did not stir till such time as
pleased themselves. We were helpless. Impossible
to go on alone ; impossible also to explain to them
why every moment was precious, for the acquaint-
ance who had acted as interpreter had been obliged
to stay behind at Sardarbulakh, and we were abso-
lutely without means of communication with our com-
panions. One could not even be angry, had there
been any use in that, for they were perfectly good-
humoured. It was all very well to beckon them, or
pull them by the elbow, or clap them on the back they ;

thought this was only our fun, and sat still and chat-
tered all the same. When it grew light enough to see
the hands of a watch, and mark how the hours ad-
vanced while the party did not, we began for a second
time to despair of success.
I can say very little about the ground we traversed
in the darkness, except that it was quite waterless,
and that I fancy we passed, in a grassy hollow at
about 9000 feet above the sea, the spot which they
call the Hermitage, which seems to be the site of
T
 260 TRANSCAUCASIA AXD ARARAT.

General Chodzko's meteorological camp of July and

August 1850. He told me

there was a spring there,
but either it is dry at this season or else we missed
it. There was pasture in many places, but we saw no
cattle doubtless they had already been driven down
;

to the lower slopes. What we were able to remark

and enjoy was the changing aspect of the sky. About
3 A.M. there suddenly sprang up, from behind the
Median mountains, the morning star, shedding a light
such as no star ever gave northern climes ofin these

ours, a light that almost outshone the moon. An

hour later it began to pale in the first faint flush of

yellowish light that spread over the eastern heaven,

and the rocky masses above us, then Little Ararat,
first

throwing behind him a gigantic shadow, then the

long lines of mountains beyond the Araxes, became
revealed, while the wide Araxes plain still lay dim
and shadowy below. One by one the stars died out
as the yellow turned to a deeper glow that shot forth
in long streamers, the rosy fingers of the dawn, from
the horizon to the zenith. Cold and ghostly lay the
snows on the mighty cone till at last there came ;

upon their topmost slope, 6000 feet above us, a sudden

blush of pink. Swiftly it floated down the eastern

face, and touched and kindled the rocks just above

us. Then the sun flamed out, and in a moment the
Araxes valley and the hollows of the savage ridges
all

we were crossing were flooded with overpowering

light.
It was nearly six o'clock, and progress became
easier now that we could see our way distinctly. The
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 26l

Cossacks seemed to grow lazier, halting as often as

before and walking less briskly ;
in fact, they did not
relish the exceeding roughness of the jagged lava
ridges along whose tops or sides we toiled. I could

willingly have lingered here myself, for in the hollows,

wherever a little soil appeared, some interesting plants
were growing, whose similarity to and difference from
the alpine species of Western Europe alike excited
one's curiosity. Time allowed me to secure only a
few ;
I trusted to get more on the way back, but this

turned out to be impossible. As we scrambled

along
a ridge above a long narrow winding glen filled with
loose blocks, one of the Kurds suddenly swooped down,
like a vulture, from the height on a spot at the bottom,

and began peering and grubbing among the stones.

In a minute or tw o he cried out, and the rest followed
r
:

he had found a spring, and by scraping in the gravel

had made a tiny basin out of which we could manage
to drink a little. Here was a fresh cause of delay ;

everybody was thirsty, and everybody must drink, not

only the water which, as we afterwards saw, trickled

down hither under the stones from a snow-bed 700 feet
higher, but the water mixed with some whisky from
a flask my friend carried, which even in this highly
diluted state the Cossacks took to heartily. When at
last we got them up and away
again, they began to
dawdle and straggle after a while two or three sat
;

down, and plainly gave us to see they would go no

farther.By the time we had reached a little snow-bed
whence the now strong sun was drawing a stream of
water, and halted on the rocks beside it for breakfast,

T 2
262 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

there were only two Cossacks and the four Kurds left
with the rest having scattered themselves about
us,
somewhere lower down. We
had no idea what instruc-
tions they had received, nor whether indeed they had
been told anything except to bring us as far as they
could, to see that the Kurds brought the baggage,
and to fetch us back again, which last was essential

for Jaafar's peace of mind. We concluded therefore

they would probably wait
that, if left to themselves,
our return, and the day was running on so fast that
it was clear there was no more time to be lost in

trying to drag them along with us.

Accordingly I resolved to take what I wanted in

the way of food, and start at my own pace. My

friend, who carried more weight, and had felt the
want of training on our way up, decided to come no
farther, but wait about here, and look out for me
towards nightfall. We noted the landmarks carefully,
the snow-bed, the head of the glen covered
little

with reddish masses of stone and gravel, and high

above it, standing out
of the face of the great cone
of Ararat, a bold peak, or rather projecting tooth of
black rock, which our Cossacks called the Monastery,
and which, I supposed from the same fancied resem-
blance to a building, is said to be called in Tatar
Tach Kilissa, " the church rock." It is doubtless
an old cone of eruption, about 13,000 feet in height,
and is really the upper end of the long ridge we

had been following, which may, perhaps, represent a

lava flow from it, or the edge of a fissure which at
this point found a vent. In the frontispiece it will
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 263

be seen as a black projection from the south-east

ridge of the cone. We were now at a height of
about feet.
12,000 Everything lay below us, ex-
cept LittleArarat opposite, and the stupendous cone
that rose from where we sat, its glittering snows
and stern black crags of lava standing up perfectly
clear in a sea of cloudless blue. Tempting it was,
but it was also awe-inspiring, and as the summit was
hidden behind the nearer slopes, I could not tell

what the difficulties of the ascent might be. Still

we have learnt them from our companions.

less could

The Kurds never come higher on the mountain than

their flocks can find pasture, and on this side at least

the pasture does not reach so high as where we were.

Moreover, they have a superstitious reverence for the
mountain, scarcely less than that of the Armenians :

only, while the Armenian faithful believe it to be

guarded by angels, the Kurds hold it to be the
favourite haunt of devils and Jinn, who are ready to
take vengeance on the disturber of their revels. The
shepherds, therefore, avoid the heights as much as
possible. This, however, was neither here nor there ;

forhad they known never so much, they could not

have given us the benefit of what they knew.
Itwas an odd position to be in guides of two :

different races, unable to communicate either with us

or with one another, guides who could not lead and
would not guides one-half of whom were
follow,

supposed to be there to save us from being robbed

and murdered by the other half, but all of whom,
I am bound to say, looked for the moment equally
264 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

simple and friendly, the swarthy Iranian as well as

the blue-eyed Slav.
At eight o'clock I buckled on my canvas gaiters,
thrust some crusts of bread, a lemon, a small flask of
cold tea, four hard-boiled eggs, and a few meat
lozenges into my pocket, bade good-bye to my friend,
and set off. surprise, the two Cossacks
Rather to our
and one of the Kurds came with me, whether persuaded
by a pantomime of encouraging signs, or simply curious
to see what would happen. The ice-axe had hugely
amused the Cossacks all through. Climbing the ridge
to the left, and keeping along its top for a little way,

I then struck across the semicircular head of a wide

glen, in the middle of which, a little lower, lay a snow-

bed, over a long steep slope of loose broken stones and
sand. This slope, a sort of talus or " screes," as they
say in the Lake country, was excessively fatiguing
from the want of firm foothold, and when I reached the
other side, I was already so tired and breathless, having
been on foot since midnight, that it seemed almost
useless to persevere farther. However, on the other
side, I got upon solid rock, where the walking was
better, and was soon environed by a multitude of rills
bubbling down over the stones from the snow-slopes
above. The summit of Little Ararat, which had for
the last two hours provokingly kept at the same
apparent height above me, began to sink, and before
ten o'clock I could look down upon its small flat top,

studded with lumps of rock, but bearing no trace of a

crater. Mounting steadily along the same ridge, I
saw at a height of over 1 3,000 feet, lying on the loose
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 265

blocks, a piece of wood about four feet long and five

inches thick, evidently cut by some tool, and so far

above the limit of trees that it couldby no possibility

be a natural fragment of one. Darting on it with a
glee that astonished the Cossack and the Kurd, I held
it up to them, made them look at it, and repeated
"
several times the word Noah." The Cossack grinned,
but he was such a cheery, genial fellow that I think
he would have grinned whatever I had said, and I can-
not be sure that he took my meaning, and recognised
the wood as a fragment of the true Ark. Whether it

was really gopher wood, of which material the Ark

was built, I will not undertake to say, but am willing
to submit to the inspection of the curious the bit which
I cut off with my ice-axe and brought away. Any-
how, it will be hard to prove that it is not gopher
wood. And if there be any remains of the Ark on

Ararat at all a point as to which the natives are per-

fectly clear here rather than the top is the place where
one might expect to find them, since in the course of

ages they would get carried down by the onward

movement of the snow-beds along the declivities. This
wood, therefore, suits all the requirements of the case.

In fact, the argument is, for the case of a relic, excep-

tionally strong the Crusaders who found the Holy
:

Lance at Antioch, the archbishop who recognized the

Holy Coat at Treves, not to speak of many others, pro-
ceeded upon slighter evidence. I am, however, bound
to admit that another explanation of the presence of
this piece of timber on the rocks at this vast height

did occur to me. But as no man is bound to dis-

266 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

credit his own relic, and such is certainly not the

practice of the Armenian Church, I will not disturb

my readers' minds, or yield to the rationalizing ten-

dencies of the age by suggesting it.

Fearing that the ridge by which we were mounting

would become too precipitous higher up, I turned off
to the left, and crossed a long, narrow snow-slope, that
descended between this ridge and another line of rocks
more to the west. It was firm, and just steep enough
to make steps cut in the snow comfortable, though not

necessary so the ice-axe was brought into use. The

;

Cossack who accompanied me there was but one

now, for the other Cossack had gone away to the right
some time before, and was quite lost to view had
brought my friend's alpenstock,and was developing a
considerable capacity for wielding it. He followed
nimbly across but the Kurd stopped on the edge of
;

the snow, and stood peering and hesitating, like one

who shivers on the plank at a bathing-place, nor could
the jeering cries of the Cossack induce him to venture
on the treacherous surface. Meanwhile, we who had
crossed were examining the broken cliff which rose
above us. It looked not exactly dangerous, but a
little troublesome, as if it
might want some care to get
over or through. So, after a short rest, I stood up,
touched my Cossack's arm, and pointed upwards.
He reconnoitred the cliff with his eye, and shook his
head. Then, with various gestures of hopefulness, I

clapped him on the back, and made as though to pull

him along. He looked at the rocks again, and pointed
to them, stroked his knees, turned up and pointed to
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 267

the soles of his boots, which certainly were suffering

from the lava, and once more solemnly shook his head.
This was conclusive conveyed to him by panto-
;
so I

mime that he had better go back to the bivouac where

my friend was, rather than remain here alone, and
that I hoped to meet him there in the evening, took
an affectionate farewell, and turned towards the
rocks. There was evidently nothing for it but to go
on alone. It was half-past ten o'clock, and the height
about 13,600 feet, Little Ararat now lying nearly 1000
feetbelow the eye.
I am
no disciple of that doctrine of mountaineering
without guides which some English climbers have of
late preached zealously by example as well as precept,
and which others, among them so high an authority as

my friend Mr. Leslie Stephen, have wisely set them-

selves to discourage. But if there
any justification is

for the practice, that justification exists when guides

are not to be had. Here not only had the Cossack

and the Kurd refused to come on, but they really
could not have been of use if they had. They were not
guides in any sense of the word they were an escort.;

They had never been so high in their lives before,

knew nothing either of climbing in general or of this
particular mountain, were not properly equipped for
the work. In fact, their presence could have been
no gain in
any way, except that, if one of us had hurt
himself on the rocks, the other two might have carried
him down or taken news to the party below. There
was no ground for complaining of them, seeing that
the mountain was terrible not only by its legends, but
268 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

by its solitude and silence and the idea of going to

;

the top for the sake of getting to the top would have
been quite incomprehensible to them. What had hap-
pened was so obviously what might have been, and
indeed had been, expected, that it would have been
folly for a man come so far unless he was now pre-
to

pared to proceed alone. The weather looked pretty

steady, although clouds were gathering round the
top, and there seemed to be so little snow on this
side that the usual risks of solitary mountaineering
were absent, and a single climber would be just as
well able to get along as a party. Convincing my-
self by these reasonings that there was nothing rash
in proceeding, I fell to work upon the trachytic

crags in front, but found them so nasty that it soon

became necessary to turn off to the left (west).
There I emerged on a very long, straight slope of
volcanic stones, fragments of trachyte, basalt, amyg-

daloid, and so forth, lying at so high an angle (probably

over 33 degrees) that they were often rolling down of
themselves, and always gave way under the foot and
hand, so that I slipped down nearly as much as I
went up. It was nearly two hours' incessant toil up this
"
bit of screes," owing partly to its nature, but chiefly
to the state of fatigue and breathlessness in which I
found myself, and which was no doubt due to the
thinness of the air. Having never before experienced,
even on the top of Monte Rosa, any of the discomforts
ascribed to this cause, I had fancied that my present
sensations, which had begun in crossing the first slope

of stones at a height of only 12,300 feet, were caused

 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 269

simply by want of training and of sleep. Now, how-

ever, when between every two steps one had to stop
and gasp for breath, it was plain that the rarity of
the air must be the real cause, though there was no
headache, nausea, gushing of blood from the nose and
ears, nor any other of those symptoms of mountain
sickness on which the older travellers dilate. Oddly
enough, it
grew no worse as I mounted ;
was
in fact,

felt rather less at 17,000 feet than at 13,000. Why

this was so, or why I should have felt it so low on
Ararat at all, I cannot explain : the phenomena of
the subject are altogether, and seem to deserve
odd
more study than they have received. In the Alps, for
instance, there are said to be mountains, such as Mont
Blanc, where these sensations are experienced far

more frequently than on other hills at the same height.

Doubtless there is a good deal of difference between
one man's susceptibility and another's, and even be-
tween the same man's states at different times but ;

there seem to be also further differences in the moun-

tains themselves which it would be interesting to
examine.
The practical question at this moment was whether
with knees of lead, and gasping like a fish in a boat, I
should be able to get any farther. Another element
of difficulty was added by the clouds, which had now
established themselves, as they usually do at this
hour, a good way down from the top, and might pre-
vent me
from finding it, or at least beguile me into a
wrong track, which there would not be time to retrace
so as to reach the desired goal. I had not seen the
2/O TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

summit that morning, and was obliged to guess at its

whereabouts from the direction of the ridges running
" "
up the face of the cone (I say cone for convenience,
though it is really more a dome than a cone, and
is so huge that in climbing the sides you do not
think of it as a cone at all). With these grounds for
reflection I sat down to eat an egg and take stock of
the position. The conclusion was that, whenever a
" "
bad place presented itself, or three o'clock arrived,
it would be prudent, indeed necessary, to turn back
"
were the top never so near. " Bad places are more
serious things when one is alone, especially in de-

scending, not so much because you lose the help of a

companion as because they are more likely to affect
the nerves and oblige the climber to proceed with
more deliberation. In this case, moreover, time was
everything, because the place of bivouac must be
reached by 6 P.M., after which there would be no light
fit for walking, and a night without food or wrappings
in the open air, even at 12,000 feet, might have had

permanently disagreeable results. In coming to this

decision, there was a sense of relief ;
and both lungs
and legs were so exhausted that the bad place, or
three o'clock, would have been almost welcome.
This repulsive stone
slope abuts at its upper
extremity upon a line of magnificent black cliff, from
which there were hanging several glittering icicles,
200 feet long, frozen waterfalls in fact, produced by
the melting of the snow on a snow slope behind.
Before reaching this, I had grown so weary of the
loose stones, up which it was difficult to advance except
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 2/1

by a succession of spurts with the aid of hands and ice-

axe, as to turn still farther to the left, and get on to

another rock-rib, composed of toppling crags of lava,
along whose farther or western side, the arete itself
being too much broken, it was possible to work one's
laborious way over the fallen masses. Here a grand
sight, perhaps the grandest on the whole mountain,
'presented itself. At my foot was a deep, narrow, im-
passable gully, a sort of gigantic couloir, in whose
bottom snow lay where the inclination was not too
steep. Beyond it a line of rocky towers, red, grim,

and ran right up towards the summit, its

terrible,

upper end lost in the clouds, through which, as at

intervals they broke or shifted, one could descry, far,
far above, a wilderness of snow. Had a Kurd ever
wandered so far, he might have taken this for the

palace of the Jinn.

This gully is, no doubt, one of those ancient volcanic
fissures with which the mountain is seamed, and from

which great part of its lava has been discharged.

The same phenomenon appears in most volcanic
regions : in Iceland, for instance, tremendous erup-
tions have taken place from similar rifts or gjds, as

they are called there, opening on the sides or even at

the base of a mountain. This particular fissure, which
runs north-west and south-east, is on the main the
axis of the mass, midway between the craters of Kip
Gholl on the north-west and Little Ararat on the
south-east, and indicates the line along which the
volcanic forces acted most powerfully. Following its
course towards the base of the cone r I could see that
2/2 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
line prolonged in a series of small cones and craters

along the top of the ridge which connects Great and

Little Ararat. Some of those craters, into which I
looked straight down from were as perfect
this point,

as if their fires had but just cooled, each basin-shaped

hollow surrounded by a rim of miniature black cliffs,
with heaps of ashes and scoriae piled on their sides.
In the bottom of one or two water had gathered in
1
greenish tarns or pools.
Not knowing how far the ridge I was following
might continue passable, was obliged to stop fre-
I

quently to survey the rocks above, and erect little

piles of stones tomark the way. This not only con-
sumed time, but so completely absorbed the atten-
tion that for hours, together I scarcely noticed the
marvellous landscape spread out beneath, and felt the
solemn grandeur of the scenery far less than many
times before on less striking mountains. Solitude at

great heights, or among majestic rocks or forests,

commonly stirs in us all deep veins of feeling, joyous
or saddening, or more often of joy and sadness

mingled. Here the strain on the observing senses

seemed too great for fancy or emotion to have any
scope. When the mind is
preoccupied by the task of
the moment, imagination is checked. This was a race

against time, in which I could only scan the cliffs

for a route, refer constantly to the watch, husband

my strength by morsels of food taken at frequent

1
These little cones appear in the frontispiece between the base of
Great and the base of Little Ararat, immediately to the right of the top
of the projecting buttress which is seen in front between the two
Ararats.
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 273

intervals, and endeavour to conceive how a particular

block or bit of slope which it would be necessary to

recognise would look when seen the other way in

descending.
Keeping mostly on the south-western side of this
same rock-rib, and mounting at last to the top of it,
I found myself on the edge of a precipice, which

stopped farther progress in that direction. From this

precipice, the summit, or at least the place where it

must lie, since there was a great deal of cloud about
in these higher regions, could be made out, barely
1000 feet above me. Fortunately, the clouds were
really clouds, and not a generally diffused mist, so
that, when I was not actually in them, it was pos-
sible to see clearly all round. Two courses were open.
One, which would probably have been the better, was
and get up the low cliffs at
to bear off to the right,

the top of the long stone slope which I had deserted,

on to the upper slopes of rock, or gently inclined
snow, which lead to the top. The other was to turn
back a little, and descend to the left into a vast snow
basin lying immediately south-east of the summit,
and whose north-west acclivity formed, in fact, the
side of the summit. This acclivity looked a likely
place for crevasses, though I do not remember to
have seen any, and was steep enough to require step
cutting. Its nfat would have been quite practicable

for a party, but not equally so for a single man, who

might have had some trouble in stopping himself if
once he slipped and went off. Luckily there was on
the east side of the basin, close under the range of
2/4 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

precipice on a projecting point of which I was standing,

though separated from it by a narrow snow-bed, a
steep
slope of friable rocks, quite free from snow, which ran

up to a point where the clouds hid them, but where

there seemed no sign of any cliff to bar the way.
Forced to decide between a course which was difficult,
but almost certainly practicable, and another probably
easier, but possibly impracticable, I could not hesitate

long in choosing the former. Retracing my steps a

from the precipice, and climbing along the border
little

of a treacherous little ice-slope, where there was for-

tunately some handhold on the rocks enclosing it, I

got into the great snow basin aforesaid, just where the
gully or fissure have already mentioned descends
I

from it, and attacked, the friable rocks. Their angle (38
to 43 degrees) would have made them simple enough
1
if they had only been firm, but they were so rotten
that neither hands nor feet could get firm hold, and I

slipped down and scrambled up and floundered about

pitiably, having no longer steel enough in the muscles
for a rush. Among these rocks I was saluted by a
violent sulphurous smell, much like that of a battery

of cannon just fired off, and perceived at the same

time patches of whitish and reddish-yellow stuff
efflorescing from the ground, reminding me of similar
deposits noticed on Hekla and the half extinct
volcano of Krabla in Iceland. This was delightfully
volcanic, and I began to look about for some trace of

1
The rock was exactly what is called in the Venetian Alps croda
morta, a term so happily descriptive (especially when compared with
the vivum saxum of the ancients) that it ought to be made technical.
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 2/5

an eruptive vent, or at least for hot vapours betraying

the presence of subterranean fires. Nothing of the
kind, however, was to be seen. The shape of this
basin makes it probable that it was
really a former
seat of volcanic action ;
but the smell and the efflores-
cences are no doubt due as Abich, who (as I after-
wards learnt) had observed them, remarks to the
natural decomposition of the trachytic rock, which is

full of minute crystals of iron pyrites (sulphide of iron).

This, in disintegrating under the moisture of these

heights, gives off sulphuric acid gas, whence the smell,

and combines with the lime and alumina present in
the felspar of the same rock to form sulphates of
lime and alumina, mixed with more or less sulphate
of iron or chloride of iron, which gives the reddish or

yellow hue. Lumps of these and other minerals are

seen lying about I found one, a piece of gypsum,
;

with handsome crystals, on the surface of the snow

close to the top. Abich further suggests that the
process of chemical change which goes on so briskly
here may be one cause of the freedom of these rocks
from snow, an extraordinary phenomenon when one
considers that they run up to very near the summit
(17,000 feet), and, though steep, are less steep than
many ice walls in the Alps or the Caucasus lying, in

equally exposed lower limit

places, far nearer to the
of perpetual snow, which on Ararat averages 14,000
feet. Not only is some heat evolved in the decom-
posing process, but the sulphates thereby formed them-
selves act as solvents, just as common salt does when

you sprinkle it on an ice-covered door-step.

U
2/6 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

All the way up this rock-slope, which proved so

fatiguing that for the fourth time I had almost given
up hope, I kept my eye fixed on its upper end to see
what signs there were of crags or snow-fields above.
But the mist lay steadily at the point where the snow
seemed to begin, and it was impossible to say what
might be hidden behind that soft white curtain. As
little conjecture the height I had reached by
could I

looking round, as one so often does on mountain

ascents, upon other summits, for by this time I was
thousands of feet above Little Ararat, the next

highest peak visible, and could scarcely guess how

many thousands. From this tremendous height it
looked more like a broken obelisk than an independent
summit 12,800 feet in height. Clouds covered the
farther side of the great snow basin, and were seething
likewaves about the savage pinnacles, the towers of
the Jinn palace, which guard its lower margin, and

past which my upward path had lain. With mists to

the left and above, and a range of black precipices
cutting off all view to the right, there came a vehe-
ment sense of isolation and solitude, and I began to
understand better the awe with which the mountain
silence inspires theKurdish shepherds. Overhead the
sky had turned from dark blue to an intense bright
green, a colour whose strangeness seemed to add to the
weird terror of the scene. It wanted barely an hour
to the time when I had resolved to turn back and ;

as I struggled up the crumbling rocks, trying now

to right and now to left, where the foothold looked
a little firmer, I began to doubt whether there was
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 277

strength enough left to carry me an hour higher. At

length the rock-slope came suddenly to an end, and
I stepped out upon the almost level snow at the top
oL it, coming at the same time into the clouds, which

naturally clung to the colder surfaces. A violent west

wind was blowing, and the temperature must have
been pretty low, for a big icicle at once enveloped the
lower half of my face, and did not melt till I got to
the bottom of the cone, four hours afterwards. Un-
luckily, I was very thinly clad, the stout tweed coat
reserved for such occasions having been stolen on a
Russian railway. The only expedient to be tried
against the piercing cold was to tighten in my loose
light coat by winding round the waist a Spanish fa/a,
or scarf, which I had brought up to use, in case of

need, as a neck wrapper. purple looked odd

Its bright

enough in such surroundings, but as there was nobody

there to notice, appearances did not much matter.
In the mist, which was now thick, the eye could

pierce only some thirty yards ahead ;

so I walked on
over the snow five or six minutes, following the rise
of its surface, which was gentle, and fancying there

might still be a good long way to go. To mark the

backward track, I trailed the point of the ice-axe
along behind me in the soft snow, for there was no
longer any landmark all was cloud on every side.
:

Suddenly, to my astonishment, the ground began to

to the north I stopped, a puff of wind drove
fall away ;

off the mists on one side, the opposite side to that by

which had come, and showed the Araxes plain at
I

an abysmal depth below. It was the top of Ararat.

U 2
2/8 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
Two or three minutes afterwards another blast
cleared the air a little to the west, which had hitherto
been perfectly thick, disclosing a small snow valley,
and beyond it, a quarter of a mile off, another top,
looking about the same height as the one I stood on.

