ARMENIA

TRAVELS AND STUDIES

VOL. I

Ararat from Aralykh.

Aralykh, 2750 feet; Ararat, 16,916 feet.

ARMENIA

Travels and Studies

BY
H. F. B. LYNCH

Nature’s vast frame, the web of human things.

Shelley, Alastor.

Who can foretell our future? Spare me the attempt. We are like a harvest reaped by bad husbandmen amidst encircling gloom and cloud.

John Katholikos
Armenian historian of the Xth century Ch. CLXXXVII.

IN TWO VOLUMES
WITH 197 ILLUSTRATIONS, REPRODUCED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND SKETCHES BY THE AUTHOR, NUMEROUS MAPS AND PLANS, A BIBLIOGRAPHY
And a Map of Armenia and Adjacent Countries
VOL. I
THE RUSSIAN PROVINCES

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
LONDON: 39 PATERNOSTER ROW
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1901

PREFACE

This book contains the account of two separate journeys in Armenia, the first extending from August 1893 to March 1894, and the second from May to September 1898. Before embarking upon them, I was already familiar with the contiguous countries, having spent a considerable portion of the years 1889 and 1890 in Mesopotamia and Persia. The routes shown in my map from Aleppo to Diarbekr and down the Tigris, and from Batum across Georgia and the Caspian to Resht, were taken during the course of these earlier wanderings, and they contribute no part of the ensuing narrative.

What attracted me to Armenia? I had no interests public or private in a country which has long been regarded even by Asiatic travellers as a land of passage along prescribed routes. One inducement was curiosity: what lay beyond those mountains, drawn in a wide half-circle along the margin of the Mesopotamian plains? The sources of the great rivers which carried me southwards, a lake with the dimensions of an inland sea, the mountain of the Ark, the fabled seat of Paradise.

With each step forward in my knowledge of the countries west of India came a corresponding increase of my original emotion. Sentimental were reinforced by purely practical considerations; and I seemed to see that the knot of politics tightening year by year around these countries was likely to be resolved in Armenia. I became impatient to set foot upon Armenian soil.

When my wish was realised, my first experiences of the country and of the Armenians in the Russian provinces exceeded my expectations—fringed with doubt as these were by disappointment with much I had seen in the East. So I passed over the Russian frontier, struck across to the lake of Van, and spent the winter in Erzerum.

When I came to setting down on the map my routes in Turkish Armenia, the scantiness of existing knowledge was painfully plain. I soon realised that it would be necessary to undertake a second journey for the purpose of acquiring the necessary framework upon which to hang the routes. Meanwhile the events occurred with which we are all familiar—the Armenian massacres, and the comedy of the concert of Europe.

It was with difficulty that I was at length enabled to return to the country. These later travels were almost exclusively occupied with the natural features, our tents spread upon the great mountain masses, whence plain and lake and winding river were unfolded before us like a map.

Primitive methods were rendered necessary for transferring these features to paper. One is not allowed in Turkey the use of elaborate or obvious instruments, and miles of ground had to be crossed in full view of Turkish officials before reaching the field of our work. But I was able to transport to Erzerum a standard mercurial barometer, which was duly set up in that centre and read several times a day during our absence. We carried two aneroids, a boiling-point apparatus, a four-inch prismatic compass, used upon a tripod and carefully tested at Kew; lastly, a rather troublesome but very satisfactory little instrument called a telemeter, and made by Steward. The measurements were checked by cross-readings with the compass, and we found that they could be relied upon. Once we were upon the mountains our operations were not impeded, and, indeed, were assisted by the authorities.

I was accompanied on this second journey by my friend, Mr. F. Oswald, who had been helping me disentangle the voluminous works of the great Abich upon the geology of the Caucasus and Russian Armenia. The varied talents of Oswald were of the greatest service to the work in hand, while his society was a constant source of pleasure and repose. He is now engaged with the geological results of this journey, and with a well-considered study of the geology of Armenia as a whole. These he hopes to publish before very long.

The illustrations are for the most part reproductions of my photographs, being a selection from a collection which fills several cases. On my first Armenian journey I was accompanied as far as Erzerum by Mr. E. Wesson of the Polytechnic in London, who not only developed the films and plates upon the spot, but rendered the most valuable assistance in the photographic work. He also displayed the qualities of a veteran campaigner before the journey was done. And I was always missing him after his return home and during the second journey, when the work devolved entirely upon myself.

My cousin, Major H. B. Lynch, now serving in South Africa, travelled with us as far as Ararat and took charge of the camp. It is, I think, a legitimate cause for satisfaction that, except for momentary lapses on the part of the cook, not one of the party during either of the two long journeys fell ill or became incapable of hard work. And on both occasions the horses were sold at a small profit when the coast was at length reached.

Why does one write a book? I find it difficult to answer the question, which, indeed, demands a knowledge of human nature greater than any I possess. There are societies and individuals who, I feel sure, would offer a price if the potential author would agree to keep his material to himself. The sum might probably be augmented by the contributions of weary students; and a revenue could be collected from these various sources far exceeding any royalties received from publishers. Moreover the author would escape the foreboding of condign punishment, which he is made to feel suspended over his head. On the other hand, there is the fascination of feeling possessed by a subject, stronger than yourself and elemental. And there is the joy and the impersonality of the work reacting upon the personality of the writer.

The country and the people which form the theme of the ensuing pages are deserving, the one of enthusiasm and the other of the highest interest. It is very strange that such a fine country should have lain in shadow for so many centuries, and that even the standard works of Greek and Roman writers should display so little knowledge of its features and character. Much has been done to dispel the darkness during the progress of the expired century; and I have been at some pains to collect and co-ordinate the work of my predecessors. In this task I have been assisted by my friend, the Hon. Mrs. Arthur Pelham, to whom the credit of the bibliography accompanying my second volume is due.

In taking leave of the book—and it has been a long connection—the mind rests with pleasure and gratitude upon the help given without stint by fellow-workers in the same or in different fields. To my friend, Mr. R. W. Graves, now Consul-General in Crete, I am indebted for a lengthy spell of hospitality and delightful companionship in distant Erzerum. I have borrowed freely from his intimate knowledge of extensive regions in Turkish Armenia, as well as from that acquired by my friend, Major Maunsell, now our Consul at Van, the principal contemporary authority on Kurdistan. Geheimrath Dr. G. Radde of Tiflis has rendered me valuable assistance on more than one occasion; and it is also a pleasure to feel conscious in many ways of my obligations to my friend, Mr. L. de Klupffell, formerly of Batum. At home I have received much kindness from Mr. Fortescue of the British Museum library, and from Dr. Mill, who has so long presided over the library of the Royal Geographical Society, and whose recent retirement from that office in order to devote himself to his scientific work is keenly regretted by those whom he encouraged by his assistance and advice. The book has brought me several new friends, among them Mr. F. C. Conybeare of Oxford, the extent of my debt to whom, in various directions, it would be difficult to estimate. Professor Sayce has kindly looked over the sheets dealing with the Vannic empire, and contributed several valuable suggestions. Prof. E. Denison Ross has helped me with the Mussulman inscriptions, besides informing me upon a number of obscure points.

A portion of the narrative of the ascent of Ararat has already appeared in Messrs. Scribner’s Magazine, reprinted in Mountain Climbing, a book published by this firm. Parts of the concluding chapters of each volume, entitled “Statistical and Political,” have seen the light in the shape of a series of articles in the Contemporary Review.