Remembering, what I had strangely forgotten on the

way up, that there are two tops one sees them dis-
tinctly from Erivan and Aralykh I ran down the

steep, soft sides of the snow valley, across it in the

teeth of the blast, and up the easy acclivity to the
other top, reaching it at 2.25 P.M. It is certainly the

higher of the two, but the difference is not great, only

some thirty feet or so, and I cannot understand how
General Chodzko comes to speak of it as amounting
to thirty-six metres. 1 The longitudinal depression
between them is 100-150 feet deep. Both tops are
gently sloping domes or broad convex hummocks of
snow, on which there not a trace of rock, nor a
is

trace of the crosses which first Parrot and afterwards

Chodzko set up, just as little as of Noah's ship itself.
One thought of the pictures of childhood, the Ark rest-

ing on a smooth, round grassy eminence, from which

the waters are receding, while the Patriarch looks out
of the window, and compared them with this snow-filled

hollow, just large enough to have held the vessel

comfortably, raised 1 5,000 feet above the surrounding
country. Neither is there any sign of a crater. You
1
See his brief account of his ascent in a communication to the French
Alpine Club, published in their 'Transactions' for 1876. Herr Abich,
to whom I wrote on seeing this, tells me he cannot understand it either.
From the north-eastern top (not having time to go on to the western)
he thought the difference very slight.
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. ^279

might describe the whole top as a triangular undulating

plain, rather more than half as big as the Green Park
in London, descending gently on the north-west, with
extensive terraces like fields of ntvf, less gently to-
wards the north-north-east, but steeply on all other
sides, and on the east breaking off, after a short snow-

field, in the tremendous precipices that overhang the

chasm of Arguri. There was nothing about it to
suggest an extinct volcano, were it not known to be
one. But in the ages that have elapsed since the
time when eruptions took place from the great central
chimney of the dome, a time probably far more
remote than that when the minor cones that stud the
flanks of the mountain were active, all sorts of changes

may have taken place, and the summit we now see

may be merely the bottom of an ancient crater, whose
craggy rim has been altogether broken away. Look-
ing around, it was hard to imagine that volcanic fires
had ever raged on such a spot, robed as it now is in

perpetual winter.
Immeasurably extensive and grand as the view was,
it was also strangely indefinite. Every mountaineer
knows that the highest views are seldom the finest ;

and here was one so high that the distinctions of hill

and valley in the landscape were almost lost. Ararat
towers so over all his neighbours, much more than
Mont Blanc or even Elbruz do over theirs, that they
seem mere hillocks on a uniform The only rivals
flat

are in the Caucasus, which one can just make out all
along the northern sky. Kazbek and Elbruz, the
latter 280 miles away, are visible, but I could not be
28O TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

sure that I saw them, for the sky was not very clear in
that direction. More distinct were the mountains of
Daghestan, rising 1 50 miles off, over the nearer ones
that engirdle the Goktcha Lake, a little bit of whose
shining levels
appeared. Beyond the dreary red-
brown mountains of the Karabagh one strained to
discover a line that might be the Caspian or the plain
of the lower Kur, but, of course, at such a distance
260 miles) it would be impossible to distinguish a sea-
surface. Besides, the Caspian is below the horizon ;

so one must reject, unless the aid of refraction be

called in, the stories of mariners who, sailing on it,
have been able to make out the white cone of Ararat.
Nearer at hand, only forty miles to the north, rose
the huge extinct volcano of Ala Goz, with its three

sharp black rocky peaks enclosing an ancient crater,

in whose bottom were patches of snow and, nearer ;

still, the dim plain of Erivan encircled the mountain

to the north and east, with the Araxes winding like

a faint streak of silver through it. slight rise in A
the ground showed where Erivan itself lay, but the

bright green of the orchards and vineyards round

it was lost at this distance, though, standing in the
market-place of the
city, Ararat seems to tower
right over the spectator's head. Looking due west,
the extreme ranges of Taurus mingling with the

Bingol Dagh in the neighbourhood of Erzerum were

hidden by the clouds which the wind kept driving up ;

but north-west the upper valley of the Araxes could

be traced as far as Ani, once the capital of the Ar-
menian kingdom, and the great Russian fortress of
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 28 1

Alexandropol, and the hills where Kars, its enemy,

looks forth defiance. To the south and south-west
the eye ranged over a wilderness of bare red-brown

mountains, their sides seamed by winter torrents that

showed in the distance like dark lines, not a tree nor

a patch of green on their scorched and arid slopes,

scarcely even a fleck of snow on their tops, though

many rosemore than 10,000 or 1 1,000 feet above the
sea. Prominent among them was the long stern line
of hills that enclose the upper course of the Euphrates

(the Eastern Euphrates or Murad Su), whose source

could be distinguished about forty miles to the south,

beyond the hollow where Bayazid lies, the houses of

which were hidden by a low ridge. Still further to

the south, from the shores of the Lake of Van, rose
the great volcanic peak of Sipan Dagh, and to the
south-east the stupendous masses of Savalan Dagh,
that look over Azerbijan to the waves of the
all

Caspian. Neither the Lake of Van nor the still

largerLake of Urumia was visible for both, though
;

high above the sea, are enclosed by lofty hills. But

far beyond them, more than two hundred miles

away, I could just descry the faint blue tops of

the Assyrian mountains of Southern Kurdistan, the

Qardu land, where Chaldee tradition places the frag-

ments of the Ark, mountains that look down on
Mosul and those huge mounds of Nineveh by which
the Tigris flows. Below and around, included in
this single view, seemed to lie the whole cradle of
the human race, from Mesopotamia in the south to
the great wall of the Caucasus that covered the
282 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

northern horizon, the boundary for so many ages

of the civilized world. If it was indeed here that
man first set foot again on the unpeopled earth, one
could imagine how
the great dispersion went as the
races spread themselves from these sacred heights

along the courses of the great rivers down to the

Black and Caspian Seas, and over the Assyrian plain
whence they were
to the shores of the Southern Ocean,
wafted away to other continents and isles. No more
imposing centre of the world could be imagined.
In the valley of the Araxes beneath, the valley which
Armenian legend has selected as the seat of Paradise,
the valley that has been for three thousand years the

high-road for armies, the scene of so much slaughter

and misery, there lay two spots which seemed to mark
the first and the latest points of authentic history.
One, right below me, was the ruined Artaxata, built, as
the tale goes, by Hannibal, and stormed by the legions
of Lucullus. The other, far to the north-west, was the
hollow under the hills in which lies the fortress of Kars,
where our countrymen fought in 1854, and where the
flames of war were so soon again to be lighted.
Yet how trivial history, and man the maker of
history, seemed. This is the spot which he reveres as
the supposed scene of his creation and his preserva-
tion from the destroying waters, a land where he has
lived and laboured and died ever since his records

begin, and during ages from which no record is left.

Dynasty after dynasty has reared its palaces, faith

after faith its temples, upon this plain ;
cities have
risen and fallen and risen again in the long struggle
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 283

of civilization against the hordes of barbarism. But

of all these works of human pomp and skill, not one
can be discerned from this height. The landscape is

now what it was before man crept forth on the earth ;

the mountains stand about the valleys as they stood

when the volcanic fires that piled them up were long
ago extinguished. Nature sits enthroned, serenely
calm, upon this hoary pinnacle, and speaks to her chil-
dren only in the storm and earthquake that level their

dwellings in the dust. As says the Persian poet :

" When
you and I behind the veil are passed,
O but the long long while the world shall last,
Which of our coming and departure heeds
As the Seven Seas should heed a pebble's cast."

Yet even the mountains change and decay. Every

moment some block thunders from these crags into
the glens below. Day by day and night by night
frost, snow, and rain are loosening the solid rock, and
the ceaseless action of chemical forces is dissolving it

into primal elements, setting free the gases, and

its

delivering over the fragments to torrents that will

sweep them down into the plain. A
time must come,
ifthe world lasts long enough, when even the stately

peaks of Ararat will have crumbled away and be no

"
more. Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the
earth : and the heavens are the work of thy hands.
They shall perish, but thou shalt endure :
they all

shall wax old as doth a garment ;

and as a vesture
shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed :

but thou art the same, and thy years fail not."
Withal I am bound to say that the view, spite of
284 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
the associations it evoked, spite of the impression of
awe and mystery it
gave, was not beautiful or splen-
did, but rather stern, grim, and monotonous. The
softer colours of the landscape seemed to be lost ;
the
mountains, seen from above, and seldom showing
well-marked peaks, were uncouth, rough-hewn masses.
One had a sense of vast sterility and dreariness as the
vision ranged over this boundless expanse of brown,
and sought, almost in vain, a point to recognize. For
most of these huge mountains are nameless on our
maps ;
and these bare valleys are peopled by races of
whom we know little except that they live now much
as they may have lived when that first dispersion of
mankind took place. Then suddenly, while the eye
was still unsatisfied with gazing, the curtain of mists
closed round again, and was left alone in this
I

little plain of snow, white, and desolate, with a

silent,

above it and a wild west

vividly bright green sky
wind whistling across it, clouds girding it in, and ever
and anon through the clouds glimpses of far-stretching
valleys and mountains away to the world's end.
The awe that fell upon me with this sense of utter

loneliness made time

pass unnoticed and I might ;

have lingered long in a sort of dream had not the

piercing cold that thrilled through every limb recalled
me to a sense of the risks delay might involve. It was
half-past two o'clock, so that only four hours of day-
light remained there might be some difficulty in re-
;

tracing the morning's path, even by the help of the

piles of stone set up a night on the mountain without
:

food or wrappings would be a more serious matter

 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 285

than any obstacle that had yet presented itself.

Besides, as night approached, my friend below would

grow anxious ;
the rather as he could not communi-
cate with the Cossacks, and their stock of provisions
would scarcely enable them and him to wait till the
next day. It was clear therefore that the hope of
descending the summit towards the west and north
examining its structure, which
for the sake of better

no one seems to have properly described, must be

abandoned. So I ran down the easy slope into the
little valley between the two tops, climbed the snow

wall of the eastern one, and followed the marks made

by my ice-axe in the snow back to the spot where I
had left the rocks. The mist was now so thick that it
would otherwise have been impossible to hit the right
direction for though I had a compass, on a volcanic
;

mountain like Ararat, with plenty of iron in the rocks,

one could not have trusted it. I have seen the needle

on the basaltic top of Ben Nevis point every way in

succession. Once on the slope of friable rock, the way
was pretty a snow-bed lay on each hand,
clear, since

though the treacherous nature of the surface made

caution necessary and progress slow. Towards the
bottom I was tempted to try a glissade on the narrow
left-hand snow-bed, but it turned out to be much too
rough and too hard for the purpose so my glissade ;

ended in a slip and some bruises, the only little

mischance which befel me during the day.
A few minutes more brought me to the upper end
of the great fissure of eruption already mentioned,
whose eastern side I had climbed in the morn-
286 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

ing, partly on the slope, partly on the top, of the rock-

rib or arete which encloses it on the east. Surveying
the declivity below me
from the top of this rock-rib, it
seemed possible to descend by a route considerably
shorter than that which I had then followed, viz. by

striking diagonally across the slopes of loose rock

towards the east-south-east, instead of due south-east
down the cone. Taking this line, which presented no
great difficulty except where the loose, angular blocks
became so large that much time was lost in climbing
over and among them, I dropped down at last upon
a large snow-bed, 1 and in crossing it had the ill-luck
to break off the spike of my ice-axe, which had been

unskilfully fixed by the military carpenter of Aralykh.

It was well that the inclination was not steep enough to
make the rest of the way dangerous ; by caution and
the use of the head of the ice-axe to cut steps or take
hold of the ice, I got safely across, and on to another
mass of loose rocks, down which I pursued the same
south-eastward course, and thought I began to recog-
nize the long ridge up which we had toiled in the

morning. To the left rose the sharp peak which is

called, in Tatar, Tach Kilissa, and at the foot of it, on

1
This snow-field stretches right up to the top of the mountain, and
would afford a practicable route to it, although a tiresome one, for in
most parts of it the inclination is steep enough to make step-cutting
necessary. At the point where I crossed, it is a kind of tongue from a
wider snow-field above, up which Messrs. Freshfield and Tucker and
their Swiss guide seem to have made their spirited attack on the moun-
tain in 1868. They went (as far as I can gather) from Sardarbulakh
right up past Tach Kilissa, and were prevented from reaching the
summit only by illness, the result of long travel in Russian telegas.
See the very interesting account of their expedition in Mr. Freshfield's
'
Central Caucasus.'
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 287

the top of the ridge have just mentioned, was the

I

spot where my friend and the Cossacks had halted ;

the spot I had now to make for. By this time the

sun had got behind the south-western ridge of the
mountain, and his gigantic shadow had already fallen
across the great Araxes plain below, while the red
mountains of Media, far to the south-east, still glowed
redder than ever, then turned swiftly to a splendid

purple in the dying light.

Quickening my pace as the risk of missing the

encampment became greater, feeling, in fact, that it
was now a race against the onward striding night in
which defeat would be serious, I caught sight at last
of two Cossacks loitering on the edge of the slope of
sand and gravel which had proved so fatiguing in the
morning, and after a while made them hear my shouts.
When I reached them, it was six o'clock ;
and though
at this height (12,200 feet) there was still
good twilight,
Aralykh and the ruins of Artaxata below lay already
shrouded in gloom. Twenty-five minutes' more walk-
ing brought us to the place where the Kurds and the
other Cossacks had bivouacked and here, when it
;

was already so dark that we could barely recognize

one another a few yards off, my friend came forward
and met me. He had spent most of the day near the
spot where we parted, coming down eventually to
this point, which was a little lower, had seen the Kurd
return, but of course could get no tidings from him of
me, had slept about a good deal among shady places
in the rocks, making up for the vigils of the last week,
and had latterly, as the evening deepened, wandered
288 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

round, keeping a sharp look-out on the slopes above.

We examined the provisions, and found that nothing
but a lump of bread, a mere scrap of meat, two eggs,
and a thimbleful of cold tea were left. Happily neither
of us had much
appetite the sun had kept hunger at
;

bay and meat lozenges had done the same for

for him,

me so our frugal evening meal was soon despatched.

;

A little hot tea would have been welcome four weeks

under the sceptre of the Czar had made us perfect
slaves to tea but as there was neither fuel, nor
;

water, nor a vessel to boil it in, the hope was no

sooner formed than abandoned. Accordingly, about
half-past seven, we lay down on the hillside, my
on the top of the ridge, I a yard
friend valiantly
or two below him on the eastern side, the Cossacks
and Kurds all round where they severally pleased,
and we courted sleep. They, to judge by the sounds
that broke the mountain silence, courted not in vain,
but we two, although rather tired, found the position
too novel, and lay half conscious in a drowsy reverie ;

dropping off wake with a start at mid-

at last to

night, when the moon's pale horn was just shewing

over the Median mountains. Fortunately there had
been little wind. Though the air was sharp, and my
friend rose in a of shivering which at first alarmed
fit

us, I do not think the temperature can have fallen

and should have guessed it to be
to freezing-point,
about from 36 to 40 Fahrenheit, no great cold for an
exposed point about 11,500 feet above the sea. Un-
happily we had no thermometer ;
it had been neces-
sary to restrict our baggage to the lightest and most
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 289

indispensable articles. Even the aneroid which had

come with us from Tiflis I had been forced by its
weight to leave behind in the tent at Sardarbulakh.
After packing our scanty stock of camping gear as
well as we could in the darkness, and counting the
bundles on the Kurds' backs, we set off down the
dark ridges and darker valleys, stumbling about over
huge rocks under the feebly glimmering moon, losing
often our companions, and sometimes the way itself.

How we got safe down was a marvel to us at the

time but one frequently has the same cause for won-
;

der in night walks. Perhaps the muscles and sinews,

knowing what depends upon them, acquire a sort of

preternatural elasticity and readiness, which enables
them to adapt themselves to an emergency, and carry
one safely through innumerable risks. There was
no track, but the Kurds seemed to have an idea
where they were going. Many were the halts which
the Cossacks made, stretching themselves on the

grass to laugh and talk ;

nor was it now worth while
to hurry them. Now and then we tried to get a nap
during these delays, but though scarcely able to walk
for drowsiness, as soon as we lay down and shut our
eyes, we became bolt awake. At
length the morning
and not long after
star rose in unearthly brightness,
we came to a sweet little grassy plain, where two or
three Kurds, whose flocks were pasturing hard by,
had lit a fire of withered bushes, to which our Kurds
led us up in a friendly way, bidding us (as we guessed)
warm ourselves. The Cossacks had nearly all gone
on out of sight, and we were (as it afterwards struck
2QO TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

us) entirely at the mercy of these wild, swarthy fel-

lows, on whose glittering daggers and matchlocks the
firelight played. However, they had no thought of
mischief ; perhaps, if it had occurred to them, the
sense of hospitality, which is proverbially strong in
the East, would have restrained them from harming
those with whom they had eaten. Then between four
and five o'clock another glorious dawn began and ;

just before sunrise we reached the tent at Sardar-

bulakh, much to the relief of Jaafar's mind, and flung
ourselves down on the tent floor to sleep the sleep of
the weary.
Roused again at eight or nine o'clock both the
watches had stopped, so we could only guess at the
time of day we ought clearly to have gone up Little
Ararat, and obtained from his top a fuller notion of
his great brother's structure. Provisions, however, ran

short, and the Cossacks were anxious to return to

Aralykh, taking back with them their comrades
whom we had found in the two tents, as the post
was to be withdrawn for the season. Accordingly
the tents were struck, everything packed on the bag-

gage horses, the Kurds paid for their day's and

night's service on the hill. Then, before starting,
the Cossacks gathered in a ring in front of the spot
where the tents had stood, and began singing Russian
songs. The words we, of course, could not follow I

believe they were mostly camp songs, some com-

memorating military exploits, some farewells to de-
parting comrades but the airs, usually lively, but
occasionally tender and plaintive, dwelt long in our
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 29 1

memory. One stood in the middle and led, firing

off a gun sometimes singing
at intervals, the others
with him, sometimes merely joining in the refrain
or chorus. The voices were good, and the time
perfect.
In an English daily newspaper of July 27, 1877, I
"
found the following passage Utterly remorseless,
:

the Cossack falls upon a hostile country like a demon

of destruction. There is no getting away from his
thirsty lance, no assuaging his fierce fury, no appeasing
that innate devilry which makes him regard cruelty to
his fellow-creatures as a delightful pastime. Mercy
to the conquered not a part of the Cossack creed.
is

The savage does not expect it, does not give it. He
is content to carry his life in his hand, for those to

take who can but while it remains with him, he

;

intends to make it pleasant, according to his lights,

by miscellaneous pillage and slaughter."

Now I cannot say what the Cossack war may be in

time, for saw him only, in peace. In all men the

I

brute comes out at the taste of blood and no doubt ;

in him also. What I can venture to say is that, com-

paring him in time of peace with the soldiers of other
countries, I have never seen any so apparently gentle,
"
so unlikely to prove, even in war, utterly remorseless
demons of destruction." These sons of harmony were
the merriest, simplest, most good-natured fellows we
could have wished to ramble over the hills with. The
countenance after all cannot wholly belie the cha-
racter ;
and among the hundreds of Cossacks we met
in the Caucasian provinces, there were fewer hard or
X
292 . TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

fierce faces than we had ever seen in as many fighting

men before.
"
Wanton cruelty," " innate devilry," and
so forth, are not passions that can be wholly repressed
even in peace time yet I never heard from either the
;

Armenians or the Germans, who are keen critics of

everything Russian, a word of complaint as to the
behaviour of these irregulars among the people. No
doubt the Cossack has a keen scent for supplies on
a campaign, and helps himself pretty freely, without

paying for what he takes. But there is not a particle

of evidence to show that he has of late years ever done
1
anything more cruel in war than all troops do, the
French, the German, or our own. Compare him with
the Austrian Pandurs of last century, or the Bashi-
Bazouks of to-day, and he seems almost white against
such foul blackness. Of course I do not suppose that
the writer of this article had anything particular in his

eye. He wanted to write tellingly and the article :

was telling. But is it not pitiful that at this time of

day able writers should be content to stir up hatred

between nations for the sake of a little literary effect ?

Before noon we
bid a regretful farewell to Sardar-

bulakh, and rode down into the plain, this time taking

a track outside of the buttress of Takjaltu, instead of

behind it, and thence across the arid slopes to Aralykh,

which we reached about four o'clock without further

incident, though once during the way an alarm was

given that there were strange people about, and

1
Wecan all remember the false stories that were industriously circu-
lated about the excesses of the Germans in France in 1870, and of the
Federal troops in the American Civil War ; yet it is now generally
admitted that no invading troops ever behaved so well.
 THE ASCENT OF ARARAT. 293

Jaafar rode ahead to reconnoitre. Owing, I suppose,

to the bracing quality of the keen dry air, we were

much less fatigued than we had expected to be.

Colonel Shipshef welcomed us with characteristic
heartiness,and we spent a pleasant evening with
him, lamenting more than ever that unhappy event
at the tower of Babel which made our communica-
tions so limited. Next morning we mounted the
tarantass once more, and drove off across the Araxes
and through the dusty villages back into the furnace
of Erivan.
Two days found myself at the Armenian
later I

monastery of Etchmiadzin, near the northern foot of

Ararat, and was presented to the archimandrite who
rules that illustrious house. It came out in conver-

sation that we had been on the mountain, and the

Armenian gentleman who was acting as interpreter
turned to the archimandrite and said " This English-
:

man says he has ascended to the top of Massis"

"
(Ararat). The venerable man smiled sweetly. No,"
"
he replied, that cannot be. No one has ever been
there. It is impossible."

X 2
294 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

CHAPTER VIII.

ETCHMIADZIN AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE.

AFTER returning to Erivan from Ararat, we made a

hurried expedition to the famous monastery of Etch-

miadzin, which claims to be the oldest monastic

foundation in the world, and has for many centuries
been the seat of the Armenian Patriarch or Katho-
likos, the spiritual head of all true Armenians, in what-
soever empire, Russian, Turkish, Persian, Austrian,
or British, they may dwell. It is distant about

thirteen miles, some two hours driving, from Erivan,

and the journey gave us our first experience of that
wonderful vehicle the Russian telega. Our faithful
tarantass had suffered from the roads to Aralykh,
and been obliged to go into hospital, so at the post-
house they produced to us this contrivance a cart, or
shallow lidless box, about six feet long by four wide,
set upon wheels with no pretence of springs or any-

thing in the nature of springs. A

little hay was

thrown in, among which we were told to squat. We

put in a travelling bag, but soon found it impossible
to sit upon that, or on the sides of the box itself, for

the jolting knocked one about like a pea on a hot iron.

While the team of three scraggy beasts walked, the
 ETCHMIADZIN AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE. 295

shocks came slowly and were tolerable, but as soon as

the pace was quickened they became so violent that
we could only hold ourselves in the cart by grasping
its sides, and a whisky flask which had been safely
lodged in my companion's breast coat-pocket was
shot out like a cannon ball, and flung to a distance
in the road, where of course it broke into a hundred

pieces. How
people manage to travel for many con-
tinuous days in such vehicles without grievous bodily
harm, it is hard to understand, but the thing is done.
The road was no doubt very bad, so bad that was it

a relief to get off it into the bed of a stream or on to

the steppe, whose natural stoniness was less horrible
than the artificial stoniness of the highway. But this
road was not worse than all roads, except the main
post chaussee, are in these countries.
The evening was serenely clear. Ararat to the
south, and the dark mysterious mountains towards
Kars our eyes, and there was
in the far west, riveted

something inexpressibly solemn in the great desolate

plain that lay around us under the dying light a

plain in which Armenian tradition places the site of

the Garden of Eden. The curse of the flaming sword

might well be thought to have clung to it, for few spots

on earth have seen more ruin and slaughter than this
Araxes has been the highway through
valley. It

which the Eastern conquerors and marauders, from

the days of the Sassanid kings Shapur and Chosroes
Nushirvan, down through those of the Saracen and
Turkish and Mongol and Persian invaders, have

poured their hosts upon the fertile shores of the

296 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

Euxine. Here the Romans strove with the Par-

thians ;
here Alp Arslan overthrew the Armenian
kingdom of the middle ages ; here, down to our own
days, Turks and Persians and Russians have carried
on a scarcely interrupted strife. From Kars to
Djulfa there is hardly a spot of ground that has
not been soaked with blood, hardly a village that
has not many times been laid in ruins. Yet when the
storm is past, the patient peasant returns he draws ;

water again from the ancient canals whose network

covers the plain, and remembers these scourges of
mankind only in vague traditions, where the names
of Nimrod and Semiramis are mingled with those of
Tamerlane and Nadir Shah.
was nearly dark when we reached the village of
It

Vagarshabad at seven o'clock, and as we had no

interpreter there was some difficulty in discovering the
officials to whom our letters of commendation were
addressed. When their houses were found they turned
out to be absent, so we drove straight to the monas-
tery,prowled for some time in the deepening night
round its lofty walls, much like those of a mediaeval
fortress, and made out a gate, to which after
at last

long hammering there came a porter. When he

opened and saw that we were foreigners, he brought at
lasta young Armenian gentleman from the Armenian
colony in Southern Russia, who was able to speak
French. Our troubles were then at an end ;
we were
received with much friendliness by the archimandrite,
and lodged in a
guest-chamber overlooking the great
front quadrangle. On our apologizing for intruding
 ETCHMIADZIN AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE. 297

on their religious seclusion at so late an hour, they

answered that to entertain strangers was with
them a duty as well as a pleasure ;
so that we might
have claimed hospitality even had we come unrecom-
mended.
Etchmiadzin the ecclesiastical metropolis of the
is

Armenian 1
nation, and has been so, though with a

long intermission (A.D. 452-1441), since the year

A.D. 302,when, according to tradition, the first Chris-
tian church in Armenia was founded here by St. Gre-

gory the Illuminator, on the spot whereon the Saviour

had descended in a ray of light. The place was then
called, from some ancient king who had founded it,
Vagarshabad, a name still retained by the neighbour-
ing village. The word Etchmiadzin means in Arme-
nian, "The only-begotten descended."
Tiridates, or Dertad, the reigning monarch whom
Gregory then enlightened (Enlightenment is the
technical Armenian term for conversion), was the first

king who embraced Christianity along with his people,

Constantine's so-called conversion not happening till

either twelve or thirty-seven years later, according as

one reckons to the battle of the Milvian Bridge or to
his baptism. Armenia, therefore, is the first country
to have enjoyed the privileges of an ecclesiastical

1
The authority of the Patriarch of Etchmiadzin was for a long time
disputed by a patriarch who resided at Akhtamar, an island in the Lake
of Van, and is, I fancy, still disputed by a patriarch at Sis, among the
mountains of Cilicia, where the warlike Armenian tribes maintain a
sort of independence. However, this latter rival has now few subjects ;

Constantinople and all the Gregorian Armenians ( = those not united

to Rome and not Protestants) throughout the world recognize Etch-
miadzin.
298 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

establishment, although the attacks of the Persian

fire-worshippers, and of various Mohammedan Khalifs,
Sultans, and Shahs in later times, gave it a very
troubled and precarious existence. At first the

bishop of Etchmiadzin was a suffragan of the metro-

politan of Caesarea in Cappadocia, by whom Gregory
had been consecrated ;
but when the Persian kings
established their supremacy in the next century, they
broke this link between Armenia and the Roman
Empire. Shortly afterwards came the Council of
Chalcedon, whose decrees the Armenian Church first
hesitated, and finally, in A.D. 491, refused to accept,

thereby severing herself from the Orthodox Eastern

Church. So to this day she remains out of com-
munion with the Greek patriarch of Constantinople,
as well as with the Church of Russia, and is held both

by them and by the Roman Church to be tainted

with the Monophysite heresy, which the fathers of
Chalcedon condemned. Ever since those days, though
attempts at reconciliation were occasionally made, and
seemed for the moment to be successful, she has
remained a perfectly independent ecclesiastical body,
owning no superior above her own Patriarch or
Katholikos, who is, in fact, a sort of administrative
Pope, but of course without infallibility. He is chosen
by the whole body of Armenian bishops throughout
the world, who meet here for the purpose, and is then
confirmed by the Czar, who protects him and enforces
his authority. Those Armenian Christians, a minority

dating from the time of the Crusades, who are in com-

munion with the Latin Church, although allowed to
 ETCHMIADZIX AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE. 299

retain their own rite, of course do not recognise the

prelate of Etchmiadzin, but have a patriarch of their

own, who resides at Constantinople, and owns alle-

giance to Rome. There has lately been a schism

among these so-called United Armenians, some re-
fusing obedience to the Pope, while others cling to
him. Small as the matter may appear to us at this
distance, it excites great interest in the Roman Curia,
for whose zeal or ambition nothing is too small or too
great. And a desire to have the authority of the
United patriarch who adheres to Rome supported
by the Porte, against the other United patriarch who
is disobedient, has been conjectured, not without pro-
bability, to be one chief motive which has induced

Pope Pius IX. to extend his moral support to Turkey

in her struggle with Russia. 1

The monastery of Etchmiadzin (here, as in Russia, it

is at monasteries that episcopal seats are fixed every ;

Russian prelate lives in one) has been frequently

destroyed or injured by the numerous invaders that
have swept over the country, and as often restored.

The schism began in 1869, when the Pope issued the bull Reversuris,
1

by which he asserted his right to choose one out of three candidates

presented to him for every bishopric, or to reject all three if he pleased,
and also to have all the accounts and dealings of the Armenian Church
and Patriarch laid before him. As no such right had (so said my in-
formants) been previously exercised by him, a large body of the United
Armenians in Constantinople, including the richest and best educated,
refused to submit to this bull, and deposed the patriarch Hassun,

appointing another pledged to resist Rome. The Porte, under the

influence of Germany (as is supposed), recognized this rival ; and
the Pope's object is believed to be to induce the Porte to withdraw
that recognition, and enforce the claims of Hassun, who is faithful
to him.
300 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

The present church is supposed to contain some bits

of wall as old as the fourth century, the main body of
it being ascribed to the seventh or eighth but I found ;

it impossible to get any information on the spot which

could be relied on, and the architectural style in these
countries varies so little from one century to another
that only a practised and skilful archaeologist could
undertake to pronounce on the date of a building from
examining it. Like nearly all the older churches of

Russia, as well as of the East, it is small small, that is

to say, compared with its fame or importance perhaps

a little larger than the Temple Church in London.
It is cruciform, with exceedingly short transepts and

a short apse in fact, you might call it a square with

four shallow recesses the interior rather dark, with
an air of heaviness which is scarcely redeemed by the
frescos on the walls, drawn and coloured in the usual

style of Persian arabesque, with birds, flowers, and

various conventional ornaments. However, any cheer-
ful decorations of this kind are welcome after the
and judgment that adorn
revolting pictures of hell
the walls of so many Russian and Greek churches.
There are two patriarchal thrones, one on each side
of the apse, and a tabernacle over the central altar
under the dome marks the spot on which the Saviour
descended. Here a slab of marble covers the hole

through which St. Gregory drove into the earth all

the devils that in his day infested Armenia, and gave

false oracles in the heathen temples. On this very
spot there had stood a shrine and image of the god-
dess Anahit, just as the hill of Monte Casino was
 ETCHMIADZIN AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE. 30 1

crowned, when St. Benedict first went there, by a

temple of Apollo. Between the apse and the body
of the church is a sort of screen, somewhat similar to
the ikonostas of Russian churches, but it is only a

small part of the Armenian service that goes on

behind this screen. On the whole, the interior is im-
pressive, with a certain sombre dignity, and an air of
hoar antiquity about everything its pictures, some :

of them portraits of sainted patriarchs, and other

decorations, have little artistic merit, but they are

less offensive to the Protestant eye than the black
Madonnas incrusted with precious stones which are
the glory of Russian or other Orthodox places of

worship. Externally the church has little that is dis-

tinctive about it. The tall central cupola rises into
an octagonal spire, or rather conical tower, of the
usual Armenian type, and is said to date from the
seventh century, though I cannot believe it to be any-

thing like so old. So, too, the four smaller open

towers at the four extremities, the windows and
doors, with their mouldings (the elegantly carved

porch at the west end is especially handsome), are

all in the regular style of Armenian building, and
probably all modern, the towers of the seventeenth
century, the porch of the eighteenth.
'

A learned

ecclesiological writer (Dr. Neale), however, insists that

the ground plan of the church is rather Byzantine
than Armenian, and his reasons, so far as I can judge
of such a matter, seem to be sound. Of true Arme-
nian architecture the finest and most characteristic

specimens are to be found in the ruined city of Ani,

3O2 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

some thirty miles from here, towards Kars, and just

within the Turkish border.
The
other monastic buildings, only a small part of
which consists of the dwellings of the brethren, are
of no great architectural merit. What struck me as
the oldest and most interesting are the two refectories,
one of which, used in summer, a long, low. vaulted
room, with one narrow table running down the midst
between stone benches, a throne under a canopy for
the patriarch, and a sort of pulpit, whence reading

goes on during meals, appears from its style to be not

later than the twelfth century. However, there is a
tradition assigning a much later origin to it. Old also
is the library, to which we had come with great expec-
tations, hearing of its treasures in the way of ancient
manuscripts. Unfortunately there was no one on the
spot who could tell us much about them, and I doubt
if there is any one who knows much. The stock of

printed books is quite small, not reaching 2000, and

of course the great majority are in Armenian, most of
the newer ones in Russian. There seems to be little

ground for hoping that any Greek or Latin manu-

scripts, unless, possibly, of late ecclesiastical writers,
remain to be discovered here ;
it is rather to Orient-
alists that researches into the libraries of the
Armenian monasteries are to be recommended. The
treasury, or, as we should say, the sacristy, in which
the holy relics that constitute the great glory of
Etchmiadzin are kept, is a new building at the east
end of the church. Unhappily we could not gain
admittance, owing to a cause which might seem to
 ETCHMIADZIN AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE. 303

cast a painful light on the want of security, or at

least of confidence, among even the respectable eccle-
siastics of this country. There is but one key to the
treasury, and that key is kept by the patriarch, who
carries it with him wherever he goes. He was then
in a cool mountain retreat some miles away on the
slopes of Ala Goz, and we were therefore obliged to
forego the hope of seeing the head of the holy spear
wherewith the Roman soldier pierced the side of
Christ. have been brought to Ar-
It is asserted to

menia by Thaddeus the Apostle, and has therefore a

far more respectable pedigree, so to speak, than the
" "
rival holy lance which the Crusaders discovered at
Antioch with such magnificent results, or than that
which Sir John Maundeville tells us he saw at Con-
stantinople the possession of the Eastern Em-
in

peror, not to speak of other claimants. In this trea-

sure-house there is also a fragment of Noah's Ark,
obtained, according to the legend stated in an earlier
chapter, by the monk St. Jacob ; and, what is the
most curious of all, a withered mummy hand inclosed
in acasing of silver, which purports to be the very
hand of St. Gregory the Illuminator. This hand is
actually used to this day in the consecration of every
patriarch, who being touched by it receives the grace,
as it were, direct from the founder of the Armenian
Church. It is an instance of the carrying out, on its

physical side, of the doctrine say of apos-

(I will not

tolic succession, but) of the transmission through

earthen vessels of spiritual gifts, and their communi-
cation by physical means, which one is startled to find
 304 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

.still in fullan important and respectable

force in
branch of the Christian Church. In the middle

ages nothing would have seemed more natural or im-

pressive in the nineteenth century it looks a little
;

different.

Within the lofty and battlemented wall that incloses

the monastery, which has in its day repelled many a
band of Tatar or Persian marauders, and may perhaps
even have stood sieges before the days of cannon it
was repaired in the last century, but of its first erection
there seems to be no record there lies a great mass
of buildings of different kinds, as well as some gardens
and open spaces. Besides the cells of the monks,
who number from twenty to thirty, there are, on the
west side of the great square, apartments for the patri-
arch and for the archbishops, bishops, and archiman-
dritesfrom other monasteries, who are frequently to
be found here, consulting him on the affairs of their
churches, or attending the general and supreme synod,
which sits, almost in permanence, under his presi-
dency. There are many subsidiary buildings, and
among them a sort of bazaar, where some trade is
done, chiefly in hay and corn produced by the monastic
lands in fact one has almost a little town within the
;

walls of this fortress convent, a mile in circuit.

Finally
there the seminary, a sort of school or college for
is

the education of young Armenians chiefly, but not

exclusively, with a view to their entering the priestly

office. The school is supported by the monastic
revenues, which, as they are said to amount to nearly
.10,000 a year, arising partly from landed property
 ETCHMIADZIN AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE. 305

here and in Georgia, but mainly from the contributions

of the loyal Armenian churches throughout the world,
can well afford this charge, in addition to that of a
sum paid to the patriarch and the maintenance of
the monks and their establishment.
We were received at the seminary, which occupies
a new and fairly commodious building to the east of
the cathedral,by the Armenian archbishop of Tiflis,
who is at present acting as its director. This able
and accomplished prelate, who has lived long in the

West, and speaks French fluently,

chiefly at Venice,
told us a good deal that was interesting about the
school and the prospects of education in the country

generally. There were about eighty boys or young

men then attending, who are of course lodged in the

monastery, and for the most part remain in it from

the beginning to the end of their education, coming
often from great distances. Among those present in
the dining-hall some were from the heart of Persia,
others from Cilicia, others from all sorts of places scat-
tered through Asia Minor. The well-marked national
type of countenance, the dark eyes and straight,
black hair, came out strongly and the quick intelli-
;

gence of many of the faces was no less. characteristic.

The school labours under serious disadvantages from

the difficulty of procuring competent teachers, and the
state of blank ignorance in which so many pupils
come ;
it is however making manful efforts to extend
and raise its instruction, and the very fact that funds
formerly spent in selfish indulgence should now be
voluntarily devoted to this public purpose testifies to
306 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
an awakened life and hopefulness in the Armenian
Church and people.
A magazine called
'
Ararat
'

has recently been

established ;
it is printed at the monastery, and of
course in Armenian nor is the press of Etchmiadzin
;

idle in producing educational manuals, the class of

books which are (strange as a British parent may
think it) at present most scarce among the Arme-
nians of these countries. Doubtless the seminary
will do considerable good, both as a teaching insti-
tution and by acting as a centre of light and influence
to the Armenian population scattered through the
Turkish and Persian empires, some of whose children
already resort hither to be trained. In fact the
same sort of connection between a prelate living
under a Christian monarch and his flock scattered

through non-Christian lands is thus re-established

which the Persian kings broke in the fifth century,
when they Armenian bishops from their
cut off the

dependence on a metropolitan who was the subject

of the Roman emperor.
A separate quadrangle, one side of which is formed
by the southern outer wall, and which is graced by a
fountain and pond in the centre, contains the rooms

appropriated to guests, and in one of them on the

first floor, opening off a small wooden gallery, we were

lodged. It was a Friday, but they made no difficulty

about giving us a substantial meat supper, some one

probably knowing that the English do not regard
those church fasts which are so prodigiously important
in these countries. It is really quite a new light to a
 ETCHMIADZIN AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE. 307

Western to find that the chief difference, in the

wilder places, between Christians, pagans, and Ma-
hommedans, consists in the times or rules of fasting.
We stayed the night in our chamber, suffering a
good deal from the heat, and next morning were
honoured by the apparition of an official, who
seemed to be something between a mayor and a
superintendent of police his uniform was handsome
:

enough for anything. He followed us round every-

where with the greatest punctiliousness, doing the
honours of the monastery in rivalry with the archi-
mandrite, and ultimately, when we started for Erivan,
sent with us, as a guard of honour, a brace of ragged
but fully armed tchapars, who
galloped behind our
telega along the road, and added very much to our
sense of dignity, if not of security. There seemed to
be very few other guests in the convent at the time
of our visit. Probably it was the dead season the ;

heat was oppressive there were fevers about

;
the ;

Patriarch, to confer with whom most of the ecclesi-

astical visitors come, was absent in the mountains.

He is named Kevork (George). At other times there
are usually several archbishops, bishops, and abbots in

attendance, though I fear they no longer work in the

"
garden, as it is related that they once did. Forty-
seven archbishops," says Gibbon, " each of whom may
claim the obedience of four or five suffragans, are con-
secrated by the hands of the patriarch of Ekmiasin,
but the greater part are only titular prelates, who
dignify with their presence and service the simplicity
of his court. As soon as they have performed the
Y
308 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

liturgy, they cultivate the garden and our bishops

:

will learn with surprise that the austerity of their life

increases in just proportion to the elevation of their
rank."

Formerly Etchmiadzin was the resort of immense

numbers of pilgrims, both from the surrounding
country and from the Armenians scattered through
Asia but now, like almost all the great old shrines,
;

like Santiago, Einsiedeln, St. David's, Loretto, it has

lost this source of wealth, and has also lost the visitors

who halted at it as they passed along what was once

the great trade route from Trebizond by Erzerum
and Erivan to Tavriz and Northern Persia. The
trade from Persia to the Black Seanow goes entirely
through Turkish territory, I suppose in order to
avoid Russian custom-houses, by way of Bayazid on
the south-western side of Ararat. The village of

Vagarshabad, lying a few hundred paces from the

monastic fortress, is quite an insignificant place, with
scarcely any trace of its former greatness. Only one
mass of ancient brick building marks the place where
there once stood, according to Armenian historians,

20,000 houses, the place where Tiridates reigned, at

the time of his conversion, over a powerful kingdom.
These Oriental cities, being mostly built of unburnt
brick, and without great public structures, perish very
swiftly, and leave little trace behind. Usually only
the churches remain ;
and so here, near the convent,
there stand two churches, probably more ancient than
the cathedral itself, those of St. Rhipsime and St.

Caiana, who were martyred in the time of Tiridates.

 ETCHMIADZIN AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE. 309

Rhipsime was a virgin of exquisite beauty. Accom-

panied by a band of maidens, she had fled from
Rome to escape the addresses of the reigning emperor,

whom, as a pagan, she could not espouse. Tiridates

was equally smitten by her charms, and when she re-
fused him for the same reason, he put her to death
with hideous tortures, and killed at the same time her
nurse Caiana.
The other sights of the place I have described as
fully as a modern reader's patience is likely to bear,
and will thereforesay nothing of the cuneiform in-
scription, nor of the bell which bears, in Tibetan, the
Buddhist formula dm dm hrum nor of the famous fruit
y

garden. The most really interesting thing in the con-

vent is the library, mean as its appearance is but ;

people ignorant as we were of Armenian and other

Eastern tongues could of course make nothing of it.
I cannot but hope that, with the progress of education,

there may arise native Armenian scholars who will

examine Its treasures more thoroughly than any one

appears to have as yet done.
The present condition of the monks leaves- much to
be desired, as far asknowledge and education goes, but
in general their monastic life will fairly bear a com-

parison with that of most Western as well as Russian

foundations. It is not squalid nor is it, according
;

to monastic ideas, rigid, for though they fast a good

deal, they do not mortify the flesh otherwise, and
have quite shocked Roman Catholic travellers by
enforcing no rule of silence. It is enlivened by the

visits of prelates and pilgrims from a distance, arrd

Y 2
310 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

now by the existence of the school, which might

justify to a reforming eye the retention of the monastic
estates, though it is happily needless to fear reforming
eyes or hands in these lands of long repose. As no one
seemed to speak any tongue but Armenian and Tatar,
or in some few cases Russian, our communications
with them were very limited. Their dress is becom-

ing it consists of a long black robe of a thin serge

:

or tissue, not so thin as crape, and a peaked cap, from

which a sort of veil of the same material falls back
over the neck and shoulders. On the whole they im-
press a traveller perhaps more favourably than the
inmates of convents generally do inferior as they
;

are in learningand polish to the brethren of that

famous Western foundation, the mother of all Western
monastic houses and the home of their founder, which
is perhaps the chief Etchmiadzin in antiquity
rival of

and historical fame the great Benedictine abbey of

Monte Casino.

Unfortunately the situation of Etchimiadzin is by

no means healthy, placed as it is in an excessively
hot plain, on the banks of a stream which, being
diverted into a number of channels for the purpose
of irrigation, loses itself in fever-producing marshes.

Except in the large convent garden just outside the

walls,which borders the magnificent stone-faced fish-
pond, or reservoir, formed by a late patriarch, there
are no trees anywhere near; the landscape is bare
and open all the way from the glens of Ala Goz
and the brown mountains of the Karabagh in the
east to the hills of Kars, far on the western horizon.
 ETCHMIADZIN AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE. 3! I

The glory of the place is its view of Ararat, which

rises full in front in indescribable majesty, covered

on this side with snow for a good way down. We

could not take our
eyes we
off it all the time
remained. Doubtless the neighbourhood of the holy
mountain adds sensibly to the veneration which the
oldest seat of their faith and the storehouse of so
many relics commands from all pious or patriotic
Armenians.
The Armenians are an extraordinary people, with a

tenacity of natural life scarcely inferior to that of the

Jews, and perhaps more remarkable, since it has not

been forced upon them by such unremitting persecu-
tion. They have been a nation known by their pre-
sent name ever since the days of Herodotus x at least, 1

and probably a good deal earlier. 2 Under the Persian

empire they seem to have retained their own princes,
merely paying tribute to the Great King, and march-
ing in his armies, as they did under Xerxes against
Greece. That the same sort of arrangement lasted
on in the days of the Seleucid kings may be con-
jectured from the fact that Artaxias and Zadriates,
under whom Armenia recovered her independence,
are described as being not only descendants of the

1
Herodotus speaks of them as living on the Upper Euphrates, .

but conceives of the Saspeires as occupying the eastern part of what we :

should call Armenia, placing the latter between the Medes and the
Colchians. Perhaps his Saspeires are the Iberians.
2
The kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz of the Bible, the
Armenian kingdom of Xenophon's Tigranes, the lover of Panthea, were

probably within the compass of what we call Armenia, though the

former cannot be placed there with absolute certainty, and we never
know how far anything in the
' '

Cyropaedia can be taken as historical.

312 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

royal house but also generals or lieutenants of Antio-

chus the Great. Not very long afterwards Digran,
whom the Greek and Roman writers call Tigranes,
threw off the suzerainty of the Parthian Arsacidae,
who had become the chief power of Western Asia,
and made Armenia the centre of an empire which
stretched from the Orontes to the Caspian. As he had

supported his father-in-law, Mithridates of Pontus,

against .the Romans, he was attacked and his power
shattered by Lucullus, who penetrated to the capital
of Artaxata, at the north-east foot of Ararat. None
of his successors was able to raise the kingdom to
the same pitch they maintained, however, a sort of
;

unstable independence, playing off first the Parthians

and then the Persian Sassanids against the Romans,
and the Romans against the Parthians and Persians.
From the time of Nero, who
placed a native sovereign
of the Arsacid family on the throne, they had gene-

rally rather leant on their Western neighbours. Sha-

pur. second of the Sassanid kings, conquered
the
Armenia at the time when he defeated and took
prisoner the unfortunate Emperor Valerian. Under
Diocletian was recovered for Rome, and Tiridates
it
1
the Great (of course not the Tiridates for whose
fears Horace did not care, who was a Parthian, three

centuries earlier) returned to the throne of his ances-

tors. The conversion of this Tiridates by his cousin,

St. Gregory the Enlightener, whom he had confined

Horace, Od. i. 26, 5. One can fancy Roman quidnuncs talking

1

about the alarms of Tiridates much as ours do about the Khan of Khiva
or Yakub Beg of Kashgar.
 ETCHMIADZIN AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE. 313

for fourteen years in a dry well, is the turning-point

in the history of the nation.

From that day Armenia became the bulwark of

Christianity in Asia. Overrun and ravaged by the
Persian fire-worshippers, the first race or faith that
set the example of religious intolerance and perse-

cution, who at last extinguished the Arsacid king-

dom about the year 440 A.D. then, after the fall
;

of the Persian power, by the Mohammedan khalifs

of Bagdad ;
sometimes supported, sometimes aban-
doned by the Byzantine emperors, and torn all the
while by internal dissensions and revolutions, she rose
in the ninth century to be again a state of some
importance in the world. The first flood of Arab
conquest had subsided the ;
Roman emperors had
even recovered lost territory ;
the Abbasside sove-

reigns had seen their dominions seized by a swarm of

local potentates. Armenia was now ruled by the
/ dynasty of the Bagratians, a family who claim to be
\ descended from King David the Psalmist, and who
may very possibly be really of Hebrew origin. Their
capital was Ani, between Etchmiadzin and Kars,
the magnificent ruins of whose churches and palaces
remain to attest the transitory splendour and wealth
of the kingdom they ruled. This Bagratid race

gave a line of kings to Georgia, while some of its

branches established themselves in Mingrelia and
Imeritia. The family still exists, and ranks high
among the nobility of Russia one of them was the
;

Prince Bagration, who was killed at Borodino in

the Napoleonic campaign of 1812.

314 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

This mediaeval Christian kingdom had bloomed

in the lull ofMuslim invasion caused by the decay
of the great Bagdad khalifate. The storm that fol-
lowed proved more fatal. The aggressive movement
of Islam passed into the hands of a lately converted
and fiercer race, the Turks, who were pressing in from
the steppes of the Oxus. In the eleventh century the

great Seljukian sultan Toghrul Beg conquered Persia,

and became the master of Bagdad and the protector of
the impotent khalif. His successor, Alp Arslan (the
valiant lion), overran Armenia and Georgia in 1066 (the
year of another famous conquest) ;
the Romans of Con-
whom Armenia had leaned, regarding
stantinople, on
with comparative indifference the miseries of Mono-
1
physite heretics. Malek Shah, the successor of Alp
Arslan, completed the conquest Ani was sacked,
;

and the Christian throne of Armenia finally over-

turned in 1075 2 while the Turkish arms were carried
;

as far as the Caucasus and the Euxine.

In the repeated invasions and devastations of their

country which occupied these weary years, a great

part of the Armenian people were driven from it,
and scattered over the adjoining lands, especially
through Asia Minor, where their descendants still
constitute a large element, probably nearly one-

1
The Emperor Romanus Diogenes, however, advanced against Alp
A rslan into Southern Armenia, but was defeated and made prisoner in
a great battle near the Lake of Van.
2
Others give the date as 1079 or 1046. There is much confusion in
the Armenian chronology ;
the conversion of Tiridates, for instance, is
by some assigned to A.D. 286. The Armenians have an era of their
own, which begins in A.D. 551.
 ..iMIADZIN AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE. 315

fourth, of the entire

population while the void ;

which they left was

partially, but only partially,
filled up by the immigration of half nomad Moham-

medan Tatars or Turkmans, whose villages now lie

scattered through Russian and Turkish Armenia. The
existence of Armenia as an independent state was at
1
an end j
and her later history, which I have neither
the knowledge nor the time to describe, is little more
than a dreary record first ,;,of warfa>e between the
' ' v
~- r ;Si. ;
.

Byzantine emperors and the Seljukiart'Turks, then of

devastations by the Mongol^,iXanjd rap hqsfs'vpf Timur,
\ *^ \ ^^ ^
still long and indeoBrj^xoRJ^st between the
later of a
\?& \1 7* [1
Ottoman sultans and Persia fol^^p8^3sfciqfl f these
)

^^^ C?>ar
once flourishing provinces. But the Armenian people
survived. to their religion with a zeal
They clung
all the more desperate that it was now all that their

patriotism had to cling to. Though a certain number

must no doubt have embraced Islam, as the conquered
have everywhere done, the bulk of the race remained
true to a faith which was no doubt deeply corrupted

by ignorance and superstition, but which was their

very life-blood, and through many weary centuries of
oppression turned to the sacred walls of Etchmiadzin
as to an ark alone visible amid the rising flood of

1
The Christian kingdom of Lesser Armenia, in the south-east corner
of Asia Minor, of which we hear occasionally in the twelfth, thirteenth,
and fourteenth centuries, lay towards Cilicia and the north-east corner
of the Levant, and was quite distinct from Old Armenia. It was
founded by Armenian fugitives from Ani under a Bagratid prince. Its
Leo VI., a Latin of the family of Lusignan, died at Paris
last sovereign,
in 1393. Otto of Brunswick, an ancestor of the house of Hanover, was
once crowned king of this Armenia. There are still in the wild Cilician
mountains some Armenian tribes practically independent of Turkey.
3l6 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

Mohammedan dominion. At last help began to

appear from the north. Russia, even before she had
established herself in Georgia, had begun to inter-
fere for the protection of the Armenian Christians,

and, when she was planted south of the Caucasus,

could do so with more effect. The famous patriarch
Narses, who was elected in 1843, being then seventy-
three years of age, and had been the foremost man in
the nation for many years, always maintained that
the true policy of the Armenians was to look to and
aid the advance of Russia, whether she were selfish or
not in her designs, since the rest of Christendom was
indifferent, and anything was better than Turkish and
Persian tyranny. The event justified his anticipa-
tions. In 1827 the Czar Nicholas went to war with
Persia, and wrested from her the whole upper valley
of the Araxes, including Etchmiadzin itself. War
with Turkey followed in 1828 the invaders under
:

Paskievitch penetrated as far as Erzerum, and when

they retired on the conclusion of peace in 1829, a

multitude of Armenian subjects of Turkey followed
them across the border and settled in Russian terri-

tory, where, unsatisfactory as we may think their

.

condition, they are infinitely better off than they

were under the Sultan or the Shah. I do not say
that the Armenians love Russia, but neither do they
hate her :she has, at any rate, given them security
for the honour of their families and the enjoyment
of the crops they raise. The reviving sentiment of

nationality, the generally diffused belief that the

Ottoman power is sickening towards death, the spread
 ETCHMIADZIN AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE. 317

of education, the easier intercourse with the West,

the prosperity of individual Armenians in the foreign
countries where they have established themselves as

merchants, have all of them stimulated the hopes

and aspirations of the more instructed classes, so that
one even begins to hear of schemes for the erection
of an Armenian state. Russia, of course, frowns upon
such schemes, nor can any one think them easy of
accomplishment. For the native Armenians are not
only poor and unarmed, but cowed by long submis-
sion, while there is no European people that has
shown any interest in them, or even any sense of
the important position they occupy, and the services
which they may one day render.
At present Armenia is a mere geographical expres-
sion, a name which has come down to us from the

ancient world, and has been used at different times

with different territorial extensions. The country, if
one can call a country, has no political limits, for it
it

lies mainly in the dominions of Turkey, but partly

also in those of Russia and Persia. It has no ethno-

graphical limits'/for it is inhabited by Tatars, Persians,

Kurds, and the mixed race whom we call Turks or
Ottomans, as well as by the Armenians proper. It
has no natural boundaries in rivers or mountain
chains, lying, as it does, in the upper valleys of the