H. F. B. LYNCH.

The map which accompanies my first volume will be on sale separately at Messrs. Stanford’s in Longacre.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

[The Coast and the Port] 1

CHAPTER II

[Ascent to Armenia] 37

CHAPTER III

[To Akhaltsykh] 53

CHAPTER IV

[To Akhalkalaki] 72

CHAPTER V

[At Akhalkalaki] 86

CHAPTER VI

[Prospect from Abul] 92

CHAPTER VII

[Gorelovka and Queen Lukeria] 96

CHAPTER VIII

[To Alexandropol] 118

CHAPTER IX

[At Alexandropol] 124

CHAPTER X

[To Erivan] 133

CHAPTER XI

[To Ararat] 143

CHAPTER XII

[Ascent of Ararat] 156

CHAPTER XIII

[The Heart of Ararat] 179

CHAPTER XIV

[Return to Erivan] 200

CHAPTER XV

[At Erivan] 206

CHAPTER XVI

[Edgmiatsin and the Armenian Church] 228

CHAPTER XVII

[To Ani and to Kars] 316

CHAPTER XVIII

[Ani, and the Armenian Kingdom of the Middle Ages] 334

CHAPTER XIX

[Kars] 393

CHAPTER XX

[Across the Spine of Armenia] 409

CHAPTER XXI

[Geographical] 421

CHAPTER XXII

[Statistical and Political] 446

LIST OF PLATES

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

LIST OF MAPS AND PLANS

CHAPTER I

THE COAST AND THE PORT

On four different occasions, both in summer and in winter, I have sailed along the southern shore of the Black Sea almost from one extremity to the other; yet I do not remember having seen the sky free from heavy clouds during two consecutive days. As the ship speeds eastwards along the mountains of Bithynia, a thin veil of haze will blend the land outlines together; while, as the range grows in height with every mile of progress, the vapour will collect about its upper slopes in long, horizontal, black banks. Even when the sun of this southern climate has swept the sky of every lingering film, when the zenith and the water recall the hues of the Mediterranean—the whole scale of brilliant blues—somewhere upon the wide circle of the horizon will be lurking the scattered forces of the mist. But the stronghold of the cloud is in the mountains of Akhaltsykh, at the foot of Caucasus, in the extreme eastern angle of the sea. Can there exist a more gloomy coast? There the sky is always lowering above the inky water, and the forests of fir which clothe the range from foot to summit wave darkly, like feathers over a pall. Such, I think, are the impressions which the mind most closely associates with the aspect of this sea and shore. What a contrast to the smiling landscape of the Bosphorus, the strait through which we enter this sad sea or leave it on our return home! The cold draught follows the home-coming ship up the narrow channel between the wooded cliffs, and frets the running tide into crisp little waves which sparkle in the brilliant light. The dolphins leap from the blue water and dart shining through the air. To the traveller who is returning from a long journey in Asia and a tedious tossing on this grey sea, the Bosphorus, always bright and gay and beautiful, may appear as the promised gate of paradise beyond the world of shades.

The character of the coast cannot fail to be affected by this climate, by this atmosphere. Just as the vapours gather thickest where the mountains are most lofty, at the south-eastern angle of the sea, so the vegetation increases in luxuriance and variety the further eastwards we proceed on our course. The cliffs or rolling hills about the entrance of the Bosphorus—the closing cliffs of the Greek legend, which caught the tail-feathers of the dove—soon give place to the belt of wooded mountains which rise from the immediate margin of the water, and stretch from west to east along the entire seaboard to the Phasis and Batum. Tier upon tier they rise from the narrow strip of sand and pebbles, and grow both in height and in boldness of outline as they stretch towards the east. The winds of the open sea, the cold winds of Scythia, fly over the barrier of the range; and the ship may often anchor in smooth water at a point where least protection would appear to be offered by the configuration of the shore. But the moisture of the air is arrested at the coast-line, and hangs about the upper tiers of the mountains or clings to the fir-clad slopes. These natural conditions are extremely favourable to vegetation, and the larger grows the scale upon which they are operating, the more abundant becomes the growth of trees and shrubs. When at last we have reached the neighbourhood of the Phasis, where the wall of this range towers highest above us on the one side, and the line of Caucasus closes the horizon on the other, the shore becomes clothed with dense forests, plants and creepers flourish with tropical exuberance; the traveller, threading the maze of evergreen woodland, might be walking along the banks of the Amazon or through the glades of Mazanderan.

August 13, 14.—Our ship is outward bound for the banks of the Phasis, “the furthest point to which vessels sail.” It was evening when we hove anchor from Constantinople, and night had already closed as we passed the cliffs of Buyukdere and opened the mouth of the strait (Fig. [1]). This morning we are skirting the Bithynian mountains, our head well up towards Amasra, behind us the bluff of Cape Baba, a promontory of twin hills. That cape hides the site of Heraklea, one of the most important of the old Greek cities, now patched with the relics of its former splendour, and shorn of the glory of its statue of Herakles, with lion-skin, club, quiver, bow and arrows all wrought of solid gold. The same lofty coast and bold headlands accompany our course; in a few hours we double Cape Karembe, and the sun has not yet set as we cast anchor off Ineboli, the outlet of the rich districts about Kastamuni, and perhaps at present the most prosperous of these western Pontic ports.

Fig. 1. Entrance to the Black Sea from the Bosphorus.

Herakli, Ineboli, Sinope, Samsun—the ships often stop at one or two of these places; yet how little now remains of the old Greek cities of the Argonautic shore! Step on land, and there are the high-prowed galleys drawn up, quite in the ancient fashion, upon the narrow strip of sand. But the hill to which we look for the ancient akropolis appears bare of any building now, and it is only by careful searching and diligent enquiry that you will find some faced stone with a Greek inscription of the Roman period built into the buttress of a modern bridge, or mocking the ruder masonry of a Turkish wall. Here at Ineboli, indeed, half-bedded in the soil a few paces from the shore, lies a shining fragment of white marble with sculptures in relief. A line of white-faced houses with roofs of red tiles nestles beneath the mountain wall. The Greeks live on one side, the Turks on the other; and the intelligent man to whom you naturally address yourself is an Armenian in European dress. Our ship does not call at Sinope this voyage—Sinope of the open site and spacious roadstead, whose walls seem to have resisted the general crumbling, and rise from the water a still perfect model of a fortified mediæval town. During the night we round the hump of Anatolia, and before mid-day we are lying in the bay of Samsun, towards the centre of the long curve lined with white-faced, red-tiled houses, beyond which the ruined walls of ancient Amisus still emerge from the briars on the summit of the hillside which closes the landscape on the north-west. But at Samsun also destruction has been busy; I look in vain for the massive tower of old acquaintance at the south-eastern extremity of the shore. I recognise the spot where it stood at the end of the long sea-wall, some parts of which still remain; but the foundations alone have escaped demolition, and the few large blocks of stone which still lie scattered on the ground testify rather to the carelessness of the Turkish building-contractor than to any respect on the part of his employers for the beauty and interest of their town.

The sites of these coast towns have been determined by the characteristics of the range of wooded limestone ridges which rise along the shore. Sometimes it will be a cleft in this latitudinal belt of mountains, a transverse fissure in the grain of the range, which, with its rustling river giving access to the interior, has attracted a settlement. The eye rests with pleasure on the deep green of these narrow valleys; the limestone towers high above them and protects the rich growth of trees and shrubs. Or the range recedes from the margin of the water, sweeping inland in the shape of a vast amphitheatre, and curving outwards again to form a distant promontory of the bold and sinuous coast. The first description will apply to the position of Ineboli; the second may be illustrated in a typical manner by the site of Samsun. There the open stage of the wide hemicycle is filled with rolling hills and level expanses which yield abundant crops of cereals. It is true that the estuaries of the two larger rivers, Halys and Iris, present exceptions to the normal configuration of the seaboard. These considerable streams form extensive deltas which project far out into the sea. For awhile, as you pass them, you almost lose sight of the mountains, and the view ranges across low, marshy tracts, studded with trees. As we skirted the delta of the Halys, we looked down upon such a wooded plain across a narrow bank of sandy shore. It appeared as if inside that slender barrier the solid land had sunk beneath the level of the waters upon which we sailed. The delta of the Halys is as celebrated for its tobacco as that of the Iris for its Indian corn, and Bafra and Charshembeh are becoming serious rivals to the old Greek cities of the coast.