Euphrates, Tigris, Aras, and Kur. Of the numbers

of the Armenian nation, or rather of Armenian Chris-
tians for the nation and the church are practically
synonymous no precise estimate can be formed it :

is commonly taken at 4,000,000 under Turkish rule,

3l8 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

800,000 under Russian, and 600,000 under Persian ;

but some think that there are no more than 3,000,000

in Turkey. Others are scattered abroad in all sorts
of places India, Southern Russia, Kabul, Hungary,
Abyssinia, Manchester. Wherever they go, they
retain their faith, their peculiar physiognomy, their
wonderful aptitude for trade.
In Constantinople and most parts of Asia Minor,
as well as in Transcaucasia, commerce is to a great
extent in their hands ;
and they are usually found
more than a match for either Jews or Greeks. Here,
in their own country, however, they are chiefly peace-
able, stay-at-home peasants, living in low, mud-built
cottages, or sometimes in underground dwellings,
tilling the soil just as their ancestors may have done

thirty centuries ago, very ignorant, poor, and unambi-

tious, scarcely distinguishable in dress and in some of
their habits, except, of course, so far as religion conies

in,from the Tatars who are interspersed among but

never intermingled with them. Here, in Russian
territory, the women go about unveiled, just as in
Europe ;
but I fancy it is otherwise in Turkey and
Persia, where, of course, not merely prejudice, but pru-
dence, suggests the concealment of what may attract
the notice of some brutal official. There seems, how-
ever, to have been a curious old national custom
which required women to remain not only secluded
but silent for some years after their marriage. Ac-
cording to Baron Haxthausen, an able German who
travelled here thirty years ago, the young wife is for
a year permitted to speak to no one save her hus-
 ETCHMIADZIN AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE. 319

band, and to him only when they are alone she may ;

then talk to her baby, and after an interval to her

mother-in-law, then to her sister-in-law, next to her
sister, last of all to other women, but always in a

whisper. After six years, however, though obliged to

go out veiled, she enjoys much power and considera-
tion in the household, and if her husband dies, she

reigns in his stead. The worthy German approves

highly of this practice, not only as tending to increase
conjugal devotion, but as rendering possible a system
under which the married sons and daughters of a
family continue to reside in one household.
" "
Imagine," says he, five or six young married

women (be it said with all due respect) living to-

gether in the same house, should we not anticipate
continual quarrels and disturbance and the loss of
all authority in the head of the family ? No such
thing ;
this danger is removed. Women's quarrels
generally arise from the use of women's tongues and ;

it not easy to quarrel for any length of time in

is

pantomime, whilst the amusement of the spectators

tends to allay(?) any angry feelings. Even after-
wards, when freedom of speech is restored, this being
carried on in a whisper is unfavourable to quarrelling.
In short, to any one who has to manage a large
household containing several young women, I could
give no better advice than to introduce this Armenian
custom." However ancient and laudable this custom

may be, it is fast disappearing, and, so far as I learn,

now subsists only to this extent, that a bride may not

speak to her sisters-in-law for six months after mar-

320 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

riage, to her mother-in-law for nine months, and to

her father-in-law for eighteen.
It is rather remarkable that whereas serfdom pre-

vailed in Georgia and Mingrelia for many centuries,

down till the recent emancipation by Alexander II.,
there is no trace of its existence in Armenia. Domestic
slavery of course there was, as everywhere under
Persian and Turkish rule but ;
all Armenians not
slaves were equal : there was neither serf on the one
hand nor any noble caste on the other. While every
second Georgian you meet calls himself a prince, no
Armenian seems now to claim any title of rank (when
they used one, it was ishan = prince), or has (so far as
I know) accepted any from the Czar an example
worthy of imitation in more civilized countries. Some
families of course enjoy special respect from their
ancient or honourable pedigree and of these there;

were a few which in Persian times were exempt from

taxation, and were hereditary heads of their villages,
responsible to the Shah's viceroy, or to the Armenian
Melik of Erivan. This personage was the head of one
of these old families, and a sort of national chief or

judge, enjoying as much power as the Shah or Sardar

for the time being chose to allow him, and often ap-

pealed to by his humbler countrymen to compose their

differences, or shield them from the tyranny of some
Mohammedan official. The Tatars had a Khan at
Erivan who corresponded in a measure to this Meiik,
and was probably a representative of some ancient
princely house. All this was, of course, swept away

by the Russian conquest here, as elsewhere, the

:
 ETCHMIADZIN AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE. 321

centralized bureaucracy of governors and judges ap-

pointed by the government is now in full swing.
Physically the Armenians are middle-sized, with a
swarthy, yellowish complexion, less yellow, however,
than that of the Persians, who are said to be (linguisti-
cally) their Clearest relatives, black, straight hair, a
forehead rather wide than high, and a large nose.
The women are often handsome, with an erect car-

riage, regular features, and fine dark eyes. The lan-

guage they now speak differs widely from that in
which their ancient literature, dating from the fourth
century, is preserved, and in which their worship is
still conducted. They call it, and themselves, Haik,
claiming to be descended from an eponymous hero
Haik, who was the brother of Karthlos, ancestor of the
Georgians, and the son of Thorgamos or Thogarmah,
who was the son of Gomer the son of Japhet It

belongs to the Iranian group of the Indo-European

family, and is said to be copious and strong, though
certainly not melodious. Besides the ecclesiastical

writings of the earlier middle age, the best known

of which the history of Moses of Chorene, there
is

exist in the old tongue some ancient ballads, several

of them containing versions of the Persian legends of
Zal and 'Rustum. The earliest inscriptions found in
the country are in a cuneiform character somewhat ;

later, in Graeco-Roman times, the Greek alphabet was

used by the Western, the Syriac by the Eastern
Armenians, the beginning of the fifth century,
until, in

St.Mesrop invented the present Armenian character,

and thereby, it has been thought, gave a considerable
322 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

impetus to the independent national feeling of the

people. He wrote in it his Armenian translation of
the Gospels, now accounted the model of the old

tongue in its purity, but barely intelligible to one who

knows only the modern vernacular, the origin of
which, or rather the disuse of the ancient language
in literary composition,is commonly assigned to the

fourteenth century, when the Turkish and Mongol

invasions had destroyed what little learning or wealth
had been left in the country. There exist a certain
number of recent ballads, sung to national airs, and
some of these airs have considerable sweetness, unlike
the church music, which is singularly harsh and un-
melodious.
In the southern and western parts of Asia Minor,
the Armenians generally speak either Turkish or
dialects of their own tongue much corrupted by
Turkish ;
but the establishment of schools among
them is calling Armenian back and notably
into use,

strengthening their national sentiment. These schools

and the funds of the churches are in each community
managed by a local council, elected by universal
suffrage. The Armenians whom I saw boasted that
in no church was the lay element stronger than in

theirs ;
even the election of the local priest is entirely
in the hands of the people. In points of doctrine
and ritual the Armenian Church is extremely conser-
vative,and has been wise or fortunate enough to
avoid defining her faith with the particularity which
has produced so many schisms farther west. She
has never committed herself to Monophysite views,
 ETCHMIADZIN AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE. 323

although, chiefly owing to a national jealousy of

Constantinople, she refused to accept the decrees of
Chalcedon she has not formally expressed herself on
;

the subject of purgatory or the invocation of saints;

although the latter is of course practised she has ;

avoided the use of any word corresponding to the

term transubstantiation, so that practically a con-
siderable diversity of opinion regarding the Eucharist

might prevail among her members.

The vigorous life which still dwells in the Armenian
race, and makes one expect more from it than from
any other of the Transcaucasian peoples, has chiefly
expressed most of all (as
itself in practical directions,

has been said already) in money-making. Many

Armenians, however, have entered the civil or military
service of Russia, as well as that of Turkey (where,
unhappily, their reputation as officials is not very
creditable ;
it is an old remark that the faults of a
subject race come out worst when they are put in
power over their fellows), and some have risen to posts
of high dignity. For instance, the commander of the
invading Russian army in Asia at this moment,
General Loris Melikoff, an Armenian, as is the
is

present governor of Daghestan. Their family, pro-

1
perly Melikian (ian is a patronymic in Armenian,
like Mac or Ap), is one of the oldest and most re-

1
Melik is of course the old Semitic word for king, which appears in the
Melchi Zedek of Genesis. It is the same as Malek, or Melek (Adram
Melech, Abi Melech), and has now come to mean prince or merely land-
owner in the Eastern countries. (See a learned and interesting essay
by Sir E.Colebrooke on imperial and other titles in East and West,
reprinted from the 'Transactions of the Asiatic Society,' 1877.)
Z
324 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

spectable in Armenia. There are, I believe, thirty

other Armenian generals in the service of the Czar.
1

Russia wise not only in turning Armenian ability to

is

account, but in thus giving an open career to ambi-

tion, which might otherwise find a vent in intrigues or

disaffection.

There a considerable stirring of intellectual, even

is

of literary activity, among the Armenians, both here

and in Constantinople. They see that the time has
come to make their voice heard in the world, and to
claim (however little prospect there seems to be of
their obtaining it) for their
unhappy co-religionists
in the Asiatic provinces of Turkey some share in
Western sympathy. Nothing can be more pitiable
than the condition of these poor people. They are
not only (like the Rayahs of Bosnia and Bulgaria)

plundered and outraged by rapacious tax gatherers

and zaptiehs, they are also constantly exposed to the
robberies of the marauding Kurds, who live among
them, roving over the mountains summer, and inin

winter descending to quarter themselves upon the

Christian villagers, where they slay and pillage to
their heart's content. The Ottoman Porte has not
the power, even if it had the will, to interfere. In
fact, the sheep-dogs are little better than the wolves :

the burning and plunder of the bazaar at Van, last

winter, was the work, according to the uncontra-

dicted narrative that reached this country, not so
much of Kurds as of Turkish soldiers. Why, it

may be asked, do the Armenians not rise in rebel-

1
Generals Tergukasof and Lazaref are said to be also Armenians.
 ETCHMIADZIN AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE. 325

lion against these outrages, as their forefathers did

against the Seleucids or the Parthians ?

Partly
because they are unarmed, partly because the popu-
lation is thin, with Tatars, Kurds, and Ottomans
scattered among them, but mainly because ages
of slavery have broken the spirit of the nation,
because there is no one to lead them, no means of
combined no such prospect of sympathy or
action,

support from European powers as even the people of

.
Herzegovina or Bulgaria might have looked for. The
same causes, be argued, unfit them for inde-
it will

pendence or self-government. True enough none of ;

the subject races of Turkey is now fit for self-govern-

ment. But the question is not so much whether they
are fit as rather whether any sort of self-govern-

ment, however bad, must not be better than the kind

of tyranny from which they now suffer, and whose
bitterness is in a measure intensified by comparison
with the peace and security enjoyed by their country-
men nnder the rule of Russia. The alternative to
some sort of independence for the Turkish Armenians
is absorption by Russia, who already uses her posi-
tion as sovereign and defender of the Patriarch to
claim a sort of protectorship over the whole Church.
Without being actually discontented, however, the Ar-
menian subjects of Russia are not devoted or zealous
subjects, while those who live under Turkey look on
her j ust as the Bulgarians do. Better the Czar than the
Sultan, is the feeling of both
local
but better any sort of &
;

independence than either Czar or Sultan. Their

^
remote geographical position renders it difficult for
Z 2
326 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

any Western power to help them, and seems even to

have made us comparatively callous to their wrongs,
though why European Slavs should be really any
juster objects ofsympathy than Asiatic Armenians,
itwould be hard to say. For the present, help and
deliverance seem to be far away from the Armenians
of Turkey. But whoever considers their history, and
marks the signs of awakening life they now show,
cannot but believe that better days are in store for
them. A
race that has endured- so stedfastly must
have bone and sinew in it. Whether it will develop a
civilization of its own no one can predict ; but, when
once the dying tyranny that has cursed it is dead,
it may fairly hope, with its industry, frugality, and
quick intelligence, to restore prosperity to countries
which war and oppression have made almost a desert.
 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA. 327

CHAPTER IX.

FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA.

BEFORE taking leave of Armenia, I wish to say a few

words about the Kurds, who dwell scattered among
the other inhabitants through nearly the whole of its
area,and have recently won for themselves a horrible
fame by the massacres which they are using their
service under the Sultan's banner to perpetrate.
They are a remarkable race : indeed, of all that we
saw on our journey, their encampment on Ararat
interested me most. For there
is something very

striking incoming time upon that nomad

for the first

life which still prevails over so large a part of our

globe, and once prevailed even more widely. The

Kurds are only one, though perhaps the most impor-
tant, of a great diversity of wild tribes who occupy
Western Asia, and dwell interspersed among settled

agricultural peoples, through the upper parts of

all

Asia Minor and the border lands of Turkey and Persia.

From Ala Goz, whose pastures mark their northern
limit, their encampments may be occasionally found
as far south as the neighbourhood of Bagdad and

Aleppo a friend tells me he has even seen them

;

among the temples of Baalbec. To

the east they go
as far as Urumia ;
to the west, as Sivas and Kaisariyeh
328 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

in Anatolia. part of this wide area is called

Though a
Kurdistan upon our maps, they are nowhere its sole
inhabitants. Tatars, or Osmanli Turks, or Persians, or
Armenians, always occupy the valleys and towns, while
they cling to the heights, seldom or never taking to
agriculture, but living on the milk and flesh of their

flocks.Their number has been guessed at a million of ;

course there are no means of ascertaining it. In person

they are mostly rather stout and strongly built than tall,
with splendid chests and arms, swarthy complexions,
small deep-set eyes of blue or grey, black hair, and a

large mouth. The women, who are freer and more in-

dependent than those of Persia and Turkey, and are

even said to have separate property, do most of the
work ; robbery is the favourite pursuit of the men,
whose dark faces and glance give them
fierce restless

a menacing appearance that does not belie their

character. Nevertheless, those who know them best
believe them to be a race of great natural gifts, apter
to learn than Tatars and more vigorous in action than
Persians, They are certainly much less fanatical :

indeed, many (not to speak of those Nestorian Chris-

tians who are said to belong to this race, nor of the
Yezidis, or so-called devil worshippers) have the

reputation of being very indifferent Muslims. It is

a proverb among their neighbours that no saint

will ever come out of Kurdistan.
*
In fact, the

During the great Mohammedan fast of Ramazan, when everyone

1

is bound to abstain from all kinds of nourishment or stimulant from

sunrise to sunset, the Kurds allow themselves to smoke in the day-time,

alleging that tobacco was unknown in the Prophet's day, and therefore
cannot have been forbidden by him.
 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA. 329

theology of many consists chiefly in a belief in

Jinn, Peris, and Sheyts (devils). It is not from

religious hatred, but simply in the exercise of their

profession of robbers, that they are the scourge

of the Armenian peasantry, whose villages they often
attack and plunder. Some of those of higher rank
learn Arabic in order to read the Koran they have, I ;

fancy, no literature of their own, except wild songs ;

but their national airs are described as being not only

melodious, but full of a pathetic melancholy. Their
tongue, of which there are many widely diverse dia-
lects, is, so far as I can ascertain, a distinct branch
of the Iranian family, though it has adopted a good

many Persian words so probably there is no basis for

;

the belief that they are a primitive Turanian people,

representing
r those so-called Accadian races with whom
- *
the early Assyrians came in contact, and from whom
Nineveh seems to have learnt its magic and a good
deal of its religion.
The first authentic mention of them seems to be that
which we find in the Anabasis of Xenophon, who de-
scribes the furious resistance offered to the passage

of the Ten Thousand Greeks by the Karduchi of the

Upper about 150 miles south of Ararat. They

Tigris,
were then quite independent of the Great King,
and carried on constant war with their neighbours,
especially the satrap or prince of Armenia. Nor does
it appear that they were ever really subdued by any
succeeding potentate, Macedonian or Parthian, Arab
or Turk. Later writers call them Gordyeni or Kor-
dueni ;
a word which appears also in the Hebrew name
330 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

Qardu for the country north-east of Mosul, referred

to in a preceding chapter. Their name for themselves is
said to be Kart or Kartman. At present they profess
a sort of loose allegiance to the Sultan, but are practi-

tically their own masters, paying little or no tribute,

and divided into small clans, each of which obeys its
own chief. Individually valiant fighters, they have too
little idea of discipline or concerted action to be valu-
able in war ;
and though news comes (June 1877) that
they are gathering to attack the Russian armies in
Armenia, it will be surprising if their alliance proves
of any real service to the Turks. Those who now dwell
in Russian territory, and who number about 10,000,

live pretty peaceably, and occasionally, like our friend

Jaafar, take service with the stranger, just as the

great Saladin, the only world-famous man whom

the Kurdish race has produced, did in the armies
of the Seljukian princes. One likes to fancy that
among the effete races of Asia some future may yet
be in store for these vigorous mountaineers, who have

never bowed to a foreign conqueror.

Of our journey back from Erivan to Tiflis, there is
little to tell that is worth the telling ;
for we were
obliged, having the tarantass as a loan from a friend
at Tiflis, to travel with it along a reasonably good

road, and the only such road was the one we had
come by. Else we should have preferred to cross the
mountains on horseback, by a track which passes
over the skirts of Ala Goz, or to take, going still
farther west, the route through Alexandropol and the

valley of the upper Kur, by which the Russians send

 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA. 33!

most of their troops to operate in Armenia. As it

was, we traversed for the second time the dreary up-
lands that lie north of Erivan and the stern, silent
shores of the Goktcha lake. Only this was gained,
that we were nowable to see something of one of the

prettiest bits of scenery on the whole route I mean ;

the lovely wooded glen which leads from the pass

down to the village of Delijan, and which in coming
we had passed through at night. As this glen is a
famous place for robbers, my experiences there may
be worth mentioning. Descending it in the dusk, I
had walked on alone before the tarantass, and was
taking short cuts from one angle of the winding road
to another, when the vehicle with my companions in
it passed me, and went on ahead, leaving me ten
miles to walk. Night fell before I had got far, and
with night there appeared an unexpected annoyance
in the shape of fierce dogs, which darted out when I

passed a dwelling. Every woodman or peasant keeps

several of these creatures, of a ferocity that has been
famous since the time of Strabo, who says they were
able to pull down a lion. Something of this strength

they have certainly lost in the eighteen centuries

since then, but it was not without difficulty that I
could keep them at bay by volleys of stones. They
can hardly have taken me for a robber, because the
robbers are on excellent terms with the peasantry. I

reached Delijan at last, pretty well exhausted, for I

was suffering from a violent headache, but at any rate

satisfied that the roads of Transcaucasia were safe as
far as human enemies were concerned, since here was
332 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

a solitary traveller on foot, evidently a stranger, pass-

ing unmolested through a solitary wooded glen, whose
reputation for robberies was, as every one after our
This was on Saturday.
arrival told us, specially bad.
What was our surprise to hear on the following Mon-
day forenoon that there had been that morning an
outrageous robbery in this very glen of two Tiflis
merchants, who were seized by a band, and stripped
of everything they possessed. Was it true ? We
could never make out ; but it was reported in all the
Tiflis newspapers, and everybody believed it.

The same Monday night, having driven all day

down the exquisite valley of the Akstafa river, and
over the barren steppe of the Kur, we crossed the
Red Bridge just after sunset, and at the next station
were of course met by the usual tales of brigands.
There had been a band about here lately, and several
travellers had been stopped.
Only yesterday some-
body coming way from
this Tiflis had seen one or two
armed horsemen peering round a hillside, and had
escaped them only by galloping to the station, which
luckily was near. After this, it was urged by the
postmaster, to go on at night would be downright
folly. Such is the perversity of human nature that
the more these stories were told, the less we believed
them and probably we should have disbelieved them
;

altogether could the usual innkeeper's motive have

been discovered. But a Russian postmaster is not
an innkeeper he supplies you with nothing but the
:

indispensable samovar (urn) to boil water for your tea.

We listened to these narratives while consuming tea
 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA. 333

and our last hard-boiled egg ;

and the food, such as it

was, was all our own, for the postmaster had none to
give us. If you lie down on the post-house floor, you
do not pay for the accommodation, but may go on
lying there gratis till he chooses to find horses, which,

of course, he is usually reluctant to do. In this in-

stance he did not pretend that there was a scarcity
of horses, and, as I now on reflection believe, may

really have thought we were running some risk. We

persisted, however, and he eased his mind by sending
a tcJiapar with us as an escort. Next station the
same drama was acted over again. The same stories
reappeared the same advice was even more solemnly
;

tendered. However, it was now near midnight, Tiflis

was only two hours away, and our impatience to rest
in a civilized bed instead of on a post-house floor made

us ready to face dangers more substantial than these

seemed to be. " No," we answered " you may say ;

what you like, but we shall go on to-night shall see

;

us either murdered or in Tiflis. But if it is any satis-

faction to you, or protection to us, give us two or
three tchapars to ride beside the tarantass." To this

the postmaster demurred, and, after beating about

the bush for a good while, at last muttered,
"
are We
more afraid of our own people for you than of the
Tatars." After this there was no more to be said ;

we called for horses, and drove off alone, amid

many first that we would be brought back
warnings,
stripped and wounded, and, secondly, that even if we
escaped the band, some stray marauder would cer-
tainly climb on to the carriage as we entered Tiflis,
334 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

and cut away the portmanteau which was tied be-

hind. Nothing, however, happened, except that once

or twice in the darkness, for it was as black as a wolfs

mouth, with thunderstorms growling in the distance,

we ran into Tatar carts making for the city, and were
nearly capsized. At 2 A.M. we entered Tin is, and
1

took possession of our old quarters there.

Three days spent in the capital, which seemed more
of an oven than ever, made us not unwilling to set
our faces homewards, since appeared that the ex-
it

pedition through Daghestan we had meditated would

occupy a fortnight at least, more time than my friend
could spare. There are but two ways of getting from
Tiflis to Europe, the one that we had followed in

coming, across the Dariel Pass and by railway to the

Sea of Azof, the other by rail to Poti on the Black Sea.
This latter line, opened in 1872, is the only railway
in Transcaucasia ;
and now that Russia has, by going
to war, debarred herself for some time to come from
it is likely long to
projects of internal improvement,
remain so. however, have been
Three other lines,

projected which would mightily open up the country.

One of these is across the mountains from Tiflis to
Vladikavkaz, avoiding the top of the Dariel Pass by
a tunnel a little to the east of the present road. A
second is from Tiflis to the Persian frontier, near

Tavriz, passing through Erivan. This would give a

stimulus to the trade with Persia, and would not be
difficult of construction except in one section, that

over the mountains north of the Goktcha lake. The

third is from Tiflis to Baku on the Caspian. This is
 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA. 335

the necessary completion of the Black Sea line, and

is much the most likely to be carried out, especially as

it over a level country, where bridging the rivers

rurfs

is the only difficulty. It would greatly strengthen

Russia's military position, as well as increase her

Caspian trade, and would indeed leave Persia pretty

much at her mercy. However, Persia is that already ;

if the Russians are foolish enough to wish to annex

in that direction, they may do so when they please.

Desiring to see something of the coast of Asia

Minor, and especially of Batum and Trebizond, we
chose the route by Poti, and on the 22nd of Septem-
ber took our seats in the train for the Black Sea.
There is but one in the day, which leaves at 9.30 A.M.,
and is due at Poti about 1 1 the distance being
P.M.,

191 miles. The station at Tiflis lies a good bit out of

the town, beyond the German colony, but the houses
are creeping out towards it. There may have been,
besides soldiers, some forty passengers, few of whom,
however, were going through. Running up the valley
of the Kur, we soon passed Mtzkhet, the ancient

capital of Georgia, with its ruins scattered over the

promontory between the Kur and the Aragva, in the
midst of which rise two stately old churches, one of
them the patriarchal cathedral of old Georgia. For
Mtzkhet is admittedly the oldest city in the country.
It was founded by Mtzkhetos, son of Karthlos, the

eponymous hero of the Georgian race, who was fourth

in descent from Noah through Japhet, Gomer, and

Thogarmah, and brother of Haik, the ancestor of the

Armenians. The Georgian annals present a long
336 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

string of monarchs from these patriarchs downwards,

which after all are just as authentic as George
Buchanan's early kings of Scotland, or the dynasties
of the Odin-descended Ynglings in Scandinavia, or
most noble pedigrees in our own country. Anyhow,
whether Mtzkhet is really the oldest city in the world
or not, it is a place of vast antiquity, having unques-
tionably existed long before Tiflis, which sprang up in
the fourth century A.D., was heard of. Tradition fixes
it as the spot where Karthlos was buried, where stood

a great image of Ormazd, whose worship had been

introduced from Persia, and where St. Nina, whose
cross of vine sticks was long preserved in the cathedral,
converted the Iberian king and people to Christianity.
In the cliff of soft rock which borders the river, innu-
merable caves have been hollowed out, evidently by
hand, and were probably inhabited before any build-
ings rose on the flat above. Similar rock-dwellings

appear at intervals all the way up the valley of the

Kur, not mere scattered hermits' nests, but mostly
crowded together to form a sort of troglodyte village.
Above Mtzkhet the railway, keeping along the
southern bank of the river, enters a long defile be-
tween hills, which are sometimes wooded to their base,
sometimes descend to the narrow bottom of the valley
in precipices from forty to one hundred feet high.

The scenery is pretty without being grand. What

most strikes one is the great strength of the gorge
in a military point of view. Fearing no enemy here,
the Russians have not thought it worth their while to

fortify, but even a small force could hold a much

 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA. 337

larger one in check in this valley, which effectually

separates the upper basin of the Kur from the low-
lands stretching from Tiflis to the Caspian. After a

good rrfany miles of this narrow glen, the hills recede

a little, and the town of Gori appears lying in a small

plain at the foot of a castellated rock, where a broad

shallow stream comes down from the Caucasus to

mingle sparkling waters with the muddy Kur.

its

Here, a little before one o'clock, we left the train,

meaning to catch the corresponding one next day,
drove into the town which is half a mile away, found
quarters at a humble inn lately set up by an Armenian,
and after a while went round to present ourselves to
the German apothecary, Mr. Schoff, to whom, as the

representative of learning and culture in the place,

we had brought a letter of introduction from Tiflis.

Much we found not only the Herr

to our pleasure,
"
Apotheker himself, who belonged to one of the colo-
"
nial families of Tiflis, but a hearty welcome from his

wife, a Franco-German lady, who spoke excellent

English. Mr. Schoff led us through the modest
bazaar to visit the one sight of Gori, its castle perched
on a rock that rises abruptly out of a plain so flat

that you cannot help supposing it to have been a lake

bed, drained off when the ravine through which the

Kur forces its downward way was formed. From the
top of the rock, nearly 200 feet above this plain, there
is a magnificent view over the Caucasus to the north,

most of the great peaks between Elbruz and Kazbek

being visible. We, however, were in ill-luck here,
as we had been at Pjatigorsk, on the other side of
338 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

the chain. There was, as there often is in this

blowing from the west, but
valley, a violent gale
the mountains were covered with such thick low-

lying clouds that the snows could not be seen, only

a long line of forest-covered heights. The position is
so strong and commanding that a fortress may well
be believed to have existed here from the remotest
times ;
but it is impossible to say what date ought
to be ascribed to the existing walls. In the midst of
them stands a small and very ancient church, now
used as a powder magazine by the Russian garrison.
The natives call it the Golden Hill, saying that here
the emperor Heraclius kept his treasures in the great
war he waged with Persia.
The town below is a poor place, with a bazaar con-

sisting of two or three arcades, and but slight traces

of its former greatness in several old churches, one of
which shows a sacred picture presented by Justinian.
Its population, which is under 4OCX), consists mainly

of Armenians, who abound in the country places as

well as in the towns all up this part of the Kur valley,
and keep themselves distinct from the Georgians.
The climate is much cooler than that of Tiflis, and
the environs prettier, so that people have often

regretted that Gori was not made the capital of

Transcaucasia when the Russians crossed the moun-
tains, especially as Tiflis had been shortly before
reduced to ruins by the Persian invaders of 1795.
Now that so many public buildings have been erected
at Tiflis, it is too late to make a change.
The evening was pleasantly spent in discourse with
 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA. 339

our host and his wife. He was evidently one of the

chief people in the town, having been appointed to his

place of state apothecary by the government, which,

I suppose, considers the supply of medicines a matter

of public interest and he possessed a good know-

;

ledge of natural history. At 6.30 A.M. next morning

we started in his company for the place we had halted
at Gori to see, the Petra of the Caucasus, the rock-city
of Uphlis Tzikhe. It lies about five miles off to the

east-south-east, a distance which it took our vehicle

nearly two hours to traverse, so rough was the track

along the hillside. This telega was the most primi-

tive form of cart we had met with, consisting of a

simple board upon wheels, with neither sides nor

flat

seats. We sat on the edge, letting our legs dangle

over, an arrangement which had the advantage of
enabling us to drop off readily when the way became
more than usually hilly or rocky. Except for the
name of the thing, we should have gone faster on
our own legs, and the air was so fresh up here that
the morning sun need not have harmed us. However,
gentility before everything is the rule in the Caucasus
as elsewhere, even when
gentility consists in riding
in a cart. Much of the land in this valley seems to
be left untilled ;
what we crossed was mostly open
brown steppe, like that of the hills round Tiflis, on
which the withered stems of the weeds that cover it

were rattling in the wind. There was not a house the

whole way till we came to a tiny cluster of huts, sur-
rounding a rude old church, above which, to the east,
rose a ridge of broken crags running down towards
2 A
34O TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

the Kur, which flowed along the valley to the south.