Indeed, even along this remote seaboard the flowing tide of Western civilisation is surely setting eastwards again. How the conditions of human life around these lonely waters have altered within the last sixty years! Sixty years ago the first steamer drew her train of smoke and foam past these forelands and bays of still uncertain fame. The slave ships infested the harbours of the coast, and if a sail rose upon the horizon it was likely to be a slaver’s sail. Armed bands still forayed into the recesses of Georgia for their loot of beautiful boys and girls, and parents who wished to preserve their daughters from the market would place them, when quite children, in one of the numerous fortified convents which crowned the summits of their native hills. Slowly the grip of law has fastened upon the peoples of Caucasia, a stern force moving with the insistence of a vice from distant Russia, from the north; while from the west, with, perhaps, less system, less coherence of methods, European commerce creeps along this Turkish shore of the sea, and extends ever further into the inland country the solvent influences of her sway. Already towards the middle of the century the Russians swept these waters with their steam cruisers, while their police boats blockaded all the coast of Circassia to guard against the import of arms. Only when the season was most tempestuous, when the cruisers had retired within their harbours and the Cossacks no longer dared to face the open sea, the captain of the slave ship would venture out upon his perilous voyage from some wooded inlet of the eastern shore. At the present time this traffic has either ceased entirely or is conducted through obscure and secret channels, where it would be difficult to trace. To Russia belongs the credit of this achievement, which has accompanied the extension of her empire down the eastern coast of the Black Sea. To Europe and to the increasing intercourse with European markets is due the growing prosperity of these towns of the Turkish seaboard, and indeed the very appearance which they present. New houses, in construction far more solid than their predecessors, are transforming the aspect of the shore; burnt bricks or stone masonry take the place of wood, and these materials are faced with a coat of concrete, painted a pure white. The window apertures are large, and at evening or morning a row of wide glass panes reflects the glow. Even the Government can show some signs of progress; carriageable roads have been constructed to the towns of the interior, from Ineboli to the inland centre of Kastamuni, from Samsun to Amasia and Sivas.

August 15.—Weighing from Samsun at night, it is early morning as we cast anchor off Kerasun—Kerasun with its castled rock thrown seawards from the range, the lofty headland of the bay, from which the town curves westwards and sinks to the waterside under the shadow of the mountain wall. Were it not for the needle forms of minaret and cypress, rising against the terraces of white walls and red roofs which mount from the water’s edge, we might be sailing on the Rhine, past some grim old burgh, dominating the cluster of peaceful habitations which cower at its skirts. In less than three hours the barges are emptied, and we are proceeding on our course. Almost immediately we pass close to a little island, a rare object along this shore. It is a mere fleck of rock, picturesquely encircled by feudal walls and towers. The range on our right hand is always rising in elevation; hard porphyritic rocks are beginning to take the place of the crumbling limestone; the ridges, clad with firs to the very summits, stand up one behind another ever loftier and more abrupt. At the same time the lower slopes increase in verdure; orchards and plantations clothe each respite of open ground. Small settlements succeed one another more closely, the houses peeping out with their white faces from the soft, leafy background of green.

Such is the appearance of the shore we are skirting this morning—the range growing in height, the vegetation increasing, the characteristic beauties of the coast now, perhaps, for the first time imprinting a lasting image upon the mind. Like the Mediterranean, this sea is almost tideless—the narrow strip of sand, upon which the waves plash, is unencumbered with those oozy beds of giant seaweed which, scattered in fragrant streamers upon our English seaboards, whet the freshness of our sea-breeze. Beyond this margin rise the first spurs of the mountains, or immediately descend into the deep, clear waters in the form of bold capes. If this coast yields to some in variety of outline, and is wanting in those combinations of sinuous bays and sea-thrown islands which lend such beauty to the landscapes of western Asia Minor and to the European shore of the Mediterranean Sea, it is surpassed by none in distinctness of character, in singleness of effect. Day after day it is the same long belt of mountains always following the shore, the same long series of parallel ridges rising roughly parallel to the shore. The persistence of the range, the regularity of the system, the many signs along the seaboard of an ever-increasing development in the scale of the mountain walls which lie behind—all contribute to the growing consciousness that this foot of the barrier, the pleasing inlets of this shore, are but the threshold of some commanding piece of natural architecture of which we long to realise the plan. While the imagination is stimulated by this largeness of feature, the eye also is pleased. Groves of lofty fir trees clothe the slopes and climb the summits, standing out on the undulating backs of the ridges against the light of the sky. Wherever the soil favours, there are pretty orchards, and an abundant growth of plants and trees. Nature strikes the first note of that “evergreenness” for which the coast of Kolchis has been famed.

Towards mid-day we are holding up for a well-defined headland, projecting towards the north. It is distinguished by bold bluffs, breaking off in the form of cliffs before they reach the water’s edge, and by a succession of deep valleys which descend on either side to the margin of the shore. It is the promontory of the “sacred mountain”—Hieron Oros, now called Yoros, Ieros, or simply Oros—and it forms the western border of that series of smaller indentations which make up the beautiful bay of Trebizond. Platana, most picturesque of little settlements, nestles well under the shelter of this cape upon the west, when once you have doubled the points; while on the eastern side of the bay, exposed to the strong north-westerly winds of the seaboard, lies the site of the old city of Trebizond. From this port starts the principal avenue of communication between Turkish Armenia and the sea; and beyond the mountains, on the south of this wild coast range, now traversed by a metalled road, lie the plains of the Armenian tableland. The width of this mountain belt which borders Armenia—this continuous chain of latitudinal ridges which, rising one behind and higher than the other, lead up like a ladder to the edge of the Armenian plateau—is on this section of the range a direct distance of nearly fifty miles. When the roses are blowing in the gardens of the seaboard, the Armenian rivers may be bound with ice; an unbroken sheet of snow may dazzle the eyes of the traveller, as he penetrates from this border country of parallel crests and depressions to the open landscapes of the tableland.

Fifty miles of intricate mountain country, inhabited at all periods by a sparse and little civilised population of doubtful or mixed race! The fact goes far towards explaining the isolation of Armenia, the remoteness throughout history of the great grain-growing plains of the interior from the coast towns of the Black Sea. While the Greek cities of the seaboard, sheltered behind the barrier of the range, found a natural and almost uninterrupted connection with the main currents of Western history and Western life, the Armenian country and people, full exposed to the revolutions of Asia, belonged essentially to the East.

Yet these crumbling walls and towers, emerging at intervals from a leafy overgrowth of creepers and trees, claim a larger share of our attention than a merely passing notice of the port of Trebizond. For, in the first place, no traveller, about to enter the interior by this well-known and well-beaten route, can fail to undergo the spell which belongs to these ruins, or to feel his interest aroused by the monuments which still remain here of an empire long forgotten in the West. Nor will a mind which has been fed upon Western literature ignore the importance of realising the events of Western history as they touch this remote shore. The annals of Trebizond, while they illustrate and in themselves to a great extent resume the fortunes of these coast towns, were joined by a thread which was seldom severed to the web of Western things.

August 16.—The morning is the time to arrive at Trebizond, perhaps to wake when the ship lies secure at anchor, while a fresh land-wind blows. The vessel coming from the west crosses the bay from Cape Ieros to an answering headland in the east, and does not bring up till she has doubled this lesser promontory and closed or almost closed the wide bay from sight. The anchorage lies at the foot of the eastern suburb of the city, now the most flourishing portion of the town, and the suburb mounts the back of the little promontory, and descends to the water on the opposite or western side. The inlet which recedes from the cape is not deep or extensive, and the shelter which it offers is so partial that in stormy weather a ship may be obliged to run for Platana, and seek shelter under the lee of Cape Ieros, now some fifteen miles away. This configuration of the shore may be said to give two faces to the site of Trebizond. While the ancient city with the ruins looks seawards and westwards, commanding the softer landscape of the bay, to the anchorage belongs an easterly aspect, and a view past the estuary of the famous river Pyxitis along the wildest portion of the coast range.

Facing the anchorage, on the east of the white houses which climb the western skirts of the rising land, a bold cliff towers up above the water with abrupt walls of dark rock. The face of this cliff is almost bare of vegetation; but the summit, which is flat, is completely covered with a soft carpet of old turf. The elevation of this lofty platform above the sea-level is 850 feet. East and west the hill descends with gentler gradients, on the one side to the estuary of the Pyxitis, and on the other to the little cape and to the town; but whether you approach it from the city or from the river valley, the slopes are no light matter to climb. On the south it joins on to the half-circle of the coast range, which recedes from beyond the river in a wide amphitheatre, embracing both the bays and all the town. Thus the town itself is shut off from the level ground about the river by this peninsula of table-topped rock; and while one road climbs these slopes to unite the two valleys, the other winds outwards along the foot of the cliff, following the curve of the shore.

I remember that, when for the first time I looked out upon the city, I was at once impressed with the manner in which this bold natural feature corresponded to the name of the town (Τραπεζοῦς). Could the shape which is denoted by the figure of a table be presented by Nature in a more convincing manner than by this mass of rock, towering up above the sea and from the valleys to a summit which is almost perfectly flat? Yet the name does not appear to take its origin in a justification at once so striking and so clear, but rather to derive from the configuration of the ground in the western bay upon which the ancient fortress was built. Still this platform is surely the most impressive characteristic of the site of Trebizond. The Turks, who have no antiquarian sympathies, apply to it the bald and undiscriminating appellation of Boz Tepe, the grey hill, basing the name upon the colour of the trachytic rock of which the hill is composed. The Greeks of old knew it as the Mount of Mithros—Mithrios—from a statue of the god Mithras which used to stand upon this elevated spot. It is not easy to imagine a more delightful ground of vantage from which to overlook the town and command the coast. You may step a distance of some 500 paces by 200 on a level surface of springy turf, with no object between you and the wide expanse about you, in air which is at once full of sun and vigorous; and, if the day be clear, you may descry beyond the endless stretch of water the faint blue line of distant Caucasus closing the horizon in the east.

The anchorage of Trebizond receives the first flush of morning; a mellow light is thrown upon the terraces of the eastern suburb, circling seawards down the lower slopes of Mount Mithros to the point of the little cape. Here and there among the buildings rows of tall cypresses still hold the shadows of night; but the white faces of the houses soon dispel the darkness, and their glass windows reflect in a glow of dazzling splendour the lurid brilliance of the rising sun. Nowhere else than in these landscapes of the Black Sea and the Caspian is the dawn more essentially the “rosy-fingered,” or the sea at sunrise “the glass-green.” As the rays commence to break, the wind freshens and the black cypresses wave and sway. Down the coast, beyond the dark cliff of Mithros, the mountains of the seaboard are massed in savage parapets beneath the rising sun; the faithful clouds cling to their slopes or float above them, a sky of cold, silvery greys. Westwards, above the point of the little promontory, under the immediate lee of which we lie, you just discern the softer setting of the greater bay itself, as the outline of the range sweeps in long undulations far out into the western sea. The day wakes; the colours start; the world of pinks and opals disappears. The aspect of the town is warm and genial, even in winter, when the background of broken ridges look their wildest and the sparse fir trees stand out darkly from the snow. Sunny meadows and flashes of green turf caress the traveller, who may have journeyed through the long Eastern summer and autumn in countries where scarcely a blade of grass grows. The shore is soon astir, and the cries of the boatmen are carried down the wind. Large, high-prowed galleys bear down upon us, the crews racing for the first berth. We are surrounded by a swarm of ragged human beings, shouting, scrambling, gesticulating, as their boats and heavily laden barges drive against our tall iron sides.

The steamers anchor at some little distance from the shore, and it takes a long pull, at a time when the wind is setting off the land, to reach the little mole. The shore-boats are manned with ill-miened youngsters, whose clamour never ceases from ship-side to landing-stage. On the quay are arrayed the customs officers and their assistants, motley groups in which the cast-off wardrobes of Europe mingle with the coloured cottons of the East. What a relief to escape from all this turmoil, to repose for a few minutes in a spacious coffee-house, rising high above the harbour and the noise! A youth is just completing his lustral service of the morning; the floor has been swept and watered, the nargilehs are coiled—the peaceful figure of Ion rises in the mind.

Our road leads up the hillside, at first by the town garden and wide streets, lined with houses and shops built in European style, and then through the narrow alleys which intersect the Christian quarters, a labyrinth of winding ways. These streets of Trebizond have a width not exceeding six or eight feet, and sometimes less, and are lined by the dull walls of garden enclosures which shut out all prospect over the town. A raised pavement runs along them, sometimes on both sides of the way, and always on one. Here and there the fresh green leaves of a fig tree overhang the walls, or the cherry-laurel with its clusters of claret-coloured fruit, or the pink flowers of the oleander. The houses are, for a great part, quite Eastern in character—blank, featureless wall, broken only at mid-height by little windows with gratings made of laced strips or mortised cubes of wood. But the modern villa is rapidly taking their place.

What waifs of all the ages may be met within these alleys! Yet I think, and our Consul, Mr. Longworth, seems inclined to agree with me, that the Greek type prevails. Our conversation turns upon these race questions; one can indeed never cease learning what fallacious guides in such questions religion and nationality are. There are whole villages on this seaboard whose inhabitants are Mussulmans, and would resent being called by any other name than Osmanli; yet their Greek origin is established both by history and by the traditions which they themselves still in part retain. Thus take Surmeneh and Of, two considerable villages on the east of Trebizond. These versatile Greeks are as famous now for their theological eminence as they were formerly under the Eastern Empire, with this difference, that whereas in those days they supplied the Church with bishops, it is now mollahs that they furnish to Islam. Yet, fanatical as they are, they still hold to certain customs which connect them with the old faith they once served with such distinction, and have, no doubt, since persecuted with equal zeal. Under the stress of illness the Madonna again makes her appearance, her image is again suspended above the sick-bed; the sufferer sips the forbidden wine from the old cup of the Communion, which still remains a treasured object with the whole community, much as they might be puzzled to tell you why. As we are talking, a little girl happens to pass down the lane, a child of some ten years. Her limbs are scarcely covered by a loose cotton skirt, although her complexion has not suffered from the sun. The waxen texture of the flesh, the transparent colouring, and the rich setting of auburn hair remind one of the favourites of Venetian painters and of faces seen in North Italian towns. It is besides only natural that the people of this city should possess a strain of Italian blood; not so many centuries ago the Genoese controlled the commerce and menaced the independence of Trebizond.

Fig. 2. Trebizond from above the Head of the Western Ravine.

It is a long climb from the anchorage to the British Consulate, which, although within the limits of this suburb of gardens, has an elevation of at least 150 feet. Still, the site has the advantages of a middle position between the old fortified city in the western bay below us and the open walks around Boz Tepe. And if the mornings be devoted to the town and the ruins, the evenings may be spent on that airy platform or upon the lonely slopes of the adjacent hills.

There are many pleasant spots which, in the course of these rambles, invite a view over the town. The landscape which you overlook is that of the west—the vague succession of endless little capes and inlets, disappearing and combining to form the single feature of a wide and open bay. Below you lies the old city, mediæval walls and towers, overgrown by a canopy of leaves, gently sloping to the sea (Fig. [2]). Yet, however beautiful in itself may be the scene that expands before you, it is rather upon the thoughts and the memories which it raises that the mind is inclined to dwell. The sea is not so much the blue floor without limits to which the sinuous outline of the coast descends, as the open thoroughfare which leads across to Europe, joining Asia to the West. The fir-clad ridges, which close the prospect towards the interior, are rather the first outrunners of that wide belt of troughs and ridges in which so many armies have become entrapped, than the background of sterner features which supports the peaceful landscape in which the ruined burgh lies. The scene itself is the same that brought tears to the eyes of Xenophon, and which was associated in the mind of the Emperor Hadrian with his first view of this shore and sea.