He.re the Armenian priest of the place, living in a

slightly superior hut, which boasted two rooms and

a picture of the Virgin, received us, and gave us, as

guides, his assistant and the head of the village, an

intelligent old peasant. They led us up the face of
the crags by a steep winding path, partly built up
of stones, partly cut out of the cliff, to the top, where
we found ourselves suddenly in the midst of the city,
a city with streets, palaces, shops, private houses, all
hewn in the solid rock without a fragment of masonry
or a piece of timber anywhere through it. The sloping
side of a hill, or what might rather be called a broad

tongue of rocks projecting from the ridge behind,

and descending southwards towards the Kur pretty
steeply (though much less steeply than the western
face of this tongue up which we had climbed), has
been honeycombed with grottoes large and small,
some mere holes, like those in the cliffs at
Mtzkhet,
but many of them regular
houses, with large and
handsome chambers, and smaller rooms opening off
these. Two in particular struck me, not more by their
size than by their architectural style and the finish of
their ornament. One was a hall 28 feet long by
26 feet wide, and about 20 feet high, in the centre of

which there had stood two columns, the ornamental

bases of which, and a piece at the top adhering to the

ceiling, were all that remained, the middle part having

been broken away. Along the ceiling, both here and
in several other dwellings, there run beams of stone,
that is to say, the rock has been carved into the shape
 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA.' 341

of beams, obviously for ornament, and in imitation of

the beams of a wooden house. These beams are
crossed at right angles by rafters hewn in the rock,
the workmanship very fine and true, though simple.
This apartment is open in front towards the east at :

the back a short flight of steps leads up to a sort of

gallery under three arches, from one end of which

there a passage into two smaller rooms of equal
is

height, with windows looking down the western cliff.

The other house, which faces to the south, com-
manding a noble view of the Kur valley, is somewhat
smaller than the last, and about 20 feet high its :

ceiling is vaulted into a dome, and adorned with deep

octagonal mouldings, not unlike those of the Pantheon
at Rome, while the arch which forms the entrance is
surmounted by a pointed gable, running back to the
solid rock behind. Between the top lines of this
gable front and the arch there were pilastres hewn
and other bits of ornament, which the weather has
.

destroyed. There was nothing to indicate how the

front of these chambers was closed, whether by long
wooden doors, or by walls of rock or of loose stone,
which may have been since destroyed. These two are
only the largest and most perfect out of a mass of
dwellings, standing close to one another all over the
slope, the roofs of the lower forming the streets in

front of the higher, just as in the modern Georgian

and Osset villages which one sees built on the steep
declivity of a hill. Channels to carry off the rain

water run along the streets or beside the flights of

steps which connect a lower street with one above
2 A 2
 342 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

it. About halfway down the hillside one finds a

long, winding, subterranean passage cut through the
rock, which leads down to the river flowing at the
bottom, and which was no doubt so constructed for
the sake of defence. By it the inhabitants could
supply themselves with water from the river, while
in time of war it might be closed, or at least defended

more easily than an open way. Steps were cut all

the way down but in many places they
this tunnel,

have disappeared. This was the only approach from

below, as the path we climbed by on the west side
of the cliff is quite modern. On that side the place
presented escarpments which made attack impossible ;

it was probably protected by walls on the north and

east. The a comparatively recent sandstone,
rock is

whose strata dip to the south (i.e. away from the

Caucasian axis) at an angle of about 20 degrees. It
ismostly fine-grained, but occasionally coarse, passing
into a kind of conglomerate with pebbles of quartz
imbedded.
The not large, covering, perhaps, only some
city is

six or eight acres of ground, but every part of its

area is covered with these dwellings, nor is there one
of them, except a small brick church, which shews

any trace of masonry. The church is, therefore,

probably later date than the other edifices, though
in

it is obviously very ancient and this favours the idea

;

that the city itself must be assigned to pre-Christian

times, that is to say, to some time before the fourth

century of our era, when the Georgian kings embraced
Christianity. So far as I know, there is
absolutely
 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLAC

nothing else on which a conjecture asiJtS^

be based. The Georgian annals ascribev^ts. :

to a mythical king Uphlos (uphlos

"
Georgian, and tzik/u? fortress "), who was the son
of Mtzkhetos, the son of Karthlos, the eponymous

patriarch of the Georgian nation ;

and then, making a
leap, they tell us that it was a fortress of note in the

third century B.C., when they bring Alexander the

Great into these countries.
1
The resemblance which
the style of decoration bears to that of Georgian and
Armenian buildings of the tenth and succeeding
centuries would lead one to believe that it belonged
to that time, when Georgia was a tolerably civilized

country, rather than to the savage ages, when men

dwelt in caves like those in the cliff at Mtzkhet, or
like the rude grottoes which line the banks of the
Upper Kur at Vardsi, on the borders of Armenia.'
2

The absence of a church might be explained by

supposing that in some of the numerous invasions
which have wasted this country it has been destroyed,
as many of the edifices of Uphlis Tzikhe certainly
1
I need hardly say that Alexander never was here ; the only Cau-
casus he saw was the so-called Indian Caucasus or Hindoo Koosh of
Afghanistan, which is
supposed to have been then called Caucasus by
his flatterers, wishing to parallel his exploits with those of Hercules,
who went to the Caucasus to liberate Prometheus.
2
One of these grottoes at Vardsi is a chapel, adorned with rude
frescoes, and attributed to Queen Tamara ; but of course it may be
later than the other caves, which were probably used in her time by
hermits as a sort of rock monastery like those of the Thebaid. In
Russian Armenia, among the mountains east of Erivan, there are some
remarkable little churches and tombs hewn in the rock. Probably the
habit of constructing grottoes was a general one in these countries,

clung to even when a knowledge of architecture was considerably

advanced.
344 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

have. One thing is at least clear. The people who

lived here were no mere brutish troglodytes, but a
cultivated race, with an appreciation of architectural
beauty, and workmen capable of executing fine
designs with truth and grace. They were evidently
familiar with large wooden houses witness the beams
in the ceilings with the column, and even with the
arch. Was then fashion, or adherence to ancient
it

custom, or the needs of defence, that led them to

create a city of caves like this not in a woodless
;

land such as that which lies round Idumaean Petra,

but within sight of the sumptuous forests of the
Caucasus ?
Returning to Gori, we took the mid-day train, the
same which had brought us from Tiflis yesterday, for
the west. We had very nearly missed it, for the
ticket for the luggage we had left at the station had
been lostand we were obliged to find an interpreter,
;

and through him make a piteous appeal to the rail-

way officials to let us have the goods despite the want
of the ticket. Such an appeal would have failed in
France or Germany but with these good-natured
;

people it ultimately succeeded, and they even kept

the train, the one train of the day, full of officers and

troops, waiting for fifteen minutes while this diffi-

culty of ours was adjusted ;

an instance of indulgence
to unpopular England which a little surprised us.
The line follows the Kur through an open, bare,
flat-bottomed valley up to a place where a road runs
off southward to Borjom, the summer residence of the

Grand Duke, and most fashionable of all the Cauca-

 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA. 345

sian hill-stations. Up beyond it, on the way to

"
Armenia, the government has planted another odd
lot" of Russian Dissenters, somewhat similar to our
Molokan friends, called the Duchobortz. Here a
large part of the passengers, and most of the soldiers,
left the train, and here, unhappily, rain came on,
which destroyed our chance of seeing the snowy
range to the north. A
little farther, about three o'clock,

we reached Suram, an ancient town with an ancient

castle, standing at the foot of the ridge which divides

the basin of the Kur, whose waters seek the Caspian,
from those of the Rion flowing towards the Black Sea.
It connects the Caucasus on the north with the great

mountain system of Taurus and Armenia to the

south. As has been remarked in an earlier chapter,
this ridgehas also a great meteorological importance,
for on the one side it obstructs the cold dry winds

from the inner continent of Asia, and on the other

side arrests the rain clouds coming up from the
Black Sea, thus increasing the warmth and humidity
of Imeritia and Mingrelia on its western side, while
it leaves to Georgia and the steppes towards the

Caspian an arid soil and a climate of extremes,

hotter in summer than the Euxine coast, and far

colder in winter. This ridge was the great difficulty

encountered by the Poti-Tiflis railroad. The English
engineers who made the line proposed to tunnel
through it, but the Russians shrank from the cost,

and characteristically preferred the plan of carrying

the line over the top, which is likely to involve far
more expense in the long run. Every year the
346 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

winter snows and spring storms do mischief which

interrupts the traffic and requires large repairs ;

while the risk of a mishap on the steep incline was

declared by the engineers themselves to be serious.
This incline is one of the steepest, if not the steepest

(excluding, of course, the Rigi line), in the Old

World : I in 20. The train is pulled up by a Fairlie

engine, of course at a slow pace, and descends

also very slowly and cautiously. No bad accident
has happened yet I suppose more people are killed
;

at Preston station, which is generally accounted the

worst in England, in a month than on the Trans-
caucasian railway in a year.
This ridge, though of so much consequence both in
a climatic and an engineering point of view, is not

very high, not 1000 feet above the village of Suram,

and only 3600 feet above the sea. Its upper part is
covered with beech woods, which are especially tall and
luxuriant on the western side, where the railway de-
scends with terrific steepness into the deep valleys of
Imeritia. Nothing can be more beautiful, or less like
the scenery round than the long, narrow, winding
Tiflis,

glens, hemmed in by bold cliffs of sandstone and lime-

stone, through which the line finds its way, crossing and
recrossing the foaming stream, to the wider vale of the
Kvirilla, the principal affluent of the Rion or Phasis.
Ruined castles stand out upon nodding crags, which
are draped with wood and tufts of luxuriant fern,
while up the gorges one has glimpses of forest-covered
mountains rising behind, and now and then a snowy
peak appearing far to the north. It is a country
 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA. 347

apparently so difficult for military operations that one

is at a loss to understand how so many armies should

have marched through it, to and fro, from the days of

Pompey downwards. At Kvirilla station you come out
upon a rich undulating plain, where the wretched log
huts of the peasantry are hardly discernible through
the tall maize and sumptuous vines that climb among
the fruit trees. Here, unhappily, we lost the daylight,
for it was now seven o'clock, and lost also the
company
of a young Englishwoman, whose conversation had en-
livened the journey since the station beyond Suram,
on the other side of the pass. She was the wife of an
English superintendent of rolling stock, who, with two
other Englishmen, was the last left out of the host of
our countrymen who had been employed upon the

making and working of the railway. Most of them

had perished by the fevers of the deadly plain we
were entering, to which their intemperate habits made
them easy victims. The rest had returned to England,
having saved but little, as she told us, out of the high

pay they received.She was a Clitheroe woman, with

a strong Lancashire accent, which sounded pleasant
in this strange land a sensible, vigorous person, whose
;

nai've account of the life she led among these Russians,

Armenians, and Georgians, her contempt for their

superstitions, her repulsion from the Russian ten-

dency to spend what they make in a little temporary
display, or to
gamble away, her exhortations to her
it

husband to make the most, by thrift and sobriety, of

the risks whith he was running in this climate ex-
hortations which, I believe, the worthy man followed
348 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

gave a pleasant picture of a hearty English character

retaining its practical sense and domestic instincts
under depressing conditions.
We saw no more of the country, and should have
seen little even by day, for the clouds had settled
down with a drenching rain which beat against the

carriage windows. The air grew foul and heavy as

we entered, about 10 P.M., the great dismal swamp
which extends twenty-five miles up the course of the
Rion from the sea. We tried to read, but were too
stupid to keep awake, and fell into a slumber broken
by hideous dreams. About midnight the lagging
train crawled at last into the terminus at Poti, and
we drove, under the blackest night I can remember,
across the wooden bridge, through seas of mud, to the
miserable inn of the most miserable town that ever
a traveller was condemned to halt in. Better a

hungry bivouac under the snows of Ararat than those

dank bed-rooms and clammy sheets, heavy with such
a smell of putrid slime that one feared to lift the
frowsy carpet and find beneath it a bottomless abyss
of foulness. We comforted ourselves with the thought
that was only for a night, though, to be sure, one
it

night would be enough to give the fever, which he who

sleeps in Poti seldom escapes, and that next day we
should be heaving on those billows of the Euxine
whose hoarse roar upon the strand sounded above the
lashing rain.
Alas for next morning and those roaring billows !

The first news that greeted us was that, with such a

surf breaking on the sands, it would be impossible for
 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA. 349

the steamer that lay in the river to cross the

little

shallow bar, so that we were prisoners here till the sea

fell, and perhaps for a fortnight. For the steamers
which run from Poti to Constantinople and Odessa
leave only once a week, and, as they can neither
enter the so-called harbour of Poti nor wait outside
in the open sea, are forced to lie, the one at Batum,

thirty miles to the south, the other at Sukhum Kaleh,

twice as far to the north, whither passengers are

conveyed by tenders drawing only four feet of water.

Each steamer gives thirty-six hours of grace, and, if

the tender does not appear by that time, sails on

her watery way, leaving the luckless passengers to
sicken of fever at Poti before the next one comes.
This was cheering. But there was no mistake about
the facts. We walked to a point on the artificially
raised bank of the river, the only elevated spot in
Poti, which is so flat that you literally cannot see
where you are, and watched the lordly breakers
foaming on the beach half a mile off. We saw the
tender lying in the stream, without even a fire in her
furnace, and were told by the captain that he could
not think of trying the bar. We
asked every French-
or German-speaking creature we could find whether
there was anything that could be done, and were
told that nothing could be done except to wait, and
that at this time of year, when the weather once

broke, it usually continued to blow and rain for days,

possibly weeks, together, so that it was likely enough
that we might not get out to even the next following

steamer, which was due a week from now. We watched

350 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

the wind swaying the tops of the melancholy poplars,

and vainly tried to persuade ourselves that it was
going down. We enquired whether a smack could
not be hired to carry us to Batum or Trebizond, but
it was agreed that no smack would venture out. Be-
sides, there were none. We thought of getting horses
to ride along the coast to Batum that very coast
where the Russian troops have lately been checked in
several bloody fights by the Turks but it turned out
that there was no road across the frontier, only hills
and pathless swamps. So at last we settled down to
the conclusion that, the bar continued impracticable
if

to-morrow, there was nothing for it but to retrace our

steps to and go home over the Dariel Pass, and
Tiflis,

by railway from Vladikavkaz to Odessa, a circuit of

about eleven hundred miles. This seemed too absurd
to be true ;
but those to whom we turned for advice
agreed that it was the only alternative. Having at

last, then, reached a conclusion, and seeing that there

was nothing for British energy to do, we thought of
Mark Tapley in the swamps of Eden, which must have
been rather like Poti, only pleasanter, and set ourselves

to see the sights of the place.

Sights, however, there were none. There is a

wretched sort of market, consisting of some booths set
down in an ocean of mud, where ill-flavoured grapes
and rotting plums are exposed for sale among
crockery and hardware even coarser than one gene-
rally finds in Russia. Some languid Mingrelians were
lounging about, but nobody seemed to have anything
to do nothing, except a little fruit, was bought or
;
 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA. 351

sold. Every street, if these roads with wooden shan-

ties placed here and there along them could be called
streets, was as wretched as the last, and when the

squalls of rain drove us into the inn again, even its

bare walls and empty rooms seemed better than the

melancholy folk who are so thoroughly in harmony

with their dwelling-place. My friend, who is as near

perfection as a human creature can be, has but one

fault. He
a determined optimist, and has many a
is

time disheartened his companions by attempts to put

the best face on things when there was no good face
to be put on them. But Poti was too much for him.
We both relapsed into a moody silence, and not a
word more was said about the bar.
The river, white with the mud of Caucasian glaciers,
is as wide as the Thames at Kingston, with, of course,
far more water, but somewhat sluggish for the last

thirty or forty miles of course through the flats. It

its

used to fall into the sea south of the site of the present

town, at a place where there is still a big lagoon called

Palaeostom (old mouth), whose borders are said to be,

if possible, more pestilential than the town itself. An
ingenious friend of mine who has been at Poti insists
1
that the Dragon in the Argonautic tale symbolizes
the poisonous marshes of the neighbourhood, and that

Jason was really a skilful Greek engineer who drained

them, and whom King Aeetes, like many Oriental
princes since his day, refused to pay for the work, so

very common legend of the dragon who

1
It certainly is true that this
infests theneighbourhood of a city, and is killed by a young hero, is
generally found in places where there are swamps which formerly bred
disease.
352 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

that he was obliged to pay himself and decamp

with his navvies. If this be so, I can only say that

things are ripe for another Jason.

The houses are one-storied and nearly all of wood.
Ponds have established themselves in permanence
along the sides of the streets and roads, soaking
through from the river, which is above their level ;
in

fact, the town stands in water and out of water ;

marshes around it for many miles each way, and west

winds bestowing upon it 62 inches of rain in the
year. It is the paradise of frogs, whose croak is
heard all day and all night and wild boars find ;

themselves at home swamps, where they are

in the

rarely disturbed. In such an atmosphere, everything

falls to pieces perhaps not so wonderful that
;
so it is

in this town, which has been a town ever since the

time when Medea eloped from it with Jason, where

the Greeks trafficked with the Colchian kings, and
the Romans had a fortress (called Phasis, whence the
name Poti), and the Genoese a factory, there should
be now only one relic of antiquity, the ruined gate of a
Turkish fort captured and dismantled by the Russians
in 1829. Up till that time, though the Czar had been
established in Imeritia since iSio, 1 the Mingrelian
coast had been retained by Turkey, who, however,
made no use of
except for the purposes of the brisk
it

slave trade she kept up with the Abhasians and the

Tcherkesses.
We returned more dejected than ever from our
1
AnImeritian king ceded his realm to Russia in 1804 ; subsequently
one of his family rebelled ; the revolt was suppressed and the country
finally occupied in 1810.
 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA. 353

ramble along the melancholy banks of the Phasis.

Some little comfort, however, was at hand. All the

great moralists are agreed in holding that the highest

pleasure is to be found in doing good to others. Weil,
a thrill of this pleasure was ours when, on going to
the house of the British vice-consul, we found there
a young Englishman, left alone to represent a com-
mercial house and protect British interests, to whom
the sight of two fellow-countrymen was evidently as

great a joy as his exhausted frame could support. He

had had the fever so often as to have lost count of the
times, and was reduced by the general dismalness and
monotony of Poti to that state of reckless indiffer-
ence which the articles of the Church of England call
wretchlessness. Nothing to do, for trade was languid,
nowhere to go to, not a soul to speak to, except a
Russian police officer. If our detention in Poti had

the effect of brightening one day in this melancholy

life, then, we felt, we had come to Poti not wholly in

vain. He was a pleasant, hospitable fellow, and we

spent the rest of the afternoon with him, listening to

his accounts of the Mingrelians and Russians, and the

doing business in a country where you

difficulty of
could not trust any one's word, nor get a stroke of
work done when your back was turned. On his floor
we found a whole sheaf of lately arrived English news-

papers, among them the reports of the September in-

dignation meetings, which were then at their height,
and of which, of course, we had not heard a word ;

before. The last Times contained Mr. Gladstone's

speech to a mass meeting at Greenwich ;
what a vivid
354 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

impression of the life and movement of the West it gave

after the unspeakable stagnancy of these countries.
Business is never very brisk at Poti, our young
friend told us, because the Russian tariff strangles

import trade, while as for exports they are chiefly

ornamental woods, some dye stuffs, and a little silk
and grain the uncertainty whether a contract to
deliver goods will be fulfilled at the time fixed, or
rather the certainty that it will not, constitutes a
serious difficulty. It is also always uncertain how

long your goods may have to lie before they can be

shipped ;
no vessel
for drawing more than four feet of
water can cross the bar, and the anchorage is very
bad outside. There though some futile
is no port,

attempts have been made to erect a pier and break-

water on the north, or opposite, side of the river there ;

is only the stream itself with this fatal bar. Every-

body now agrees that the Russian government ought
not to have made Poti the terminus of the Black Sea

railway, but rather Sukhum Kaleh, at the foot of the

Caucasus, eighty miles off, where there is a fair road-
stead. Everybody throws the blame of the mistake
on somebody else, and accusations of corruption are
freely bandied about. All the evil comes from an

unlucky mistake that was made after the treaty of

Adrianople was drawn up in 1829. Russia insisted
on, and Turkey yielded, the cession of her territory as
far as the riverTchorok (the ancient Acampsis), which
falls into the sea a little to the west of Batum. But
when the treaty had been drawn up and signed, and
the ratifications exchanged, it was discovered that the
 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA. 355

name actually written in it was not Tchorok, but

Tcholok ;
the Tcholok being a small river on this, the
north-east, side of Batum. Thus Batum was left to
Turkey, and Russia lost the much desired and indeed

indispensable outlet for the trade of her Transcau-

casian provinces. Had such an error happened in a
contract between two private persons in England,
the Court of Chancery would, upon sufficient proof
of the intention of the parties, have ordered the
deed to be reformed. But happening between nations,
there was no remedy ;
and Russia had to make
the best of the seabord that was left to her. In the
interests of the world as much as her own, it is to
be hoped she may now acquire Batum. The Turks,
of course, make no use of it, and she may.
However, Russia's loss was Poti's gain. The place
rose from being a mere cluster of huts under the
Turkish fort to a town of five or six thousand people,
mostly Mingrelians, but with an admixture of Arme-
nians, Turks (i.e. natives of the Ottoman empire),
Gurians from the neighbouring mountains, and Rus-
sians. I doubt if it will grow much more, for nothing

will ever be made of the attempted port, since the

waves carry away the breakwater as fast as it is
built, and the Mingrelians of the plain are incurably

sluggish. Gifted by nature with splendid frames" and

a wonderfully rich country, they live in a state of
wretchedness and ignorance that passes that of any of
their Christian or Mohammedan neighbours, except,
perhaps, the Abhasians. It seemed odd to have come
"
Phasidos ad fluctus et fines Aectacos" and to find
2 B
356 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

nothing but poverty where the oldest traditions place

a treasure-house of riches the Colchis of King Aee'tes
and the Golden Fleece, the spot where lay the isle of
1
Aee'tes' sister, the luxurious enchantress Circe. But
these countries have been singularly unfortunate in
their history. They have been battled for by hostile
empires, none of which was strong enough to retain
them and they have, ever since the fall of the Genoese
;

Black Sea trade, lain out of the track of commerce

and Mingrelia here belonged partly to
civilization.

the all-benumbing Turks, partly to a dynasty of local

princes Dadian, owning allegiance first to

called

Turkey, then to Russia, who kept the peasantry in

the most abject serfage. With their emancipation by
the present Czar in 1866 a better day has dawned
on them though the only use they seem so far to
;

have made of their liberty has been to break out in

agrarian riots, which had been quelled just before our
2
visit.

Next morning brought- a sudden change in the

weather. The sky was perfectly clear, the strong sun
was raising a cloud of steam from the wet soil through
the still chilly air, and on rushing up to the river bank
to see whether there were signs of movement on the

steamer, we were astonished to discover both to north

1
Mr. Gladstone has shewn in the chapters on Homeric geography
of his Homer and the Homeric Age that the Aeaean isle is probably
' '

conceived of by the poet as lying in the extreme east rather than in the
west.
2
The imagination of Constantinople had turned these riots into a
general insurrection of the Caucasian tribes, which was duly telegraphed
to Vienna, and figured in the English papers toward the beginning of

August 1876.
 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA. 357

and south long lines of snowy mountains. There had

been a heavy snow-fall in the storm of the
last two

days, and not only the whole chain of the Caucasus

to the north down to a height of 7000 feet, but the
mountains of Guria and Lazistan, on the borders of
Turkey, were covered with a thick white mantle.
Already on the bank at which the steamer lay there
was no wharf, only the clay bank a crowd of in-
tending passengers had encamped, who turned out
to be Turkman and Persian pilgrims to Mecca, who
were journeying thither by way of Constantinople
and the Red Sea. Having nowhere else to stay,
they had squatted down here beside the little vessel,
so that there might be no risk of her escaping them.
Pictures of patience they looked, each with his carpet
bundle beside him, immovable as Egyptian gods, and
with no more expression on their faces.
There was, unhappily, much more risk that the
steamer would not escape, at all. Though the wind
had fallen, the sea was still high on the bar. We
questioned the captain, but he looked at the great
breakers coming in with a steady roll you can just
see them from the town over the bushes that line
the river and shook his head more solemnly every
time he looked. We packed up, breakfasted, and had
everything conveyed on board, with a sort of vague
notion that we should thereby add to the chances of
a start. At they promised to try at ten o'clock
first ;

then, when ten o'clock came, at noon. Noon came,

the hour of departure was postponed till one one ;

arrived, and though everybody was now on board,

2 B 2
358 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

the captain hesitated still. As it was admitted that

the large steamer for Constantinople, which was wait-

ing for us at Batum, would wait no longer than eight

o'clock that night, things looked serious, and we began

again to enquire about the trains back to Tiflis. Per-

haps the tender would have never got away, had

there not been another tender in the same plight,
that one, namely, which had to carry the passengers
for Odessa to Sukhum Kaleh, where the Odessa
steamer lay awaiting them. Her more daring skipper
got up his steam, and soon after one o'clock dropped
down the river to try the bar. Then we took heart
of grace and followed, our decks crowded fore and aft
with the pilgrim throng. The Odessa boat plunged
in among the breakers, and in ten minutes was safe

through, rising and falling on the long rollers of the

smooth open sea as she turned her prow to the north,
and steamed away to the Caucasian coast. With this

encouragement, we paused, collected our strength, and

made a rush at the bar. The water certainly was
very shallow, so shallow that one could make out the
sandbanks under the fretting foam that broke over
them, but by good luck we hit the right channel, and
almost before we had ceased to hold our breath, the
foam was behind us, and the bright blue sea all round.
Of Poti, whose houses are not as high as the low trees
that fringe the shore and the stream, we no longer
saw anything except the lighthouse, and heartily
hoped we should never see it again. The conduct
of Medea might have been more leniently judged
if her critics had known what sort of a place it
 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA. 359

was she escaped from. A less attractive hero than

Jason would have done to tempt a lady away from
such a den. But the countless bards who have sung
of the Argonauts do not seem to have been strong
in local knowledge. From Apollonius Rhodius to
Mr. William Morris, nobody says anything about the
bar at the Phasis mouth, though it must have given a
vessel so large as the Argo some trouble to cross it
at short notice, when Medea came on board by moon-
light. To be sure, she was a sorceress, and may
have known how to lay the breakers or deepen the
channel.
Soon after the war between Russia and Turkey
broke out, a telegram reached this country which
caused the liveliest joy to all who have ever been at
Poti, a telegram stating that the town had been com-

pletely destroyed by the Turkish ironclads. Like

other telegrams from Turkish sources, however, this
one turned out to be in excess of the truth. Two
ironclads had appeared off Poti, and no doubt might

easily have destroyed it, had they come near enough.