But the morning is not the time, nor is this the occasion for such retrospective thoughts. Fresh from sleep, our first interest is the ivy-grown ruins of Trapezus, which lie far below us in the western bay. We descend from the slopes about Boz Tepe, by the neat villas and garden enclosures of the eastern suburb, to the ravine which separates this suburb, with the anchorage and commercial quarter, from the site of the old fortified town. It is indeed a position not readily forgotten and not easy to mistake. If the descriptions of Trapezus which have come down to us portray in a defective manner the many remarkable features which are characteristic of the place, they, at least, leave no doubt as to the identity of the historical city with the position of these ruins. At the foot of the precipitous slopes of Boz Tepe, on the western side of that table-topped hill, the surface of the ground is broken by two deep ravines, which, at a narrow interval, descend from the interior to the seaboard about at right angles to the margin of the shore. They represent the lower course of two of those wooded valleys of which the landscape towards Cape Ieros contains a succession, various in feature, but in character the same. Peculiar to these two ravines is their close proximity to one another; the streams which flow along them are only about 400 yards apart as they approach the sea. Indeed, at one point, over 1000 yards from the coast, the mass of rock by which they are separated forms a neck or isthmus of which the top is less than 60 yards across. In this manner a site is constituted which is bounded on three sides by natural defences—on the west and east by the ravines, and on the north by the sea. Draw a wall across the neck or narrowest portion of the rock, and you at once enclose the figure of an irregular parallelogram, of which the fourth side is the short cross-wall. These natural features, so favourable for defence, have not escaped the ingenuity of man; the cross-wall has been built in the shape of a massive tower and citadel, while the inner sides of the ravines have been lined with walls and castellations, which still frown above the leafy abysses and the streams rustling through the shade.

PLAN OF THE ANCIENT FORTIFICATIONS OF TREBIZOND

as they exist at the present day
drawn out on the spot in 1898

In appearance the protected enclosure, with its flanking ravines, has been described by some writers as a peninsular plateau, while to others it has suggested the shape of a table and seemed to justify the name of Trebizond (Τραπεζοῦς). Neither likeness appears to me to be quite happily chosen. Both contain in themselves the conception of a disparity of levels, the plateau of a stage raised above the surrounding country, the table above the surface of the floor. Such are not the characteristics of the site. The metaphor of a table seems the more inappropriate, inasmuch as the least one might expect of such an object is that it should have a flat and horizontal top. This site possesses neither of these qualities. On the one hand, the upper portion, which supports the citadel, rises above the lower like a dais or step; while, on the other, the plane of the ground is an inclined plane, and follows the general configuration of the country, shelving from the hills towards the sea.

Yet these images and the impressions from which they derive are no doubt founded upon real conditions. The isolation of the figure, together with its elevation—not indeed above the levels which adjoin it on either side, but above the level of the sea—these are the two factors which have supplied the real substance of such impressions. The first of these features would appeal to the eye with more distinctness, were it not for the thick growth of trees and underwood which rises from the floors and up the slopes of the ravines, and almost conceals the escarpment of their sides. The depth of the gulfs may be gauged by the following measurement made at the head of the western ravine. Standing at the bottom of the abyss, the rock which supports the citadel and palace overtops you by about 150 feet at the highest point. The width across them, from cliff to cliff, varies considerably, according as each gulf opens or closes in; the length of each of the two bridges which span the ravines is about 100 paces. Both ravines tend to flatten as they descend towards the shore, or in other words, to increase in width and diminish in depth. As for the elevation of the enclosure, it is of course most considerable at the narrow isthmus and the citadel. This highest portion, containing the keep and palace, is about 200 feet above the sea.

It is plain from the description which has just been given that the characteristic features of the site attain their greatest development in that part of the enclosure which is most remote from the shore; that it is there the protecting gulfs are deepest, and the rock loftiest which they flank. Indeed, during the Byzantine and earlier Comnenian periods the fortress was confined to this upper portion, and the outer wall on the side of the sea was drawn from gulf to gulf at a distance of about 460 yards from the present margin of the shore. A few sentences may suffice to present the plan of the fortifications, as it may be traced among the ruins that remain. At the very head of the formation came the keep and citadel, the outer wall being drawn across the narrow isthmus between the two ravines; this was the weakest point in the whole circumference of the fortress, and the works were strongest upon this side. Built into this outer wall stands a massive square tower, which rises boldly above the battlements and faces the approaches from the south. The ground shelves upwards almost from the immediate foot of the tower to the amphitheatre of hills which surround the bay. Thus the fortress is commanded by the slopes upon the south, where already it is by nature most vulnerable. It was from the south that its assailants delivered their principal attacks: the Goths, the Georgians, the Seljuks, the Turkomans, the Ottoman Turks. All the space inside the wall and between the two ravines was filled up at this uppermost part of the fortress, first by the keep, and then by the palace itself; the citadel served as the kingly residence, and the wall with the bold windows which rises along the edge of the western ravine was alike fortress and palace wall. This uppermost fortress or citadel, with the palace of the king, was separated from the lower but more extensive portion of the site by a cross-wall, equal in height to the walls along the ravines, and supported at either end by towers. So much loftier is this upper stage than the stage which lies below it that, whereas the palace, which occupies the most elevated point, towers high above the battlements of the cross-wall, the base of this wall itself overtops the highest buildings of the second and lower stage.

Below the cross-wall, with its massive double gate, lay that part of the fortress which contained the cathedral and public buildings, and formed the inhabited portion of the original fortified town. Like the citadel, it was protected on two sides by the ravines, lined on their inner edge by a lofty wall seven feet in thickness, with towers at intervals. A second cross-wall, extending from ravine to ravine, was its bulwark on the side of the sea, and constituted the outer rampart of the enclosure as it existed in the ancient form. This outer rampart followed the edge of a natural declivity in the surface of the shelving ground, and presented a bold front to the lower levels lying between it and the shore.

The third and lowest stage of the fortified enclosure filled the space that yet remained between this outer wall of the city and the immediate margin of the sea. The ravines open outwards as they approach the seaboard, and the figure widens which they bound; but on the other hand, the sides of these natural barriers flatten and take the surface of the adjoining ground. Thus the plan of the lower fortress did not display the same subservience to the natural features of the site, and was protracted on the west beyond the outer margin of the western ravine. Indeed, the area enclosed by this later work of the fourteenth century was considerably greater than that of the ancient burgh; and in proportion as it was deficient in natural defences, so it was stronger in those of art. A wall six feet and a half in thickness, with towers at irregular intervals, surrounded the new work; and, except on the side of the sea, this rampart was flanked by a second and lower wall with a moat on its outer side. But, although the lower fortress formed a third and separate unity, overstepping the natural limits of the site, it was connected in the closest manner with the upper enclosure, and with the walls flanking the ravines. On the east the new ramparts joined the old wall, and continued its direction in a straight line to the shore, at which point they turned at right angles, along the shore. Thus the old cross-wall was completely covered by the new fortifications, and the principal gate of the old city, leading through that wall and facing the sea, instead of standing at the outer extremity of the fortress, now became situated in about the middle of the fortified plan. The new wall along the sea was protracted further westwards than the western extremity of the old cross-wall; it was drawn across the mouth of the western ravine, and far overlapped the parallel line of the old wall. Some little distance west of the depression it again changed direction, and stretched up towards the south, until it reached a point opposite to the bridge which leads out from the middle fortress, and over 100 paces from the edge of the ravine. From this point, which was emphasised by a rectangular tower of extraordinary size, the line of wall was taken at right angles, and met the margin of the ravine.

This threefold disposition of the walls and fortifications is characteristic of the plan of the fortified city, and forms a feature well noted in the descriptions of the topographers and still distinguished in popular speech. Indeed, even at the present day, when most of the great gates have disappeared, and houses with several storeys obscure the plan, the hillside is lined by three complete fortresses, each separated from the other and one higher than another, yet all three welded closely into one. The appearance of the city in the days of her splendour must have justified her reputation as “Queen of the Euxine,” and lent colour to her claim to be the capital of a restored Roman Empire of the East. Between extensive suburbs, filled with busy streets and markets, rising from the shore on either hand, through a labyrinth of gardens and garden-houses, clustered on the higher slopes, the two converging lines of massive parapets and towers mounted slowly up the shelving ground. The further they receded from the margin of the seaboard, the clearer grew the essential features of the site—the ravines opening darkly at the immediate foot of either wall, the walls closely following the irregular course of the chasms, and now rising, now declining, along the uneven surface of the cliffs. Near the head of the figure stood the royal palace, raised high above the massive works of the citadel, deeply moated by the sister gulfs on either side. Broad windows opened from the royal reception hall of white marble to the varied prospects on every side, while within, the vast apartment was adorned with rich paintings, the portraits of successive holders of the imperial office, their insignia and arms. On the east, beyond the abyss, the slope gathered gradually to the side of Mithros, the table-topped hill, in which direction, just opposite the palace, the church and fortified enclosure of St. Eugenius crowned an almost isolated site which was flanked on the further side by a third and lesser ravine. Towards the interior, on the side of the narrow isthmus, the view ranged wide, above the battlements, over the hills encircling the broad bay; while the rising ground, opening upwards from the tongue of the isthmus, was occupied by the theatre and by the extensive walled enclosure of the polo-ground or hippodrome. A royal gate gave access from the palace to these pleasure-places, the distance of a short walk from the wall; and through this gate the imperial party and their brilliant court would pass to their marble seats above the race-course, whence the whole landscape of city and field and ocean lay outspread at their feet. If the several divisions of the fortified enclosure may be described as so many steps, or shelving terraces, rising one behind another from the shore, then the race-course outside the walls will be the fourth stage of the platform, the last and highest, and the fairest of all. Indeed the prospect over the walls and towers of the city to the distant sea beyond must at all times have been one of surpassing beauty, whether seen from the windows of the Imperial residence, or from these airy heights above the town. To the palace was displayed the long perspective of the city architecture outlined against the blue bay—the massive cross-walls cleaving the crowded quarters, the domes of the churches glancing in the brilliant sunlight, and, interspersed, quiet respites of shade and leafiness, where some portico with frescoed walls and row of marble pillars recalled the habits of the classical age. From the higher standpoint of the race-course all the rich detail of this scene was blended and subdued; the eye would follow the long line of parapets and towers descending by the side of the sinuous streak of verdure which marked the course of the western ravine. The palace windows, which still rise above the head of that ravine, commanded the landscape of the west, the wide bay with its peaceful setting of cultivated hillsides stretching seawards to the distant cape.

Among the most pleasing and, perhaps, not the least striking feature in the composition of these scenes must at all times have been the luxuriance and variety of the vegetation which is natural to this soil. The necessary moisture is provided, not by stagnant pools and marshes, as in the country watered by the Kolchian rivers further east, but by salubrious springs, bubbling from the surface of the rock and collecting in rustling streams. The sun is indeed the fiery orb of Eastern landscapes; but the climate is tempered by the chilling winds from across the sea, bringing rain and mist in their train. The outcome of these conditions is the simultaneous exuberance of the trees and plants which flourish upon the coasts of the Mediterranean and of the leafy giants of our Northern woods; side by side with shady thickets of chestnut, elm, oak and hazel, groves of cypress, laurel and olive grace the shore. The wild vine hangs in festoons from the branches, and in sheltered places the orange tree, the lemon, and the pomegranate thrive and yield their fruit. All our fruits are found in the well-stocked gardens, while the fig of Trebizond is of old as famous as the grapes of Tripoli and the cherry of Kerasun. Cucumbers are cultivated, and heavy pumpkins, and tobacco, and Indian corn, with its reed-like stalks and luscious leaves. The beautiful pink flowers of the oleander may be seen rising above some orchard wall. In the middle of the seventeenth century we are told of upwards of thirty thousand gardens and vineyards inscribed in the city registers, and at that time the slopes about Boz Tepe were completely covered with vines. But it is on the western rather than on the eastern side of the fortress that Nature has most freely lavished her gifts; and on no spot with more abundance or greater effectiveness than on the western ravine. The beauties of that valley, almost as we see them to-day, have been described in glowing language by Cardinal Bessarion in the fifteenth century, himself a son of Trebizond, and by the historian of the Comnenian empire whose warm imagination was kindled by scenes which recalled and intensified the graces of his native Tyrol.[1] A path leads down from the suburb on the west into the shade and freshness of the gorge, through thickets of lofty forest-trees, their leafy branches laced together by wild vines. Even at mid-day, when the sun hangs cloudless over the narrow vista, the rays scarcely penetrate to the deep shadows of the evergreens—a luxuriant undergrowth of myrtle, laurel and ivy, rising from the floor and up the cliffs. From the highest point of the castle rock some 150 feet above you, amongst a wild confusion of creepers and trees, the bold wall of the palace, now reduced to an empty skeleton, still stands up against the sky; and the broad windows which once opened from the emperor’s apartments still overlook the verdant scene below. Past mossy banks, upon which the iris and primrose flourish, through leafy brakes, where trees of laurel hide the ground, the little stream cascades into the laps of the hollows or plashes over ledges of hard rock.

But we are anticipating on our walk, which has not yet brought us further than the edge of the eastern ravine. We cross the bridge, and at once find ourselves within the fortified enclosure, which is traversed by a broad road. Following that road, we are passing through the middle fortress—that part of the site which constituted the inhabited quarter of the walled city in its original form. Now as in ancient times it is crowded by buildings, while a considerable portion is taken up by the Serai, or Government House (No. 17 on plan of Trebizond and surroundings), which is situated about in the middle of the space between the ravines, on the south side of our road. Here the pasha will be sitting within an inner room, a bundle of papers by his side on the divan. Entering the court, you have on one side this palace, thronged with applicants, and, on the other, the iron gratings of a prison, banding the faces of the captives as they stare on the scene below. Past the gateway of the Serai, a narrow way leads up the enclosure, diverging at right angles from the road which joins the ravines. It conducts us to the upper fortress through a quarter filled by private houses, and inhabited exclusively by Mohammedans. A walk of some two or three hundred yards brings us to the foot of the lofty cross-wall, which is almost as fresh to-day as when it was reared. By a steep incline we enter a gateway into a hollow tower adjoining the outer wall on the east, which constitutes the only passage into the citadel.

The massive ancient gate still rests upon its hinges, its rusty iron plates riddled with bullets. A second gate, placed at right angles to the first in the further wall, gives issue from the tower. The citadel, like the middle fortress, is occupied by modern houses; but they are less frequent, and are almost confined to the spaces immediately neighbouring the cross-wall. There is some difficulty in examining the extensive ancient works which still in part remain upon the site. One of the principal buildings is occupied by military stores, and is forbidden ground. I contrive to effect an entrance, and find it quite empty—a palpable reason for such exclusive measures. Then the walls which enclose the gardens of the private dwellings are no less the discreet protectors of the life of the harem than the veil to hide the squalor of faded opulence. While one of us is taking readings with the prismatic compass, the whole quarter is raised by the protestations of a young minx, who will insist that she is the object of his unmannerly stares. I have said that the palace is now a mere skeleton; a rambling old house, with a picturesque overhanging roof, fills a portion of the ground plan of the royal apartments, where they overlooked the western ravine. We are tardily given admission by a female voice. From an embrasure in the massive wall of the fortress, just below the row of eight arched windows, which stand up blank against the sky, we feast our eyes upon the charming view over the western ravine, following its sinuous outline into the background of leafy hills, or resting upon the cypresses and minaret of the Khatunieh mosque among the villas on the opposite margin of the abyss.

Within this outer wall, a little south of our standpoint, a square tower rises above the outline of the battlements, displaying in its upper storey the interior of a spacious apartment with windows opening upon the landscape. The fragment of a wall juts out towards us from beside the tower; and three large windows, of which two are double, with slim dividing pillars, have been spared to it by the ravages of time. Just north of us, three more windows rise from the outer wall, on a higher plane than those above our heads. Both rows are but the remains of much longer series, once the life and pride of these grim parapets. They enable us to reconstruct the ancient splendour of the imperial residence, which, day by day, is slowly passing towards the world of unsubstantial memories, to share the fate of sacred Troy and of King Priam, rich in flocks.