But the water was, or they thought it was, too shallow
to let them do so, and it is doubtful if any of their
shot reached the town. However, the inhabitants fled

in a panic, so Poti now remains in the possession of

its frogs only, who may very likely have ensconced

themselves in the deserted houses. Long may they
retain it.

From the deck of the steamer this wonderfully bright

evening we enjoyed what was the finest panorama
of mountains that either of us had ever seen. Ail
360 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

along the north and north-west horizon, the Caucasus

was visible through an arc of 250 miles from the
neighbourhood of Suram, till it sank beneath the sea
far beyond Sukhum and Pitzunda, a line of innumer-

able snowy peaks that stood glittering against the

clear sky, each perfectly distinct at this vast distance.
In the extreme east there was a gap, where the ridge
of Suram lies, for it is not high enough to be visible
one hundred miles off ;
and thence, from east-south-
east to south-west, the eye travelled along the bold
and rugged ranges that lie south of Imeritia and Min-

grelia, lower indeed than their northern rivals, but

deeply snowed in parts, and reaching 9000 or 10,000
feet above the sea. Highest and boldest among these
rose the serrated group of Lazistan, between Batum
and Trebizond, descending with splendid steepness
into the deep waters. In front of this majestic amphi-
theatre of mountains lay a stretch of low and wooded

land, with a whitesandy beach surrounding the eastern-

most bay of the Euxine, whose coast can be traced
trending off on either hand, to north-west and south-
west, in a magnificent sweep. Just behind Poti the
marshy plain stretched far inland ;
but farther south,
near the boundary line of the two empires, the
hills come down to the shore, and we saw that very
piece of rocky woody ground where the strongly

posted Turks have lately repulsed several Russian

attempts to advance upon Batum. Imagine this vast
landscape bathed in that marvellously clear, still,
luminous air which in these countries succeeds a storm,
the glassy waters round the vessel heaving softly as
 FROM ERIVAN TO THE BLACK SEA. 361

they reflected the delicious hues of evening, the line of

snows that encircles two-thirds of the horizon gleam-
ing with rose and violet against the last rays of the
level sun historic cities set like gems round the
;

ample bay from Trebizond in the south-west to the

famous Greek* shrine of Pitzunda on the north, and
you have a picture to which the v/hole Euxine and
Mediterranean can scarcely supply an equal. It is the
end of the great line of inland seas that stretches from
here to the Straits of Gibraltar, a noble limit to the
farthest voyages of the ancient world.
362 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

CHAPTER X.

FROM POTI TO CONSTANTINOPLE BY THE

BLACK SEA.

IT is little more than thirty-five miles from Poti to

Batum but our vessel was so slow and heavily laden
;

that was nearly dark when we entered the bay of

it

Batum, and slipped under the side of the larger

steamer, formerly a man-of-war, but now belonging to
the Russian Steam Navigation Company, which was
to carry us to Constantinople. There is no proper
harbour only a semicircular
; bay formed by a pro-
montory which runs out sufficiently to protect the
anchorage ground from westerly winds. Towards the
north and north-east there is, therefore, no shelter,
and when a gale rises from that quarter, ships have
to run out to sea. Nevertheless, Batum is the best

port along the whole south-eastern coast of the Euxine,

and has been a place of some note from the earliest
times. The Greeks called it f3,d6v<$ \i^v (the deep
haven), whence the modern name. At present, how-
ever, it has but little trade : the town is small, and I
saw but few vessels lying off it. There is no cart-road
either inland or along the shore into Mingrelia, so that
neither exports nor imports need be expected. In
the hands of the Turks it is useless, while, if the Rus-
sians acquire it, they will make it the terminus of the
 FROM POTI TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 363

railway to Tiflis, and the outlet for all the Transcau-

casian trade. Its transfer to them would, therefore,

be really a gain to the world at large as well as to the

conquerors, and whatever results the present war may
have, it is difficult, especially when one has just come
from Poti, not to hope that such a transfer may be one
of them. The ground rises steeply behind towards the

mountains, which cannot be less than 8000 feet in

height, thickly wooded below, rugged and rocky above ;

in fact, a most difficult piece of country for an army to

1
operate upon. These hills run
along the coast, rising
all

farther west to a height of nearly 10,000 feet, and the

Tchorok, a strong and rapid stream, seems to come

down through them a deep valley. I suppose it
in

must be in the delta at its mouth, to the west of the

promontory whereon the town stands, that the fevers
which infest Batum are bred. All this coast suffers
from these intermittent fevers or agues, wherever there
is a bit of swampy land, and sometimes even where
none such can be discerned. But no place is half so
unhealthy as Poti.

We
passed during the night the magnificent cape
where the highlands of Lazistan run down into the
sea, and at sunrise Trebizond lay glittering before us,
itswhite houses rising from the bay among cypress
groves and orchards. The steamer anchored to take
in cargo at eight o'clock, more than a mile from the
shore, and we had plenty of time to see this famous
1
The town, so far as I could make out, was not then though
fortified,
there was an old castle standing just above the beach. However, the
water is so deep that those who control the sea could make the place
untenable for an enemy by the fire of their ironclads.
364 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

city, which has been a famous city ever since the days
when adventurous Milesians first made their way from

open galleys, into these strange

Ionia, coasting along in
seas where races dwelt whose very names have been

forgotten.
on a steepish hill, washed on two sides,
It stands

the north and the east, by the sea. Eastward lies

the bay, which is not a safe harbour, being open to
the north and north-east, but affords deep water
and a good bottom for anchoring. At the northern
horn of the bay is the castle, whose ancient walls are
built on a bold projecting cliff. Here, probably, stood
the first Greek settlement, which needed a strong
position to hold its own against the fierce natives.

The mediaeval fortress whither the Byzantine em-

perors sometimes fled from their capital, and where,

indeed, a Christian empire lasted on for eight years
after Constantinople fell before the Ottomans, is a
little way back from the sea, and occupies a flat-

topped, rocky hill between two deep ravines. The

mouldering walls and towers stand along the
still

edges of the cliff, festooned with climbing plants, but

the buildings within are gone. Except these walls,
three small Byzantine churches, two of them turned
into mosques, and a few bits of marble covered with
old Greek ornament, built here and there into more
recent edifices, there are scarce any traces of antiquity
to meet the eye.
1
The better houses stand scattered in
1
Mr. Biliotti, the British consul, and a skilful archaeologist, informed
me that hardly any relics of Greek art have been found in or near Tre-

bizond. It is always so, he says, in places which have been the seats of

Byzantine power.
 FROM POTI TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 36$

their own enclosures or gardens ; they are sometimes

two or three stories high, brightly painted, the roofs

red-tiled, and the windows often covered with wooden

lattices. As in most Eastern towns, you frequently
come upon a space either vacant or strewed with the
remains of deserted houses, and fancy you have got
to an abandoned suburb, when a little farther the
habitations begin again. The bazaar is not a series of
covered arcades, as in Constantinople or Cairo, but a
maze of steep, narrow, winding lanes, where a donkey
could scarcely pass, between open booths in which men
sell or work. Except for fruit and for bread, which
is commonly made in twisted rolls or large thin pan-
cakes, there seemed to be no buyers. Most of the
dealers were Armenians, a few Greeks, hardly any

Turks, though fully half the population of the town,

and more than half, they say, of the adjoining district,
is Mohammedan.
There had been some alarms of massacre just before
our visit, the fanaticism of the Muslims having sud-

denly risen at the entry of a body of volunteers, pro-

ceeding from Lazistan (where the people are said to
be wholly Muslim and exceptionally fierce) to fight
against Servia and Montenegro. As these wild fellows
paraded the streets, the Christians fled to their

houses, while a considerable number of Mohammedans

were inspired to join the ranks. Nothing happened
at the moment, but the Greeks and Armenians con-
tinued to think that a volcano was ready to burst
out beneath them, and told us with terror that the

governor had not regular troops or police enough

366 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

to resist an outbreak, in which Muslim volunteers and

irregulars would no doubt be the foremost. Meantime
all seemed
quiet. The presence
of the European
consuls does something to reassure the Christians ;

but there are hardly any other Franks in the place,

only one or two agents of the steamboat companies
(the Austrian Lloyd's and French Messageries), whose
vessels call. The trade, most of which is in Armenian
hands, mainly with Persia through Erzerum (to
is

which two roads lead) and Bayazid. certain quan- A

tity of British goods, especially cotton stuffs and
hardware, imported, and finds its way through the
is

adjoining parts of Asia Minor, but the exports (ex-

cept from Persia) are trifling. There is little local
industry, and whatever is made is very rough and
poor in
workmanship. We looked
in vain through

the bazaar for any pretty things to carry away even ;

the modern silver work is coarse, much inferior to that

of Georgia. Turkish is the language commonly spoken,

even by the Greeks, although an old Greek dialect
holds its ground, a dialect which is said to differ widely
from the modern Greek of Constantinople, and to
have preserved the ancient pronunciation in some
sounds. For instance, the first syllable of avros is

pronounced as a sort of diphthong, not avtos, as in

modern Greek. The climate, whose heat is moderated
by constant sea-breezes, would be delightful were it
not for the wet mists which, during the whole year,

except two months of autumn, come up from the

sea and produce rheumatic attacks from which new-
comers suffer severely. Snow never lies ; but in
 FROM POTI TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 367

winter there are terrible storms from the north-east,

with showers of sleet and snow, and a short, high sea
that makes navigation dangerous on these exposed
and harbourless shores.
Trebizond dwells in my memory as a sort of en-
chanted Perhaps a place seems more out of the
city.
common range of things if, instead of entering it along
dusty roads, you come and depart gliding slowly over
dark blue waters. Its situation is wonderfully beau-
tiful,with the serrated range of Lazistan on the one
side, a group of snowy peaks plunging into a deep sea,
and on the other the bold, bluff cape on whose top
tradition places the encampment of the Ten Thousand
Greeks. Then how picturesque is the interior the :

grand old walls of the fortress rising out of glens of

green solemn cypress groves standing all round and

;

sheltering the tombs of the dead glimpses down the

;

dark and narrow streets, or through arches of trellised

vine, of an intensely blue sea basking in the sunlight.
Such a strange, silent sea it seems, without a sail to
spot its surface as the city too is silent, for though
:

there are some few people moving about the streets

that lead up from the landing-place, and sitting in
the bazaar, there nowhere any bustle, but rather a
is

dreamful sense of hush and languor which agrees well

with that air of departed greatness that seems to

brood over the place.

Embarking in the afternoon, and indeed barely

catching our steamer, which started earlier than had

been expected, we got from the deck a good idea
of the structure of the coast. Immediately behind
368 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
the town there rises a bold hill of igneous rock,
the flat tabular top of which may have been the origin
of its name (Trapezus, from Tpavre^a) ;
and beyond it

are mountains from 2000 to 3000 feet high. Still

farther back, some eight or ten miles inland, a second

range, parallel to the coast, and thickly wooded,
attains a height of 6000 feet. Over its passes, paths
lead to the lofty table-lands which form the centre of
Asia Minor, and which are mostly bare and dry, rich
in soil and minerals, but very sparsely peopled. All

along to the west for 400 miles the coast has much
the same character. It is everywhere bold, with
scarcely a scrap of flat land except at the deltas of
the two great rivers, descending to the water occa-
sionally in but more frequently in steep slopes,
cliffs,

which are often clothed with park-like wood. Behind

the hills that front the sea there is usually a gentler
acclivity ;
then a second range of woody mountains,
and through the gaps in these, peeps of much loftier
summits far inland, some spotted with snow, and little
short of 10,000 feet in height. The steamer generally
keeps two or three miles from the shore but in this ;

clear air and sunny weather, it is easy, even at that

and perpetually vary-
distance, to enjoy the exquisite

ing beauty of its rocky headlands round which the

white wave surges, and sweet little bays into which
streamlets descend through thickets of oak and hazel.
The greenness of everything was most refreshing to
eyes wearied with the bare dryness of Georgian and
Armenian landscapes. It is a strangely solitary

country.- Now and again you see houses dotted about

 FROM POTI TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 369

in twos and threes, but villages are rare, and of towns

there are but three or four all the way from Batum
to the Bosphorus.
Next night, the second of the voyage, brought us
to Kerasun, the Cerasus of the Greeks, whence cherries

are said to take their name, as pheasants do from

the hasis. There we lay several hours, taking in
a cargo of nuts, and by the bright moonlight saw a
picturesque little town lying along the west side of a
high rocky promontory. At daybreak we called again
at Ordu, a smaller and even more picturesque seaport,
where white houses with red-tiled roofs lie scattered

among their corn-fields, vines, and orchards all up the

slope of a high woody hill. The cargo we took in, con-
sisting of beans, was brought out a mile or so in open
boats, and as there were but few of these for the work,

they had to go and return several times. With them

other boats came, bringing grapes, plums, peaches,

pears, and melons, all of which found a ready market

on board. Wild, simple-looking fellows the boatmen
were, wearing a fez with a gay-coloured handkerchief
tied round it, a short open jacket of scarlet or blue,
short trousers, and a purple sash bound round the
waist. Turks and Greeks seem to dress much alike,
nor could we distinguish them by their faces. By
the help of one of these boats it was
possible to get a
swim in the waters of the Euxine, which were deli-
ciously warm, yet fresh, and perceptibly less salt than
those of the ocean.
Our third night was spent in lying at anchor off
Samsun, which is the most considerable port in this
37O TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

whole stretch of shore, though it has nothing better

than an open and rather shallow bay. It is unhealthy,
perhaps because it lies between two great deltas,
thrusting long tongues of flat, marshy, bush-covered
land into the sea, those of the Iris and Halys (Yeshil
Ermak and Kizil Ermak), that Halys which Croesus
crossed under the encouragement of the Delphic god,
who told him that, if he did so, he would destroy
a great empire, but omitted to add that the empire
was his own. Samsun is the emporium of the to-
bacco trade of these parts, and the terminus of the
road which runs up to Sivas, the capital of a large pro-
vince. It is a rambling, tumble-down sort of place,
much less handsome and elegant-looking than Trebi-
zond. I went on shore with a Hungarian gentleman,
who had joined the steamer at Kerasun. A long, irre-
gular street, sometimes wide and sometimes narrow,
runs along the shore, but we could find no proper
bazaar, indeed no sight whatever except the remains
of a fine old Genoese castle with mouldering yellow

walls, dating from the fourteenth century. At that

time the enterprising countrymen of Columbus had
the whole trade of the Euxine in their hands, and
owned many a factory and fortress along these shores
as far as the Crimea. There was something of an
Italian look about the courtyard, with its gallery of
slightly pointed arches, supported on columns, run-
ning all round and in the street a pretty little marble
;

fountain seemed to tell us that some hand more deli-

cate than a Turk's had set it up. Tobacco fields and
olive yards bordered the road to Sivas, which mounts
 FROM POTI TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 371

the hill behind ;

in the distance we saw the bold
mountains, between which the Halys descends in a
swift, unnavigable stream from the table-lands within.
The night following was the fourth of this slow
voyage, in which we lay-to during nearly as much
time as we steamed ahead. The bright moonlight
enabled me to make out, as we passed it, the lofty

square promontory, crowned by a lighthouse rare

sight in the dominions of the Sultan under the sha-
dow of which Sinope lies, immortal as the birth-place
of Diogenes,, and as the cause, by the bombardment
it suffered, of the Crimean War. Its harbour is the

best, indeed the only one in all this part of the coast ;

but we did not call, having no cargo to take in. 1 Ap-

parently it has now but little trade. The last two

nights we had been lying at anchor ;
so I had found it

possible to sleep in the tiny cabin. But to-night, when

the vessel was in motion, the screw proved too much
forme, its shaft bumping and quivering immediately
under my pillow in the extreme stem so stretching ;

out on the deck a Kurdish rug and the skin of an

Armenian bear, I slept there a la belle e"toile, and
enjoyed the novelty of the situation. But for the
wretchedness of the cabin accommodation, the voyage
was delightful we felt quite sorry to think that only
;

another day and night lay between us and Constan-

tinople. It was not only that such a succession of

exquisite land- and sea-scapes unrolled themselves

1
Dr. Radde has noted the interesting fact that the flora of the
eastern half of this coast of Asia Minor is of the Central European type,
while that of the western half, from the neighbourhood of Sinope W.,
belongs rather to the Mediterranean type.
2 C
3/2 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

before our eyes as we glided slowly along, that every

morning brought a stoppage some picturesque
off

village, a swarm of boats of wild, bright-eyed

full

fellows round the ship, a plunge in the delicious brine.

The vessel itself was a little moving world, full of
variety and interest. To the passengers received
from had now been added half as many
Poti, there

more, picked up at the different ports on the way and ;

taken together, they made a kind of Eastern mena-

gerie we were never tired of examining. Towards the
bow of the steamer, in front of the captain's cabin,
which forms a small house on the deck, was a nest
of Persians on their way from Teheran and Tavriz to

Constantinople, some to buy goods there, others to

proceed thence to Mecca. One of the latter was sick,

and tenderly nursed by his companions. They wear
long green or red-brown robes, baggy linen trousers,
and tall, conical hats of black Bokhara lambswool,

with a linen or cotton coloured skull-cap underneath,

and colour their beards, and sometimes their eye-
brows, as well as their toe and finger nails, with
some yellowish-brown dye, let us say henna. Here
they sat all day long upon their carpets, frequently
making tea over a small charcoal brazier, and drink-
ing it very weak, out of tiny glasses like those with
which children furnish a doll's house. Sometimes
they slipped noiselessly along to the cabin two or
three of the richer sort had berths in that vile little
den, and, though perfectly still and unobtrusive, were
not very agreeable inmates when they took to shaking
out their bundles. Sometimes they read out of dimi-
 FROM POTI TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 3/3

nutive books, but generally they sat cross-legged, talk-

ing eagerly to one another, and never taking any notice

of the other passengers, much less of the scenery.
There is something interesting in their finely cut faces,
a look, if not of refinement, at least of ancient culture.

Just abaft of them, between the captain's deck-house

and the funnel, were planted their hereditary enemies,
the Turkmans, of whom we were carrying quite a horde,
all pilgrims to Mecca, from the south-east shores of

the Caspian, perhaps from Khiva or Bokhara. For-

midable-looking fellows they are, tall and robust, with
short, blunt noses, and small, fierce eyes, a complexion
brown rather than dark, and a look which, though
stolid and grave, has in it a latent ferocityilike that of

a caged panther. It is better, one reflecr% to meet /

them here than in their native steppes, whate they ^
make a slave of every one whom they do not

They sat or lay through the livelong day silent in

the same spot, overshadowed by their brown sheep-
skin caps, seldom, except at supper, addressing one

another, and hardly moving, save to perform their

devotions, which they do most regularly, standing in
two rows, and prostrating themselves on the deck
towards Mecca at the proper intervals. (The Persians
seemed much less devout.) At sunset they wrapped
themselves in their large sheepskin coats, having
worn during the day, if it was fine, only a linen under-
cloak, and dirty linen or cotton trousers, and lay down
all together in a tangled heap, one man's head over
his neighbour's legs. Their arms had been taken
from them, to be restored at the end of the voyage ;

2 C 2
374 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

only a knife was left to each to cut his bread withal.

It was Ramazan, the month when Mohammedans fast

from sunrise to sunset so they took but one meal,

;

which generally consisted of a sort of gruel. They had

no flesh to eat, but some of them refreshed them-
selves with tea. These pilgrims are conveyed all the
way from Poti to Mecca for about 2 $s. each and ;

their number is
increasing every year. Indeed here in

the East, as well as in France, the facilities which

steam gives for travelling have made the habit of

pilgrimage much more general, and pilgrimage has a

sensible effect in strengthening religious animosities.
He who returns from Mecca is something of a hero
and a saint at home, his saintship showing itself

chiefly in a fiercer hatred of the infidel. The per-

ceptible increase during the last twenty years of
Mohammedan fanaticism is due in no small measure
to the stimulus which Mecca, with sacred sights and
its

furious crowds, supplies. When these Turkmans should

have reached Stamboul, they were to be transferred to
another steamer of the same Russian company plying
to the East Indies, and be carried by it through the
Suez Canal and down the Red Sea. long way A
round, to be sure, from the southern extremity of the
Caspian ;
but over and above the superior ease of a
segi journey, they could thus avoid passing through
the territory of their Persian foes. For the Turkmans
are devout and orthodox Sunni Muslims, and abomi-
nate the schismatic Shiahs on the other side of the

captain's cabin.
Still further towards the stern the stray Greeks and
 FROM POTI TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 3/5

Armenians whom we have gathered up on our way

have planted themselves, together with some so-called
Ottoman Turks, bearing no resemblance to the Turk-
mans. Except a few turbaned Ottomans, all, both
Christians and Turks, wear the red fez, and the

poorer ones their brilliant crimson sash, with more or

less of picturesque variety in jackets. The richer
Turks, who come to dinner in the cabin, are in Euro-
pean coats and trousers, according to the French style,
which now prevails everywhere in these countries.
These cabin Mohammedans seem to care very little
about the Ramazan fast, and one of them partakes
freely of the excellent Crimean wine which the
steward provides and otherwise, too, gives no sign
;

of remembering the existence of the Prophet of Mecca.

I fancy there is a good deal of laxity among the better

class of Turks, just as there is among Russians of

the same class about observing the fasts which the
Orthodox Church so strenously inculcates. Several
of these Turks have their wives and children with
them, who are made to encamp in a corner of the
deck at the stern, where a little movable railing is
set up to divide them from the other passengers.

Here, with a maid or two, they sit and lie, some with
their faces only veiled, some enveloped in an ample
blue-checked cloak, which covers head and body too,
not stirring from the spot through the whole voyage.

They seem to be unvisited and unregarded by their

husbands, and get their meals in a wretched sort of

way off platters brought to them from the cook-shop.
The children are pretty one sweet little creature,
:
3/6 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

with yellow hair and eyes of dark hazel, runs about

the deck the rest lie dozing among their mothers
:

and nurses.
Nothing strikes a Western with more disgust than
the way he sees women treated in Mohammedan
countries. It is not so much the enforced seclusion
that revolts you as the tacit assumption that women
are inferior creatures altogether, unfit to be companions
for men, but rather to be reckoned a link between

him and the brutes, more re-

and treated with little

gard than the latter. That they acquiesce uncom-

plainingly in this view, and assert their power in
hidden and crooked ways, does not make the sight
less offensive, or the result less mischievous. Al-
though the Christians sometimes adopt the policy
of seclusion, and defend it as the only safeguard

they have against the lust of tyrannical officials,

they treat their womankind in quite another spirit,
and feel the contrast in the position of woman to
be the most fundamental difference that separates
them from the Muslims. Probably it is this which,
more than anything makes them progressive,
else,
while the others remain stagnant. These Muslim
women are almost mindless what then can they do :

for their children ?

Besides the three main groups of Asiatics (Persians,

Turkmans, and Turkish subjects) which I have men-
tianed, and one or two stray Georgians and Russians,
there was a knot of Franks, mostly gathered at
little

the stern, consisting of an Italian from Trieste (acting

somewhere as vice-consul of Russia), a Hungarian
 FROM POTI TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 377

engineer, who had fought in the Polish insurrection

of 1862, a Frenchman, a German, and ourselves. We
were the only travellers for pleasure, and, being very
curious about the country and its inhabitants, were
made the receptacles of a great many interesting
facts, which we tested as well as we could by cross-

examination. French was of course the medium of

conversation, as it has now, superseding Italian, be-
come in many parts of Turkey but German, Italian,
;

and English were also heard. Reckoning in all the

tongues, there were at least eight constantly and
regularly spoken on board Russian being the lan-
;

guage of the ship herself, though several of the officers

knew some English. This beats for variety even
the South American steamer from Bordeaux, where
French, German, English, Italian, Spanish, and Portu-
guese may all be heard every minute on the deck.
The mixture of races and tongues is the phenomenon
that at first strikes one with most surprise in the
East ; but, after a one comes to consider it as
little,

natural,and the dominance of three or four great

languages in Europe, and of one language in each
several country, as being rather the exception. With
a curiosity which was certainly not Oriental, and

perhaps scarcely polite,we spent hours in rambling

through this little world of nationalities (one group
excepted, from which everybody was of course
bound keep his eyes averted), and reflected what
to
an admirable mirror it was of the larger world
which is formed by these borderlands of Asia and
Europe.
 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

On the fifth day of the voyage we made our last

call, off a charming little village called Ineboli,

nestling at the foot of a steep and wooded hill, where

coal, they say, has been found. Unhappily, the shore
is exposed, with no harbour near. From this point
the line of coast trends inwards, forming the great
shallow bay of Bithynia, in the middle of which is

Eregli, where there are extensive coal beds, as yet

little worked, but worked sufficiently to supply the
Turkish navy. Holding on a straight course for the

Bosphorus, we saw the land recede farther and farther,

till at sunset the beauties of bay and glen and
promontory were lost in the haze of distance, and
nothing remained but a line of grey serrated moun-
tains, bearing dark patches of forest on their middle
slopes.

despair of conveying the impression of melan-

I

choly which this coast of Asia Minor makes upon the

traveller, whatever be his political or religious pre-

possessions. Here is a country blessed with every gift

of nature, a fertile soil, possessing every variety of

exposure and situation, a mild and equable climate,

mines of iron, copper, silver, and coal in the moun-
tains, a land of exquisite beauty, which was once
studded with flourishing cities and filled by an indus-
trious population. And now from the
Euphrates to the
Bosphorus all is
silence, poverty, despair. There is
hardly a sail on the sea, hardly a village on the shores,

hardly a road by which commerce can pass into the

interior. You ask the cause, and receive from every
one the same answer. Misgovernment, or rather no
 FROM POTI TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 379

government ;
the existence of a power which does

nothing for its subjects, but stands in the way when

there is a chance of their doing something for them-
selves. The mines, for instance, cannot be worked with-
out a concession from Constantinople and to get this
;

concession,you have to spend months in intriguing

and bribing only to find, when you are just beginning
to work the vein, that the local governor, who can

stop everything, is changed, or that some other official

turns up who must also be bribed, so that the whole

process has to begin de novo. Our Hun-

friend the

garian engineer, who was on his way back from Kara

Hissar, a town far up among the mountains behind
"
Kerasun, where he had been "prospecting for mine-
rals, and who, like his countrymen generally, sympa- /'

thized strongly with Turkey against Russia, assured

us that there was no question as to the existence of
valuable mines all along these ranges, some of which
had been worked by the ancients, but that trje diffi-
culties of getting any contract you could rely on were

such that every project had been or was being aban-

doned. Of course, there is no capital in the country, all

must come from Constantinople or Western Europe.