Above the palace, within the narrowing tongue of the circumvallation, the space is occupied by the substructures of the keep, over which we clamber to the parapets of the outer wall. Beside us, the square tower at the extreme end of the fortress frowns out upon the knife-like ridge between the ravines. It is probable that this tower is composed of a solid mass, for one cannot trace any sign of a passage in. The battlements of the wall rise to a height of nearly 200 feet above the western ravine. Just on the east of the tower is placed the only entrance to the citadel from the side of the ridge. It consists of a long passage, flanked by a parallel outer wall, and abutting on a huge angular tower. But the inner doorway is now walled up, and one is obliged to retrace one’s steps to the middle fortress, in order to pass without the walls.

The gate is situated just below the entrance to the citadel, in the wall on the east. It too is furnished with double doors, which, like their neighbours, have been riddled by musket fire. South of this gateway there is just enough room between the wall and the edge of the eastern ravine to permit of a narrow road. Leaving the interior of the fortress, one is taken along this road, with the wooded precipice on one hand and on the other the ivy-grown battlements. Peasants, carrying baskets, pass by on their way to market; and beneath a fig tree, teeming with fruit, some Mussulman women, resting from their wayfaring, cower within their veils as we approach. The colossal angular tower projects from the head of the irregular wall towards the leafy abyss, a large inscription gleaming white upon the wall which faces us, the record of the conquest of Mohammed II.

But the point at which you pause is at the head of the fortification, beneath the soaring escarpment of the square tower. It is the same site upon which the peoples from the remote recesses of Asia have stood with the lust of conquest in their eyes. On the opposite bank of the eastern ravine the drum-shaped dome of St. Eugenius rises from among a cluster of red-roofed villas. It was there that the Seljuk sultan issued his threats and insults, while the Greek emperor fasted and prayed. From within the limits of that same sanctuary were heard the shouts of the revellers, mingling with the voices of their concubines. And a white minaret proclaims the event of the long and unequal struggle between the full-blooded followers of the Prophet and the emaciated children of the Cross.

The tower itself has evidently been built at a later period than the wall from which it rises in a continuous face. The colour of the stone is slightly paler, and an inscription, now much decayed, attests it to be the work of the Emperor John the Fourth, the last but one of the Comnenian dynasty. The ground widens like a fan from the foot of this tower, and the ravines, which have almost met, diverge and become great valleys, stretching into the bosom of the hills. Within that ampler space, a few hundred yards south of the fortress, one may still recognise the enclosure of the hippodrome and the great gateway on its northern side. The wall still rises in places to a height of from six to ten feet, but all the interior structures have disappeared. A field of tobacco grows upon the site. Adjoining the gateway, and facing the palace, one is impressed by the shape and appearance of a projecting tongue of land with a flat top. The theatre may once have stood upon this spot.

The ancient churches of Trebizond, some converted into mosques and others into public baths, are among the most interesting relics which the town contains. Retracing our steps to the middle fortress and to the road which joins the two ravines, we have almost reached the bridge over the westerly depression before attaining the old cathedral, sacred to the golden-headed Virgin, of which the southern wall borders our road on the north (No. 18). How bare and bleak it looks, shorn of its southern and western porches, and covered with a thick coating of whitewash! A little court, paved with flagstones, adjoins it on the east, over which you pass to an entrance at the north-east corner which has destroyed the side apse on that side. If you scrutinise the outer wall of the principal apse, you may still distinguish beneath the whitewash a design of figures in mosaic, one of which perhaps represents the seated Virgin. Time has worn down the few sculptured mouldings of which any trace remains. There is little to attract the eye in this mangled group of gables, surmounted by the drum of a duodecagonal dome. On the northern side rises the minaret, adjoining the principal entrance which has made use of the old porch on the north. Four marble pillars with Ionic capitals, probably the spoil of some pagan temple, support the roof of this spacious porch. We are about to enter, when we are called aside to observe an old fountain in the court on the east. It contains a marble slab with a Greek inscription, which is illegible; and the water issues from a much-worn bronze spout, representing the head of a serpent or dragon, which is said to have belonged to a bronze model of such a monster, killed by the spear of Alexius the First. Near the fountain is a tomb, still maintained in good order, in which repose the remains of a shepherd youth to whom the townspeople attribute the capture of the fortress by the Ottoman Turks. The story runs that Mohammed the Second, foiled by the strength of the citadel, had recourse to a final expedient of which the result should determine the alternatives of further effort or abandonment of the siege. A number of shots were to be fired from a cannon at the chain which supported the drawbridge. Should it be severed, it would be a signal for a renewal of operations; in the contrary case the siege was to be raised. The experiment failed; the sultan broke up his camp and removed the bulk of his army, leaving, however, the loaded cannon still in site. A young shepherd, happening to pass by, was prompted by the hardihood of his years to try his skill at the difficult mark. He discharged the gun, and the drawbridge fell. This child of a short-lived future sped to the camp of Mohammed, who was making his way up the valley of the Pyxitis towards Baiburt. But his story was derided, and the sultan, in a fit of anger, caused him to be killed. The rage of the despot was turned to grief when the confirmation reached him of this miraculous exploit. His return was followed by the fall of the city; and he endeavoured to atone for his rash action by loading his victim with posthumous rewards. Over the coffin one may still see the ball suspended which decided the fate of Trebizond. And the martyr is known by a name which repeats the sultan’s sorrowful exclamation: “Khosh Oghlan,” or “Well done! Oghlan.”

The interior of the mosque produces an effect of extraordinary massiveness, with its bulky piers supporting the dome, with the walls which join these piers to the walls of the church and screen off the aisles from the open space beneath the dome. Except for the two inner columns of the porch, not a single pillar is to be seen. The aisles are narrow, and their ceilings low; they are surmounted by a gallery, from which you look through low, arched apertures into the nave. The Turks have placed a wooden stage in the northern arm of the church, between the two walls which screen off the aisle. This erection faces their altar, and is reserved for their women; you reach it by a staircase placed inside the building, in front of the north-east entrance. A doorway leads from this wooden structure into the old gallery over the aisle, through which you pass to the women’s gallery in the original design, which fills the space above the ceilings of the narthex and exo-narthex on the western side of the mosque. Two lofty vaulted openings display the interior to this gallery; while the wall between narthex and exo-narthex is pierced by three arches in a similar style. The door on the west in the storey below, which in Christian times gave access through these outer spaces into the body of the church, is no longer used, now that the religious focus of the building has been changed from the apse to the southern arm between the aisles. The exo-narthex has a width of 18 feet, and the narthex of 9 feet 7 inches. The piers upon which repose the vaulted ceilings of these courts are of such thickness that the entire space, measured from the inner side of the outer wall to the outer side of the wall of the nave, amounts to 37 feet 5 inches. The interior measurements of the church proper are a length of 93 feet 6 inches from the commencement of the nave to the head of the apse, and a breadth of only 50 feet 5 inches. It is well lit from windows in the apse and along the walls; but the twelve windows in the dome are small. Beautiful marble plaques of various colours, and designs in mosaic, may still be admired in the apse; but there is an almost total lack of ornament elsewhere. As to the date of the building, it is ascribed by Texier to the Grand-Comneni; with much less knowledge I hesitate to offer the opinion that the design belongs to an earlier period.

From this mosque of the middle fortress, Orta Hisar Jamisi, the ancient cathedral, it is but a few steps to the bridge over the western ravine. Like its fellow on the east of the enclosure, it consists of a lofty stone embankment, with a single narrow arch through which the stream flows. The prospect on either side is of great beauty, while the deep shadows of the vegetation, rising from the floor of the ravine, rest the eye and refresh the sense. Towards the south, beyond an irregular line of ivy-grown parapets, and towers of varying features and size, the stately works of palace and citadel rise against the sky; while in the direction of the sea, where the depression flattens and is lost in a maze of houses, the tiers of red-tiled roofs are pierced by a double series of battlements and embowered forts. The wall of the middle fortress is seen extending for some distance along the uneven edge of its rocky support; but it is overpowered in the landscape by the outer line of walls, which, starting from the opposite side of the ravine, are drawn in a long perspective to the shore.