The account he gave of the condition of the people
near Kara Hissar was truly pitiable. The exactions
of those who farm the taxes, and go about with armed
men squeezing pretty nearly what they please out of
the helpless peasants, discourage every effort to im-

prove agriculture, and make it scarcely worth while to

carry on agriculture at all. Lands are everywhere.
380 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
1
falling out of cultivation. Villages are being deserted.
Round Trebizond, as we were told there, even the
better families are selling their old jewels, and sinking
into beggary. There are no manufactures, except of
just so much
coarse pottery and woollen stuffs as each

village needs. Owing to the want of roads, it does not

pay to bring corn from the interior for shipment save
when prices rise very high ;
and
the crops fail in if

any district, a famine follows, because food cannot be

carried toit from other places. Nothing is raised or
shipped from the few seaports except such raw pro-
ducts as nuts, 2 beans, wool, and wax, with sometimes
a little grain. Of course, nobody has any motive to
save money, for it would be taken from him as soon
as he was known to have it. If he does save, his only
security is to continue to go ragged. The police are
few and unorganized (a trustworthy informant told me
that in the large province of Trebizond there are only

fifty policemen to 800,000 people) and, indeed, there ;

is so little security for life and property that the

wonder is that robberies and massacres are not more
common. A sort of traditional awe still surrounds
the government in the eyes of all but the Kurds, who
are practically independent, and wander about as far

1
Even in the larger towns the population seems to be diminishing.
Trebizond was estimated towards the close of last century to contain
80,000, and Sinope 50,000 inhabitants now the former city has but
: <f

30,000, and the latter, I believe, about 6000.

2
The nuts are mostly exported to Taganrog, on the Sea of Azof.
They go from Kerasun in the country boats in spring, when navigation
becomes safe after the winter storms.
 FROM POTI TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 381

west as Sivas, plundering and murdering to their

heart's content.
All this oppression and misery falls upon the Mo-
hammedan population equally with the Christian. In
fact, along the coast the Christians are so far better
off that they have the English, Russian, and French
consuls to appeal to, whereas the Mussulmans have
nobody. But in the interior, where there are no
consuls, the Christians are doubtless worse off, since,

being unarmed, and without any means of legal re-

dress (for their testimony may be, and usually is,

rejected in the courts of justice), they are practically

at the mercy of a neighbour who covets their vineyard,
or an official who carries off their daughters. What
crueltiesand oppression go on in these almost un-
explored regions, which few travellers have crossed,
nobody knows even the consuls of the coast towns
;

tell you that they can only guess, forthough all sorts
of stories come down, the details can never be relied
on, certain as itmay be that some outrage has been
perpetrated. As to the likelihood of a general mas-
sacre of Christians, opinions vary. It would be easy

enough, for the government have no troops to check a

Mussulman rising, while the Christians are timid and
unarmed. other hand, the richer Mohammed-
On the
ans would do their utmost to prevent it, for it would
become the signal for general pillage and confusion,
inwhich they too would suffer. There seems to be
no doubt that the feeling of Mohammedan hatred
towards Christians is now sensibly more bitter than it

was at the time of the Crimean War. Many causes

382 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

have been assigned for this. I believe one of them

to be a dim feeling that the Ottoman power is dying,
and a sense of helpless rage at perceiving that the
Christian population, whose numbers do not diminish
so fast as those of the Muslims, are secretly looking
forward to their emancipation.
On the morning of our sixth day from Poti, the
bluff hill appeared which marks the entrance to the

Bosphorus, and beyond it the rocky coast of Thrace,

trending away west-north-west towards the Balkans.
Asia Minor is flatter here than round Sinope or Ineboli,
but some miles back a long line of low limestone
mountains, covered with wood, seems to run parallel
to the shore. Nearing the Bosphorus, we discover
the two Symplegades, or Wandering Isles, which no

longer inspire the least fear that they will dash

together and crush the passing vessel, for they lie
fully three miles apart, each being a mass of bare
black rocks, close, the one to the Asiatic, the other to
the European shore, and quite outside the mouth of
the straits. There was a great stir and bustle on
board when it was known we were within two hours of
Stamboul. The Persians made up their bundles,
tying braziers and tea-cups inside their carpets ;
the
Turkmans strutted about in the glory of their re-
covered arms ;
even the Turkish husband condes-
cended a word or two of directions to his wife in her
sheep-pen at the poop. Stamboul, as the stronghold
of Islam, and the burial-place of divers Muslim saints

and conquerors, is almost as sacred in Mohammedan

eyes as it is, for another set of reasons, in those of
 FROM POTI TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 383

Eastern Christians, and, for a third set, in those of the

curious traveller. After all that has been written
and printed about it since the days of Herodotus, 1 it
would be absurd for me to attempt a regular descrip-
tion either of the city or of the magnificent avenue
which leads to it. I shall only remark on a few
salient points which a reader may be willing to have
recalled to his mind.
The northern or upper end of the Bosphorus is
bare and stern. Sharp black rocks rise on either side,
backed, on the Asiatic, by steep hills, nearly 1000
feet high, and covered with thick low woods, while the

European shore is bare and brown. The sea frets in

foam upon these cliffs, for however calm it may be else-
where, a breeze or swell is rarely wanting here. Sail-

ing down
the current, which runs pretty swiftly out of
the Black Sea it is so strong at one point that boats
have to be tugged up along the shore by ropes 2 the
breadth gradually diminishes from two miles to about
one mile, when we heave-to under the guns of a small

recently strengthened battery, and send ashore an

with our papers. Lower down we halt again off
officer

the town of Buyukdere, on the European side, and are

tells us of a Persian satrap named Megabazus, who
1
Herodotus
was takento the Bosphorus, and shewn Chalcedon on the one side and

Byzantium on the other. When they told him that Chalcedon was the
older town, he remarked simply, " These Chalcedonians must have been
blind."
*
It is now ascertained that this current, due to the overflow from the
Black Sea of its lighter, less saline water, is partly compensated for by
an under-current running the other way from the Aegean to the Black
Sea, and which apparently consists of the heavier, more saline water.
The existence of such an under-current was conjectured as long ago as
the time of Procopius, but has only recently been proved.
384 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

met by a boat from a Russian frigate lying here off the

summer villa of the Russian Embassy, to which we
deliver despatches from Tiflis. General Ignatieff, they
tell us, is away in Russia ;
so every one knows that
nothing decisive can happen just yet. A little farther
we pass, on the European side, the village of The-
still

rapia, where stands that terrestrial paradise in which

Sir Henry Elliot watching over British interests.
is

A lofty pile of buildings, with a cool marble gallery

running from end to end, rises from the edge of the

deep, brilliantly clear green water ; behind, a garden,
full of choice shrubs andshadowy walks, covers the
hill slope,while in front one looks right up the wind-

ing strait into the Euxine, whose broad expanse can

just be seen, crisped with white waves. Then we
double the promontory where the mighty fortress
stands in whichMohammed II. entrenched himself
before the last siege of Constantinople, lofty walls
built in the shape of the name of Allah, with three
stupendous towers then, as the channel narrows, the
;

current flows stronger, and we glide more swiftly

between gay villages that grow more frequent, and
at last melt into a continuous town. The landscape
softens as woods and gardens begin to clothe the steep
hills and embower the white-walled villas, steamers

thronged with people meet us, and light caYques flit

over the glassy floor of this unrivalled street, which
is at once a river and a sea, till at last an amphi-
theatre of hills appears crowned with white houses,
tall black cypresses, the huge domes of mosques and

a forest of slender minarets, with a crowd of vessels

 FROM POTI TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 385

lying below, and the Sea of Marmora glittering in a

wide sheet of silver beyond.
Constantinople is one of those few places in the
world which surpasses all expectations. It is more
beautiful,more unique, more commanding than any
description has prepared you to find it. As every-
body knows, it consists of three parts firstly, Stamboul
:

proper, the city of Constantine, standing on the site of

old Byzantium between the Sea of Marmora and the
Golden Horn long narrow inlet off the Bosphorus)
(a ;

secondly, Galata, a town which grew up in the later

middle ages, also in Europe, but on the opposite or
north-east side of the Golden Horn, and Pera, an exten-
sion of Galata up the steep hill which rises behind it ;

and finally, on the other or Asiatic side of the Bos-

phorus, the towns of Scutari and Kadikeui (Chalcedon),
with their far-stretching suburbs. This immense mass
of houses covering the three shores, and running far up

along the margin of the Bosphorus in a continuous

street, gives the impression of a vast population, far

larger than the 800,000 at which the inhabitants are

commonly estimated. I do not suppose that Paris,
with its million and a half of people, spreads over a
wider area. But then, though the streets of Constan-
tinople are narrow, there are huge empty spaces
scattered through it, covered by ruined houses, or
gardens, or graveyards, so that great part of the sur-
face is not really occupied by the living at all. How-
ever, this sense of a multitude round you
teeming
adds to the grandeur of the view. Nobody knows the
proportions which the various elements of this popu-
386 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

lation bear to one another. The Armenians reckon

themselves at 200,000, the Greeks are nearly as
numerous, the Mohammedans more numerous, pro-
bably 350,000 the balance consists of Bulgarians and
;

Franks. Stamboul proper and Scutari are the Muslim

quarters par excellence (though there are some Chris-

tians inStamboul too), Pera and Galata the Christian.
On the top of Pera hillstand the winter palaces of
the ambassadors tremendous piles, among which our
own and that of the German envoy are the largest,
and have occupied the finest sites. Their conspicuous
position towering among the houses of the Franks
over against the decaying palaces and offices of the
Sublime Porte on the crest of Stamboul aptly typifies
the sort of protectorate which the powers of Europe
have assumed over the Sultan, and the independent
jurisdiction their representatives claim in this strange
town. Constantinople indeed is not a city, but several
cities, distinctcommunities dwelling together, but not
mingling, since they have neither feelings nor interests
to unite them. Or, rather, it is a huge caravanserai,
where men of allnations meet for business or pleasure,
and abide for days or years without feeling it a home.
It has no corporate existence for them, nor can they
have any local pride in it. What sort of municipal
feeling can be looked for in a town where one-half the
inhabitants call the other half dogs, and that other
half is constantly expecting to be set upon and
1
massacred P

1
I was told in the end of September that there had been several
panics among the Christians ; but, so far as a passing traveller could
 FROM POTI TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 387

It is pleasanter to return for a moment to the external

aspect of the place. Constantinople has two glories
the glory of the mountains, and the glory of the sea.
In every landscape the background is formed by the
bold heights of Scutari and the more distant Mysian

Olympus, with its snowy summit cutting the clear air

like mother-of-pearl. In the city itself there is scarcely
a yard of Old Stamboul is built on a
level ground.

long ridge rising some two hundred feet above the

waters that lave it on either hand, a ridge whose top,
indented by hollows and crowned by massive mosques
and graceful white minarets, with here and there a pile
of ancient ruin, offers a sky-line always changing as
the beholder moves, but always beautiful. Then no

city has such a sea a sea deep to its very margin,

intensely clear, intensely blue, penetrating everywhere,

tillyou can hardly recognize its arms a sea that ;

narrows to a river in the Golden Horn and Bosphorus,

and spreads into a shoreless expanse in the broad
Propontis, studded with shining isles. The central

judge, their fears, however real, were not quite justified by anything the
Mohammedans had yet said or done. An atmosphere of terror and wonder
grows up in such a place at such a time indeed it
always exists in the
East in which unreasonable I was warned that
fears are entertained.
it was dangerous Stamboul by day, and wandered
to pass alone through
into it at night without experiencing any difficulty except from the
want of lamps and the abundance of sleeping dogs. I was forced to
take the cavass of the Sublime Porte (a sort of soldier porter who. is
sent with strangers, and receives a heavy fee) with me to St. Sophia,

being told that a Christian entering it unprotected might be torn to

pieces ; and next day happening to pass it again, and having a sud-
den longing for another glimpse of Justinian's church, I procured an
entrance by the simple means of tendering a medjidi (a coin worth
4-f. 6</.) to the doorkeeper, and saw the Mohammedan worship pro-

ceeding to my heart's content.

2 D
388 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

spot of every viewis the spot where these three waters

meet, Seraglio Point, where the first Greek colonists

built their Byzantium, where afterwards stood the

palace of the Eastern Caesars, and where now stand

the ruins of the fortress palace of the Ottoman
Sultans a wilderness of broken walls and towers,
;

with cypress groves between, and the dome of St.

Sophia rising behind. No spot on earth has seen so

much history and so much crime as this, where
dynasties of tyrants have reigned for sixteen weary
centuries.
It has become a commonplace to say that the tra-

veller ought to admire Constantinople from the sea,

and then depart without landing, lest the spell be
broken. A more foolish commonplace it would be
hard to find. Constantinople is just as wonderful
within as it is from outside. No doubt there is much to

disgust and repel a stranger much dirt, neglect, vice,

;

and even ugliness. But there is far more to excite his

curiosity and touch his imagination. Its mosques, its
tombs, its crooked, rugged streets, with their crumbling
houses of every tint, interrupted here by a spreading

plane tree, there by a grand old Byzantine arch or

cistern its bridge of boats, over which a many-
;

tongued crowd streams incessantly ;

its Fields of the
Dead shaded by gloomy cypresses gardens green ;
its

with vines and ruddy with pomegranates above all, ;

those majestic walls and towers, that have stood un-

touched since the day of Mohammed the Second's
fatal

conquest all these and many more details of its

inner form and life are as picturesque, as full of endless
 FROM POTI TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 389

interest and charm, as the view from the bosom of the

sea is noble and imposing. Modern improvement has
not yet laid its destroying finger on this accumulated
wealth of beauty, the gift of many ages and races, as
it too surely will when the Turkish dominion ends.

If ever a war is undertaken on behalf of Constanti-

nople, let us understand that it is not for the sake of
the Turks, but for aesthetic reasons only to preserve :

the loveliness of a city that is unique in the world

and could never be replaced.

2 D 2
390 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

CHAPTER XL
SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS.

THOUGH I have not written this book with any poli-

ticalpurpose, I am unwilling to lose the opportunity
of stating the conclusions to which, as it seems to me,

any unprejudiced observer must be led by travelling

through Russia and Asiatic Turkey. Seeing is like
nothing else. I do not mean that it necessarily gives
one new ideas ; indeed, the largest and most careful

study of these countries could hardly enable a man

to develop any views absolutely new on a question
which has been so thoroughly thrashed out during the
last few years. But seeing with one's own eyes and
hearing people on the spot talk people who are, so
to speak, themselves part of the problem brings home
to one certain facts and principles with a force and
clearness which no amount of reading can give. One
seems to perceive better what are the main and
essential, what the secondary and accidental, factors in
the problem. I will therefore try to state, as shortly
as possible, the main impressions which this journey

gave me as to the condition and prospects of Trans-

caucasia and the adjoining provinces of Turkey, the
attitude of Russia, and the interests of England, pre-

mising only that I went with a mind which, so far as

 SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS. 39!

it was prejudiced, was prejudiced against Russia,

which I had learnt from childhood to look
upon as
the enemy of freedom, the power which oppressed
Poland, and had enabled Austria to crush Hungary.
Respecting Transcaucasia, I have little to add to
what has been said in an earlier chapter. It is not

a prosperous country, yet signs of improvement may

be discovered, and it is infinitely better off now than
formerly under its own princes, or under the rule of
Sultan and Shah. Life and property are secure. One

railway has been made, and others are projected ;

commerce and industry are backward, yet not abso-

lutely stagnant. Antagonisms of race and religion
are far less fierce than in Turkey, Mohammedan
races living contentedly under a Christian govern-
ment. European ideas and inventions are beginning
to be known, and may in time lay hold of the still

sluggish minds of the people. The two great obstacles

to moral and material progress are the want of
schools, which the government is just beginning to
establish more generally, and the co-existence I can
hardly say mixture in the population of so many
diverse and mutually repellent elements. Each race,

Georgians, Armenians, Tatars, Persians, Lesghians,

Mingrelians, Russians, Germans, is too weak numeri-
cally to absorb the rest, and too distinct in religion,
language, and habits to blend on equal terms with any
of the others. This is a phenomenon that constantly
meets one in Eastern countries, and deserves more
attention than it has received, as being not only a

consequence, but a cause, of their unprogressive state,

392 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT

For while in civilized Europe a small nation, if it be

self-governing, is quite as likely to thrive as a large
one, it is otherwise in regions so poor, so ill-governed,
and so much exposed to the attacks of their neigh-
bours as these are. Every great Oriental state has

certainly shownbad enough, but to a large and

itself

powerful people there are always given chances which

a small people cannot have.
The difficulty of fusing these races, or even of

uniting them under a common system of law and ad-

ministration, lies in the fact that the one force which
controls them, the one channel in which most of their
life flows, is religion. They have no patriotism, in our
sense of the word, for they have neither a historical

past (being mostly too ignorant for that conception)

nor a country they can call exclusively their own.

Religion is everything, since it includes their laws,

their literature, and their customs, as well as their
relation to the unseen world ;
and religion is not a

fusing but a separating, alienating, repellent power.

In ancient times there were in Western Asia and

Europe pretty nearly as many religions as there were

but these religions were not mutually exclusive,
races,
and required from their believers no hostility to other
deities. Hence the ease with which the Roman
empire drew so many diverse nations into its bosom,
and formed out of them a sort of new imperial nation-
ality. The rise of Christianity altered all this, since it

claimed to be a world religion, which could own and

brook no rival. Mohammedanism repeats the same
claim, with a fierceness which the comparative bar-
 SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS. 393

barism of its professors has in the course of time

rather intensified than diminished, while Christianity
has learnt to look with more tenderness or apathy on
forms of error. The different sects of Eastern Chris-

tians, though united in their aversion to Islam, from

which they have suffered so much, have quite enough
mutual jealousy to prevent any cordial political union.
Greeks, Russians, Armenians, Bulgarians, would each
and all of them prefer a Mohammedan government to
that of any of the others, if such a government were a
less detestable tyranny than that of the Sublime Porte
now is. The problem is one far more difficult than
Western or Central Europe had to deal with in the

Dark Ages, when so many different races lay weltering

together on the same territories, for then the omnipre-
sent, all-pervading power of the Church was a unifying
and assimilating power, which formed new nations by
linking men of different blood and speech in the bond
of a common faith. Here the force of religion is a
centrifugal force : its lessons are fear and hatred.
To return from this digression to Transcaucasia, it

may be said that the process of fusion which cannot

but be supposed indispensable to its ultimate well-being
has scarcely begun, and will necessarily be a very slow
one. But in the mean time Russia, though her govern-
ment is mainly military, is not altogether neglecting
her duties to the people. She has emancipated the
serfs,and substituted regular local courts for the old
feudal jurisdictions which were even less pure and cer-

tainly more oppressive. She has exerted herself to

'

foster various branches of industry with more zeal

394 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

than success, and, by creating security, has made it

possible for foreign capital and enterprise to flow into

the country. No doubt there is a good deal of corrup-
tion,a good deal of over-government and bureaucratic

pedantry. But the laws are mild and equal for all
subjects and as there is no disaffection, I do not
;

think there can be much oppression. Even in religious

matters, while certain advantages are accorded to the

dominant church, the worst evil a Roman Catholic or
Protestant suffers is that he is forbidden to proselytize,

and, if he marries a wife of a different persuasion, must

suffer his children to be brought up in the Orthodox
Eastern Hardships, no doubt, these are, but
faith.

hardships trifling compared to those which we were

recently inflicting on Roman Catholics in Ireland.
The Russian Church has never been theologically
intolerant, but and loyalty or patriotism
religion
words which mean much the same thing to a Russian
are so closely intertwined that one must not expect
the lesson of religious liberty to be learnt in a day.
Russia's difficulties in the Caucasian countries, as in
her other Asiatic provinces, arise from the want of
two things, men and money. She has not got men
to spare for colonization, seeing that, in addition to
and her newly acquired vast and
Siberia, Turkestan,
on the river Amur, she has far more
fertile territories

land at home than there are people to cultivate it.

When he can have a rich farm on the Don or Lower
Volga next to nothing, the peasant is not likely to
for

cross the Caucasus or the deserts of Central Asia. Of

all the states of Europe, there is none that has so little
 SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS. 395

motive to conquer or annex as Russia, for she has

already far wider territories than she can turn to ac-
count for centuries to come. Then she wants money.
In old Russia itself there is a vast deal still to do, and
the money to do it not in the country, but, like
is

that which made the railways, must enter from the

West. Every annexation costs her far more than
it brings in. The process of buying land with money
raised on mortgage one that cannot go on long when
is

you are paying seven per cent, for the money and
getting next to nothing from the land. In fact, Russia
has for the last twenty years or more been making
bold drafts on the future, which it is by no means
certain that the future will meet. She cannot con-
tinue indefinitely the practice of renewing these bills
at increasingly heavy rates and there are only three
;

possible courses open to her :

repudiation and total
loss of credit, a disgrace which it is not to be supposed
she will ever bring herself to face ; heavier taxation,
which so poor a country as Russia still is could not
bear (it would at least make the government very
unpopular, and check the rising domestic industries) ;

and, thirdly, retrenchment. As Russian finance is prac-

tically out of the reach of criticism (though what

purport to be the public accounts are published every

year), no one can quite tell the present state of affairs,
but it is understood that the most which the ministers
claim is that they had very nearly or quite succeeded,

when the present war broke out, in escaping the deficit

of former years. The debt, as everybody knows, is

already very large, and most of it recent.

396 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

In these circumstances not only war, but conquest

also, is obviously against Russia's interest. In fact,
annexation is even more pernicious than war, since it
involves a constant drain of money which lasts when
the temporary excitement of war is over and the

people are no longer willing to make sacrifices for a

present and exciting object. She might have made all
her railways with the money she spent in subduing the
mountaineers of the Caucasus, but when once she had
occupied the country on each side of the chain, that
subjection became necessary to secure peace. In
Central Asia a piece of work of the same kind, and

probably no less costly, lies before her. All this is, of

course, perfectly well known and foreseen by intelli-
gent Russians, who cannot understand why foreigners
should not credit them with perceiving what is so
obvious. It is felt most strongly by the Emperor and
his advisers, on whom a responsibility rests such as
no statesman in a parliamentary country is ever
required to face. It made them hang back from war

when the popular excitement against the Turks, who

had perpetrated the Bulgarian massacres and seemed
on the point of crushing Servia and Montenegro, was
blazing high over the whole country. They were
ultimately unable to avoid war, because the other
European powers did not join them in threatening
Turkey with a joint attack, to which, of course, she
must have yielded, while they had given pledges it
was impossible to recede from. But wholly apart
from any question as to Austrian susceptibilities
about the Danube, or English susceptibilities about
 SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS. 397

the Dardanelles, their domestic interests clearly pre-

scribe a policy of abstinence from annexation. To
add any large territory, either in Asia or Europe, to
their already overgrown empire, would be to under-
take responsibilities which they are not equal to, and
under which their system might well break down.
Maps have a great deal to answer for in clouding
men's minds. When
a boy looks at a map, he fancies
that the country which covers the most space on it is
the most powerful. It is wonderful how many of us

remain boys in this regard. Because Russia's domi-

nions stretch over a vast space on the surface of the

globe, an utterly fallacious notion of her resources has

been generally accepted in the rest of Europe. She
has undoubtedly the elements of one day becoming a
very powerful monarchy. But for modern warfare,
which is, above all things, a matter of money and
science, sheis probably less strong than the weakest

of the three other great military states of the con-

tinent. And for the administration of semi-civilized
territories, she is still more unfitted, having no such
stock of able, vigorous men, with well trained minds,
as we send every year to India. The highly educated
Russians (i.e. the true Russians, for I except the
Germans) are often brilliant, but almost always super-
ficial the great mass are not only ignorant, but,
;

with all their natural cleverness, incapable of steady,

work, even work of a very humble
solid, intellectual

kind, improvident, impatient. In European Russia,

Germans are promoted- over their heads in Trans- ;

caucasia, they are considered inferior, as officials, to

 398 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

the Armenians. They strike you, also, as wanting

initiative, I mean that moral initiative which depends
on a resolute and tenacious will, that does not fear

responsibility. They a bright people, a good-

are
natured people, a likeable people, indeed a gifted
and attractive people but somehow you do not feel
;

them to be a strong people, whom a race like the

English or the German need fear in the long run.

The Russians, therefore, with all their versatility
and quickness, are not yet, and will not for many
/
years to come, be thoroughly civilized. Till they

become so, they may govern, but they must remain

unable not only to civilize the races on a lower
level, but even to give to those races such an im-

pulse towards material progress as will make them

profitable subjects, a strength to the empire instead
of a mere dead-weight impeding its onward march.
Besides, Russia has problems at home more than suf-
ficient toabsorb the energies and tax the wisdom
of her statesmen, land questions raised by the recent

emancipation of the serfs; labour questions, which

the socialist party, not yet numerous, but active,
is bringing before the people religious questions
; ;

constitutional questions, which the establishment of

local assemblies has helped to pose, and which will

certainly rise into greater importance. These facts

are so well known and weighed by thoughtful men in

Russia herself that they find it hard to understand

why territorial aggression should be so constantly

assumed to be the chief object of their national policy.
It is easy to shew them that the steady advance of
 SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS. 399

their frontier accounts for the existence of such a

belief; easy, also, to remind them that there are

plenty of people among themselves, and especially in
the army, who still desire conquest. But the main
facts remain, which take to be indisputable
I first,
:

that Russia is far less powerful for attack than she is

believed to be ; secondly, that further conquests will

only injure and weaken her. Either, therefore, she
will abstain, or, if she does not, she will suffer for it,

and be the more likely to break up,

all all the less
formidable in future to her neighbours.
These are considerations which must, I think, force
themselves upon every one who travels in Russia, but
perhaps most clearly on one who observes her govern-
ment in her lately acquired Asiatic provinces. They
ought to dictate, they must necessarily influence, her

policy not only towards the Porte, but towards her

Asiatic neighbours generally. Let me now try to state,
with the same brevity, the impressions produced by
what one sees and hears in Asiatic Turkey and Con-
stantinople. I pass over the European provinces which
because we have lately heard so much in Eng-
I visited,

land about European Turkey that no more is needed.

The first thing that strikes you you have been
told it a hundred times, and yet it you fresh
strikes
like a discovery is that in Turkey there is one

country, but many nations. The Turks, or (as we

ought rather to say) the Mohammedans, are not

Turkey any more than the Protestants beyond St.

George's Channel are Ireland, and have no more
claim to be considered as the representatives of the
4OO TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

people ;
in fact less, for they are not the most intel-

ligentand industrious part of the population. They

are one out of several nations dwelling on the same
soil, but not intermarrying or otherwise mingling, and
having nothing in common except mutual hatred. It

is therefore a profound error to extend to them that

sympathy which is given to a people resisting foreign

invasion, even in an unjust cause, for the country they
defend is not theirs. In the present war they are quite
as much invaders as the Russians, and their expulsion,
not their triumph, would be the true " liberation of the

territory." This is so, not because they came as con-

querors, formost parts of Europe are held by the
descendants of conquerors, but because they have
remained a conquering military caste, refusing equal

maltreating and oppress-

civil rights to their subjects,

ing them in every conceivable way, and maintaining

their ascendancy neither by superior numbers nor

superior civilization, but by the power of the sword.

They are still, in fact, a hostile army encamped among
unarmed subjects who detest them, and are kept in
check partly by the want of arms and courage, partly
by their own intestine jealousies. This is most con-
spicuously the case in Europe and the islands, where
the Muslims are in a comparatively small minority ;

but it is also true of Asia Minor and Syria, where

they are equal, or nearly equal, in numbers to the
Christians ;
and
only ceases to be true in the lower
it

valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, where the Chris-

tians are comparatively few.
Of course I do not mean to ascribe this to the
 SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS. 401

national character of the so-called Osmanli Turks as

an intruding race from the steppes of Turkestan ;

for they are not really Turks at all. Very little

Turkman blood flows in the veins of the modern
Mohammedan population of Asia Minor and Europe ;
hardly more perhaps than there is of Prankish blood
in the modern French.
That population is composed
mainly of the descendants of those subjects 1 of the
Eastern Roman empire who embraced Islam as the
tide of Seljukian and Ottoman conquest advanced
westward and northward, partly also of the mongrel
race which has sprung from the marriages of Osmanlis
with the Greek, Georgian, Circassian, and Slavonic
captives brought in by the perpetual slave trade and ;

of janizaries, the offspring of Christian parents seized

and brought up as Mohammedans. How
in childhood,

little Turk there is in the modern Otto-

of the true
man may be seen by any one who will compare the
heavy languid faces and flabby figures of the Turkish
royal family, for instance, with their drooping eye-
lids, smooth foreheads, and sensual rounded outlines,
and the angular bony
firm, hard, features, small, fierce,

eyes and well-knit frames of the genuine

restless

Turkman or Tatar of the Aral or Caspian steppes. a

1
Those Byzantine subjects were themselves a greatly mixed race,
consisting partly of the primitive inhabitants of Asia Minor and Thrace
Hellenized under Macedonian and Roman rule, partly of a heteroge-
neous slave population brought into the empire from all the surrounding
countries.
2
There are still some Turkman tribes who wander about Asia Minor
with their flocks and herds, but they do not mix at all with the other
inhabitants. There are also several places in Asia Minor where you

may see a few genuine Turks still remaining, just as in the valleys of ,
4O2 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

It is not a matter of race, but of religion, which is far

more serious. No Mohammedan race or dynasty has

ever shewn itself able to govern well even subjects
of its own religion while to extend equal rights to
;

subjects of a different creed is forbidden by the very

law of its being.
The result is that, when foreign armies enter,
whether it be Bulgaria or Armenia, they are wel-
comed as deliverers by the subject population and ;

when they retreat, it is upon those unhappy subjects

that the inhuman vengeance of the Turkish soldiery
is wreaked. In Armenia, at this moment, a timid and
inoffensive people who have never meditated insur-

rection, who are not even accused of anything more

than sympathy with the invaders, are being slaughtered
by thousands in their blazing villages. I dare say the
generals in command have not ordered or approved
these massacres and torturings. That they are the

spontaneous acts of irregular soldiers, perpetrated on

their own unarmed fellow subjects, makes them an
even more dreadful evidence of the condition of the
Turkish empire.
The second fact, which comes home with unexpected
force to the traveller who sees even a little of Asiatic

Turkey, is, that the Turkish government is dying. It

has been sick for a long time and it may have yet a
;

good many years to linger. But it is not the less

certain that the sickness is incurable. It has no

the Asturias villages occur where the blue eyes and light hair of the
people shew the permanence of a Gothic type ; but these are rare
exceptions.
 SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS. 403

money, and, having lost its credit, has no chance of

getting any more from the West Little can be raised

by taxation, for the country poor in quite a different

is

sense from that in which Russia is poor the sense of

having absolutely no presently available resources :

a thin population, the best part of which has been

through large districts either massacred or drawn off

to perish in battle ;
mines that have not been opened
for want of capital ;
a soil only a small part of which
is now under cultivation ;
a total want of roads and
railways. There are really no rich people, except a
few Greek and Armenian merchants in Constantinople,
and a knot of palace favourites who have fattened on
the spoils of the provinces and very few even mode- ;

rately well off. Worse even than the want of money is

the want of capable and honest administrators, or of

any tolerable machinery of government There is no

1
aristocracy either of birth or wealth from which ad-
ministrators or ministers could be drawn. Office has
for many years past been given to palace favourites,
who have climbed into power by the interest of their
female relatives, or by subservience to some already
established favourite. Among such men corruption
is so natural that it is not surprising to find it all but
universal ;
so that even if a tolerable administrative

system were introduced, it could not be worked for

lack of diligent and upright officials. To suppose
that the men now in power would consent to have

1
The old local aristocracy of the Beys is pretty nearly gone in most

places, and has been so entirely excluded from administrative functions

as to be unfit to assume them.

2 E
404 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

themselves ejected in favour of Franks is to suppose

them willing to save the state by sacrificing all that
the state means to them, all that makes it in their
eyes worth the saving. The fact is that the Turkish
empire would, like so many other Oriental monarchies,
have been broken to pieces long ago either by con-
quest from without, had not the jealousies of the
European powers maintained it, or by revolts within

(such as that of Mehemet Ali), had not the plan been

adopted of never leaving a governor more than two or
three years in the same spot, and did not the presence
of the Christians dispose all Muslims to see their

safety in sticking to the central government.

The Mohammedans of Turkey are not without
their good qualities
. and in point of sobriety, in-
;

dustry, and honesty, the peasantry of Asia Minor, at

least, may be favourably compared with those of some
far more civilized countries. Their courage in battle

it is But take the race as a

unnecessary to praise.
whole, and consider them as they have shewn them-
selves in matters of government and war during the
last two centuries, and they appear hopelessly stupid,
apathetic, helpless. They have not within those two
centuries produced even a capable military leader ;

and, when they were at their best, in the great days

of Mohammed II. and Suleiman the Magnificent,
they never produced anything else no administrator,
;

no thinker or writer, no poet, no artist. To the

thought or to the wealth of the world they have never
made the smallest contribution. And now they are
obliged to go to foreign races even for their generals.
 SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS. 405

That the Turkish government deserves to die is a

thesis I shall not argue, being content simply to point

to the condition to which it has brought some of the

finest countries on earth. It is really not so much a
government, in our sense of the word, as no govern-
ment. Some philosopher, impressed by the evils of
bureaucratic centralization, has defined the perfect go-
vernment as anarchy plus a street constable. Here
you have anarchy plus the tax-gatherer. In this

paradise of laissez-faire nothing is done for the people

or by the people, while everything is done to prevent
one-half of them from protecting themselves. Govern-
ment is a device for squeezing, with enormous waste in
the process, a certain sum of money out of the poorest

class, to be spent, most of it on the Sultan's harem and

palaces, and the rest on ironclads and rifles, and for

permitting everybody with arms in his hands to seize

his neighbour's fields and carry off his neighbour's

daughter when he takes the fancy. What has been

written about and from Constantinople during the last
few months has enabled most people to judge of the
character of the Ottoman ministers and their system at
the centre of
affairs. But things are quite as bad at the
circumference as at the centre. The attention of the
West was so much drawn towards Herzegovina and
Bulgaria by the events of last summer there that the
miseries of the Asiatic subjects of the Porte have been

unreasonably forgotten or neglected. They are fully

as great as those of the Slavs or Cretans ;
and in so far

in Europe there exists no large body of tribes

worse that
making murder and robbery its regular and daily occu-
2 E 2
4o6 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

pation as the Kurds, and latterly the Circassians also,

do in Armenia. If any one will take the trouble to read
the complaints of oppression and cruelties presented
to the Porte by the Armenian Patriarchate in 1872
(since reprinted in England), and some of the more
recent statements printed by the Armenians in Eng-
land on the same topic, he will see that the state of
Turkish Asia presents as grave and pressing a problem
as that of Bulgaria itself.

It is draw an indictment against the Porte.

easy to
Details of its weakness and the misdeeds of its officials
could be given to any extent, but the theme is so
familiar that everybody is by this time either con-
vinced or resolved not to be convinced. Far less easy
is it to say what remedy can be applied to these evils,

or what sort of government can be substituted for the

Turkish. Setting aside annexation to Russia, which

would of course be a boon to the Armenians as com-
pared with their present condition, but in itself not a

good thing either for the annexed provinces or for

Russia the question appears to be whether it

herself,
is possible to reform the Turkish government, or
whether an effort ought rather to be made to do in
Asia Minor what was suggested for Bulgaria, and has
in large measure been done in the Lebanon, and

establish a dependent but practically self-governing

state. Such a state could only be Armenia, as the
Armenians are by far the most industrious and ener-
getic race in that region, and in some parts outnumber
the Mohammedans. They have
already a constitu-
tion, obtained about 1861, with small elected councils
 SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS. 407

in every parish, which manage the schools and the

ecclesiastical property, a representative assembly in
each province, and a national assembly, also represen-
tative, of 1 60 members, which meets in Constanti-

nople, and appoints permanent committees for civil

and ecclesiastical business, communicating with the

Porte through its president the Patriarch. 1 Although
this organization is voluntary, that is, has no power of
enforcing its willeven on the Armenians, it has worked
well, and done much to spread education among
them, and to apply for the common good such
funds as they can save from the rapacity of their
enemies. Does the Armenian people then furnish
materials for a new political community, or do the
conditions exist which could give it a reasonable
chance of success ?

In the first place, though there are said to be

over three millions, some say nearly four millions,
of Armenians in Asiatic Turkey, many of them
are scattered through the western and southern
parts, especially in Cilicia (where some tribes have

maintained their practical independence since the

fourteenth century, when the kingdom of Lesser Ar-
menia ended), so that in Armenia proper, the country
1
This organization embraces only the so-called Gregorian Armenians,
who acknowledge the Patriarch at Etchmiadzin as their spiritual head.

They have a Patriarch at Constantinople who is, quoad spiritualia,

under the jurisdiction of Etchmiadzin. The United, or Roman Catholic,
Armenians, with their Patriarch (at present there are two rival claimants),
and the Protestant Armenians (numbering about 25,000, and nearly all
Presbyterians), remain outside of it. There used to be much ill-feeling
between these three sets of Armenian Christians ; but latterly a more
liberal and friendly tone has prevailed the sentiment of nationality is
:

softening down even the spirit of hostility to so-called schismatics.

408 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

round the Upper Euphrates and Tigris, there may

perhaps be no more than 1,700,000. There they live,
mixed with a considerable Muslim population of
Osmanli Turks, Tatars, Kurds, and other hill tribes.
No doubt, if an Armenian principality were erected
here, their co-religionists would flock in from other

parts, as they flocked into Russian Armenia from

Turkey after the war of 1829. But even so, their
numbers would remain small, while the untamed
Kurds and other Mohammedans would constitute an
element of difficulty. Moreover, the Armenians, labo-
rious and intelligent as they are, with a capacity for

improvement of which their recent progress gives

ample proof, have been trodden down by the heel of
tyranny for so many centuries as to make it doubtful
how far they are fit for self-government or capable of
self-defence. They may in time recover, as their
awakened national feeling ripens and strengthens, the
courage and political self-confidence which would
enable them to hold their own as yet they have not
;

given such evidence of these sterner qualities as the

Greeks and Servians gave in winning their own
freedom. Besides, there can be little doubt that
Russia would strenuously oppose the creation of a
principality towards which her own Armenian popu-
lation would gravitate, and whose existence would,
unless she could make its head her own creature,

deprive her of the influence she now exerts in Asia

as the protector of the Patriarch of Etchmiadzin and
of the Armenian nation in general.

In the view of these obstacles, patriotic Armenians

 SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS. 409

themselves, as well as intelligent Franks who know

the country, seem rather to incline towards the less

revolutionary, but perhaps not really easier, expedient

of attempting, even after so many failures, to improve
the Turkish administration. Respecting a certain
number of the reforms that are needed, there is a

general agreement. Christian evidence ought to be

made necessarily receivable in all and placed
courts,
in all points on a level with that of Mussulmans.
The Mohammedan law, whether based on the
Koran or on the Traditions, ought to be declared

inapplicable to causes in which Christians are con-

cerned ; or, in other words, jurisdiction over them
ought to be (as the Hatt i
Humayun provided) con-
fined to the so-called Nizam or civil courts, instead of

going to the Sheri or ecclesiastical Mohammedan

courts. They ought to be admitted or required to
serve in the army and the police ;
and as it would
probably be found impossible to disarm the Muslim
population, it may, perhaps, be necessary to permit (as
has been done in the Lebanon) the Christians to carry
arms. After all, however, it is not so much changes
in the law that are wanted as more faithful adminis-
tration of the reforming ordinances so often issued

by successive Sultans, and in practice so constantly

neglected or overridden. How to secure their proper

execution, how to check the corruption and partiality
of the judges and the extortions of the tax-gatherers,
is the real problem.

The plan most commonly proposed is to set up

side by side with the local governor an adjunct,
410 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

whether a European consul or some other trustworthy

Frank, who shall watch the governor, report upon his
proceedings, receive complaints from the district of
any oppressions practised there which the governor
may not have properly dealt with, and forward such

complaints, with his own comments, to Constantinople.

Some think such an adjunct ought also to have a veto
on the governor's proceedings, but as this might make
the whole thing unworkable, it would clearly be better
to limit him to the duty of watching and reporting.

But, then, what security is there that these reports

would be attended to at headquarters ? The Arme-
nian Assembly, through the Patriarch at Constanti-

nople, makes frequent complaints of wrongs suffered

by their co-religionists ;
the European consuls some-
times set in motion their respective ambassadors, yet
how seldom and how tardily is redress granted. It

would seem necessary to supplement the local pro-

tectors of Christian subjects by a central commission
at the capital, which could bring a permanent and
effective pressure to bear upon the Porte. And what
what would this be but to put the Sultan's govern-
ment into tutelage, and involve the European powers
in the dilemma either of themselves administering the

Turkish empire or of seeing their efforts baffled by a

policy of non possumus and perpetual delays ?
Moreover, it is not merely, perhaps not so much, an
honest purpose and good laws that are wanting to
the Ottoman administration it is force and power.
:

Except by sudden and spasmodic efforts, the govern-

ment cannot make itself obeyed. The police are
 SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS. 4! I

inefficient, save for mischief ;

the irregulars cannot be

kept in order; the Kurds systematically defy all

authority, and, indeed,

though living within the
bounds of the empire, have never been properly its
subjects. No amount of supervision and reporting
will get over this fatal defect of weakness.
These are some of the difficulties which will have
to be faced when terms of peace come to be discussed,
for it is hardly to be supposed that things can be

allowed to fall back to their old footing without at

least an attempt to better the state of the Asiatic as
well as of the European Christians. Although he
would be a sanguine dreamer who should expect that
any reforms can make Turkish rule satisfactory or per-

manent, still it may be quite possible to ensure such

a measure of security for person and property as
would allow the inhabitants of these provinces to
advance in numbers, in wealth, and in intelligence,
and thereby make them ultimately fitter for self-
government. The European powers effected this in the
Lebanon, after the massacre of 1860, by substituting
for the Turkish officials local Christian governors
and mixed courts, by establishing a local police
and excluding the Turkish soldiery.
force of all races,
That security would also render possible another
beneficial influence which one hears occasionally
discussed on the spot, I mean colonization from

Europe. There are, even close to Constantinople,

large tracts of fertile land suitable for the plough and
for pasture,which are now lying untouched, tracts
where industrious settlers ought to be welcome, and
412 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

which they might probably have for a merely nominal

payment. But it would be necessary for them to
come in numbers sufficient to protect one another ;

roads would have to be made them access to

to give
the sea, and special arrangements must be made
respecting taxation. Nothing would do so much for
Asia Minor as an influx of such settlers
and any ;

government but the Turkish would have long ago

tried to attract them.
remains to say a few words on those British
It

interests in the re-settlement of the East of which we

have heard so much. I pass by the question how far

England would be justified in maintaining a reign of

cruelty and oppression for the sake of avoiding certain
possible but remote dangers to her own dominion, and
at the cost of disgracing her own best traditions and of

alienating from her the sentiments of the other peoples

of Europe. I propose rather to look at the matter

from the most purely sordid and selfish point of view.

It does not often happen that the conscience of a
nation prescribes one line of policy, and its interest
" "
(taking interest in the narrowest sense) another ;

and I think it will appear that this case shews no

such divergence.
There are two spots in the possession of which by
the Turks our advantage or security is supposed to be
involved, firstly Constantinople and the Dardanelles,
and secondly Armenia and there are two modes in
;

which it is supposed that the possession of those spots

may affect us, first as regards our trade, secondly as

regards our dominion in India. So far as trade is

 SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS. 413

it would
concerned, undoubtedly be an injury to us if
Russia were to become mistress of the Bosphorus. At
present she has a rigidly protective tariff, and may pos-
sibly be misguided enough to cling to it for a good
while yet. Her customhouses could check our import
business with the southern shores of the Black Sea
and with Northern Persia, into which we send some
goods via Trebizond and Erzerum. However, 'the
total value of this trade is but small, for the bulk of
our Persian trade goes to Southern Persia by Bussorah,
and both Persia and Asia Minor are poor countries,
daily growing poorer. The utmost loss we could
suffer its stoppage would not exceed, say, ^150,000
by
a year and what part would that sum be of the cost
;*

of fighting to protect it ? So much for that branch of

our interests.
India, and the route to India, are far more serious
matters. True it is that we conquered India without
the aid of the Suez Canal, and re-conquered it, one

may almost say, twenty years ago, at a time when we

were doing our best to discourage the incipient canal
project. Still it will be generally admitted that the

freedom of the canal is important, even if far from

vital, to our military position in the East. But how
does Constantinople affect the Suez Canal ? Simply
in this way, that it supplies a strong, perhaps an

impregnable position, where a fleet might be kept

1
The total value of our imports into Asiatic Turkey during the year
1875 was (if I do not mistake, being unable to get at the figures at this
moment) not much over ,3,000,000. Of course it is impossible to esti-
mate exactly the profit on this trade, but it cannot* amount to any very
large sum.
4H TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
'

which, in the event of war, could sally out and

annoy us, or, if it could get so far, attack Port Sai'd.
If Constantinople were in the hands of an active
naval power, we might have, in war time, to increase
our Mediterranean fleet by three or four ironclads,
and would be strongly tempted to occupy and fortify
a port in some island such as Crete or Cyprus. The
cost of those two operations would not in twenty

years amount to what we should spend in a single

campaign. That is literally all the difference that
the control of the Bosphorus by Russia could make
to India. It would leave her 1000 miles by sea

from Egypt, and a distance of two months' march

by land. How much simpler for her to contrive that
a couple of merchantmen should be sunk in the Suez
Canal. People say she could attack Syria, forgetting
that she is now, in Transcaucasia, nearer to Syria

than she would be at Constantinople. Add to this that

Russia has neither money to build a fleet, which is
now the most expensive engine of war a country can

attempt to use, nor sailors to man it her Black Sea

fleethas always been notoriously bad, for the plain
reason that she has a wretched mercantile marine
and the danger of her being able to drive the navy of
England from the sea must appear altogether vision-
ary. What would Nelson have said to such fears ?

It is also supposed that the annexation

by Russia
of Turkish Armenia, and in particular (why, it is hard
to divine) of Erzerum, would imperil our hold upon
India. Armenia commands the Euphrates valley,
the Euphrates valley leads to the Persian Gulf, the
 SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS. 415

Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean. All perfectly

true, but what are the distances ?
Why, it is as far
from Erzerum to the Persian Gulf as from Dover to
Belgrade, and there are neither roads nor railways
between. Here, again, the map has much to answer
for ; for, as some one has remarked, people study
these countries in a map on so small a scale that

they are quite misled as to the areas to be traversed

or annexed. Nor is it easy to see what ground
there is for the assumption that the possession of
Erzerum necessarily involves either the desire to seize
or the seizure of Bagdad or Damascus. Such advan-
tages as Russia can require for moving towards the
Persian Gulf her position in Transcaucasia gives her

already. But for the respect which is due to some of

thosewho appear to have entertained it, the idea of a
Russian attack upon India might be pronounced the
merest chimera, or, as Lord Hardinge used to call it,
a political nightmare. For, even setting aside the pro-
digious difficulties of the route, we are, as the Russians
know, infinitely stronger as well as better placed for

defending than she for assailing. Supposing, however,

that she should wish to harass us by intrigues with the
frontier tribes, oreven to meditate an invasion, she
has a far readier means of access than either by the
Euphrates valley or from Turkestan. Persia is a

country of great natural resources, with a splendid

geographical position between the Caspian and the

ocean, inhabited by a population less warlike and
fanatical than the Turkmans of the Oxus, a popu-
lation industrious and settled, though reduced by
41 6 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

misgovernment to a point far below its natural level.

Without a fleet, and practically without an army, it
lies at Russia's mercy whenever she chooses to march
eight or ten regiments into it. Some one has sug-
gested that she wishes to conquer Turkish Armenia
in order to attack Persia, as if she were not, with the
command of the Caspian and of the Araxes valley as
far as Djulfa, already admirably placed for that pur-
pose. And from Persia she could menace India much
more effectually than from either Khiva, or Bagdad,
or Antioch.

Russia, however, has shewn no signs of desiring to

acquire Persia. Nor any reason to think she
is there
covets the rest of Armenia, having got the most fertile

parts of the Araxes valley already. She certainly

wants Batum, and ought to have it, and may perhaps
take a slice of coast along with it, by way of satis-

fying the vulgar desire to see some tangible result for

a war, and for the sake of gaining an easier approach
from the sea to the Araxes valley. But having no
substantial motive for a large annexation in that
quarter, it is hard to believe that she will make one.
On the reasons above stated, I submit that nothing
which the Czar can do in or obtain by the present war
will make any substantial difference to the special
interests which England has as the mistress of India,
It is upon these special interests that stress has been
laid by the friends of the Porte ;
and it is just there
when looked closely into, breaks down
that the case,
most completely. The occupation of the Bosphorus
and Armenia would bring him not a day nearer to
 SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS. 417

Peshawur, nor put us a day farther from Bombay, than

we are at this moment.
But it is perfectly true that the acquisition by
Russia of Constantinople, or of any considerable ter-

ritory in either Asia or Europe, would seriously affect

the prestige, as it is called, of England in the Levant
and Euxine countries, her influence and moral weight.
It would also be a misfortune for those countries
themselves. The Russian system is too stiff and
repressive ;
Russian officials are too uneducated, too

corrupt, too anxious to advance the interests of their

own church ;
in fine, Russia is altogether too imper-
and enlightened to make the further
fectly civilized
extension of her power a benefit. For the moment,
of course, it would be preferable to the misrule of the
Porte ;
but in the long run it might prevent the
growth of something better. Nor do the Christian
subjects of Turkey, Greeks or Armenians, wish for
her success, except as a means of coercing the Porte.
Better the Czar, they say with one voice, than a con-
tinuance of present evils but rather give us, if it be
;

possible, a reformed Turkey, bitted, so to speak, and

spurred by Western riders, with as large a measure as
may be of local independence. The name of England
is still great in these countries. She is regarded with
a mixture of admiration and disappointment admira- :

tion as thehome of wealth, freedom, and invention ;

disappointment and surprise as the apparent friend

and protector of Turkish oppression. Her interference
on behalf of the subject peoples would be welcomed
with far greater satisfaction than that of Russia, for
41 8 TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.

it would not be suspected of being a cloak for the

aggrandizement of her own church or empire. She

is believed to be, if perhaps disposed to favour Mo-

hammedanism, yet at least impartial between the

rival Christian sects ;
and this alone gives her a great
advantage in lands where the jealousy of Greeks,
Armenians, Bulgarians, and Roman Catholics is so
keen and watchful.
If the fall of the Turkish dominion is only a
ques-
tion of a few years sooner or later, not folly to cling
is it

to the status quo, and make its maintenance the chief

aim of our policy ? In the moral and political, as in
the material world, there no such thing as
is in reality

a status quo : all is change and motion, if not from worse

to better, then from better to worse. England may
save the Sultan from foreign invaders, she may aid him
to suppress internal revolts. But she will not thereby
arrest that sure and steady process of decay which
makes his government more and more powerless for
anything but evil. She may delay, but she cannot
prevent, the arrival, after another era of silent oppres-
sion, varied by insurrections and massacres, of a day
when the Turkish empire will fall to pieces, and its

spoils be shared by powerful neighbours or revengeful

subjects.
A wise policy, foreseeing the inevitable, would en-
deavour to prepare for it, and would seek in the
means of excluding
elevation of the native races the
those neighbours whose real or supposed ambition
excites so- much alarm. Degraded as they are, after
ages of slavery and ignorance, the Christian populations
 SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS. 419

nevertheless offer a more hopeful prospect than the

Muslims yet even the Muslims might, under a firmer
;

and juster administration than they have yet enjoyed,

an administration which should secure to every man
the and give them the chance
fruits of his industry,

of learning from the West something more than its

vices, become far more capable than they now seem
of self-government and of a peaceful union, as equals
instead of rulers, in a common state.

Both the power and the ambition of Russia have

been grossly exaggerated in this country. Many of
us have mistaken her vast area and large population
for real strength : most of us have done less than
justice to her sentiments and purposes, which, if not
ideally disinterested, are probably no more selfish than
those of the other great European powers. But sup-
the interests of England to be really imperilled
posing
by her advance, our true course surely is to remove
those grievances which make her influence powerful,
and have obliged the Christians of Turkey to look to
her for help. It is our supposed indifference to their
sufferings that has justified Russia's interference, and
has given her the sort of protectorate she claims, and
which it is feared she will use to our detriment. And
the strongest barrier that could be erected against
her further advance would be found in the creation

among the subjects of Turkey of communities which

would be unwilling to exchange a state of tolerable
prosperity and peace under local institutions and
officials of their own faith, protected by the Western
powers, for the pressure of the Russian bureaucracy
2 F
42O TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT.
and the Russian Church. Those who think worst of
the Czars would then see both the pretext and the
means of their aggression extinguished, and might
regard with equanimity the approaching fall of Otto-
man power. No observer of the present condition
of Turkey will deny that the process of construct-

ing such institutions will be difficult and its results

uncertain. But it is essential to remember that only
a choice of evils is offered, and that while the evils

of the present of things are intolerable and

state

daily increasing, such a solution as that which has

been mentioned gives at least a gleam of hope for the
future, a foundation on which freedom and prosperity
may be slowly built up. It is indeed not merely
the most promising solution : it is the only solution.

Everything else is at best postponement, and leads

back, sooner or later, to the same stattts quo, whose
fruits are insurrection, bankruptcy, massacre. Each
former postponement has only aggravated the dangers
and difficulties of more grave now
the situation, far
than they were in the days of the Crimean War.
Further delay may make them insuperable, and may
wreck the chance that yet remains of relieving these
unhappy peoples from their load of misery, as well as
of regaining and strengthening the legitimate influence
of England in the East.

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