Our goal is now the famous church of Hagia Sophia; it is situated upon the coast on the west of the city, at a distance of over a mile from the walls (No. 25). The bridge leads over into the western suburb, and for a short space you follow the outer wall of the lower fortress, stretching westwards at right angles to the ravine. On the right hand this solid masonry and a massive rectangular tower; on the left, a little further on, the cypresses of the Turkish burying-field, the leaning white headstones with their gilt Arabic inscriptions better disposed and tended than is usually the case. We have passed the street which turns upwards to the mosque Khatunieh (No. 20), the spacious and still well-ordered mosque and medresseh which keeps alive the memory of the mother of Selim the First. Like the middle and lower fortress, this western suburb is inhabited for the most part by Mohammedans—what a contrast to the bustling town on the east of the city where the Christian quarters lie! There, busy streets, lined with the broad-paned windows of offices and shops; here, the silent graveyard and widely scattered dwellings which seem to shrink from contact with life. A brighter aspect belongs to the meidan or open place, to which we pass and which we cross (Kavak Meidan, or plane tree square)—an extensive stretch of green turf, resembling an English common, where in old times the jerid or spear exercise was performed. Several tombs (kumbets) are to be seen on this grassy lawn, but I do not know to whom they have been raised. A little later we have left the last settlements behind us, and are winding outwards towards the sea-shore.

Fig. 3. Trebizond: Hagia Sophia.

The church of Hagia Sophia, or the Divine Wisdom, now converted into a mosque, has been described as one of the most interesting monuments of Byzantine architecture, sculpture, and painting that time has spared.[2] This appreciation can only be partially tested by the traveller of the present day, because the frescos which once covered the interior of the building have been daubed over with successive coats of whitewash. It is possible that when the time comes for restoring the building to Christian worship, or at least, as we may hope, for preserving it as a relic to instruct an enlightened age, the scales may fall away and disclose in some of their ancient brightness the solemn faces and gorgeous robes of the Grand-Comneni as they looked down upon the congregation of monks and pilgrims six centuries ago. In the meanwhile we may consult those descriptions of the paintings which have come down to us in the accounts of modern travellers more fortunate than ourselves, for at some periods a portion of the plaster has fallen and revealed the rich work below. Of the sculpture and architectural merits we are able to judge on the spot, for, although the Turks have introduced some alterations in the structure, they are too clumsy to mislead.

The first view of the building, high-seated on the left hand where the road debouches upon the sands, at once exhibits the beauties which are peculiar to it: the choice of site and the skilful grouping of the component parts (Fig. [3]). A broad terrace or esplanade, which is partly natural and in part supported by an embankment and a wall, forms the summit of a gentle slope which rises from the water beyond a fringe of cactus and leafy shrubs. The surface of the platform is flat and even, and is covered by a green carpet of turf. The prospect ranges wide across the bay to Cape Ieros, and seawards without limit over the waves. On the east, rising ground shuts out the city and the suburb, while on the south, the open landscape of hill and valley is felt rather than observed.

From the peaceful elevation of this pleasant terrace the well-preserved remains of an ancient monastery look down upon the shore. On the west, at the further extremity of the platform, a lofty square bell-tower or campanile stands out alone, like a sentinel, fronting the sea; just below it lies the church, a cluster of roofs and gables centring in a drum-shaped dome. Of the monastic buildings only one has been spared, a massive square edifice at the south-western corner of the platform, which is almost concealed by trees.

Fig. 4. Trebizond: Façade of Hagia Sophia on the South.

We mount the slope and reach the platform on the southern side, with the church between us and the blue waters of the bay. A custodian has been found in some hovel among the orchards, but no meaner object breaks the grassy surface of the terrace from which the building rises, the even masonry exposed from base to dome. Against the plain grey spaces of the walls which lie behind it, the rich façade of the southern entrance at once attracts the eye (Fig. [4]). It consists of a porch or lateral structure, which once gave access to a door in the main wall of the church. Two graceful marble pillars with Corinthian capitals supported the façade; but the Turks have closed this entrance and walled up the columns, which are only visible from the inside. The new work does not rise much higher than the tops of the capitals, and the openings of the three arches which spring from the pillars have been filled with window glass. Of these, the central arch is slightly pointed, and those on either side are round. A pleasing feature of the design is the bold rounded arch which spans the porch from one wall to the other, and envelops the three lesser vaultings and their marble columns within a broad band of unsculptured stone. On the outer side, a narrow beading of grapes and vine-leaves accentuates the studied absence of all ornament upon the masonry of the span; and the keystone is enriched by the figure of the single-headed eagle of the Comneni, with open talons and wings outspread. The space of wall which is framed in this stately manner, and which is supported by the pillars of the façade, forms a panel or panels which are admirably adapted to receive that style of decorative treatment in which Byzantine art excelled. About in the centre, the space is broken by a quatrefoil window, above which, and on either side, plaques of varied mosaic have been inserted into the wall. Below the window, and from end to end, runs a frieze in low relief, surmounted by an inscription in Greek, “Have mercy upon me, save me from my sins, O succour me, Lord, God, Holy! Holy!” In the frieze may be discerned among the shapes of plants and trees, rendered with the highest skill and with much grace, human figures which indeed have suffered mutilation, but which, like corresponding works of the Romanesque style, appear deformed in size. Adam lies asleep among the foliage of the garden; a serpent, coiled round a leafless trunk, confronts the standing figure of Eve. Of the mosaics two at least of the plaques have been removed or have perished; you see the vacant oblong spaces on either side of the quatrefoil. The largest panels contain geometrical patterns; but the most beautiful and best preserved, if perhaps the smallest, is composed of two doves and two sprays of pomegranate in white on a black ground. This plaque has been placed just above the window and below the talons of the royal bird.

The reader will have divined that the great charm of this façade lies as much in the skill of the design—the wide span of the arch above the lesser arches, and the pleasing combination of these forms with the vertical lines of walls and columns, and with the sharp angle of the roof—as in the decorative effect of delicate mouldings and elaborate sculptures, and of rich mosaics thrown on the grey stone. Porches of similar plan give access to the interior, both on the western and northern sides; but their tympana or panels are without ornament. The western porch has an Arab niche with a deep honeycomb moulding from which the outer arch springs, and this moulding is continued in the form of imposts above the capitals of the columns. That on the north is without any remarkable feature, except that the capitals, which are of fresh white marble, appear to be of much later date. They are without carving, but in each is cut a panel, bearing the figure of a Latin cross.

A walk round the building confirms the impression which a first view produced. It is the number of roofs at various levels, the different grouping of the gables at every turn, that arrests and pleases the eye. The walls themselves are of hewn stone, with plain mouldings, of which the most delicate runs round the apse and side chapels, above the windows, in a continuous band. On the face of the apse itself you see the eagle of the Grand-Comneni, set in panel in the wall.

The entrance to the mosque is through the porch on the west. It is much shorter or less deep than its two counterparts, but, unlike them, gives access through a marble doorway to a second vestibule or outer court. This court or narthex extends the whole width of the building, and is both lofty and well lit. A door opens from it into the church proper, an airy interior of pleasing proportions, into which the light streams from the twelve windows in the circumference of the dome (Fig. [5]). Four massive marble pillars with carved Byzantine capitals support the pendentives from which the dome springs; but the sharpness of the sculpture has been obliterated by thick coats of buff and green paint. The Turks have also introduced some structural changes. The southern porch has been thrown into the body of the building, and an altar (mihrab) placed between the two columns which properly belong to the façade. In this manner the porch, with its orientation towards Mecca, has become the religious focus of the mosque; a wooden gallery, from which my illustration was taken, has been erected against the opposite wall. The apse, which is lit by three windows, is supplemented by two smaller apses or side chapels at the extremities of the aisles.

Fig. 5. Interior of Hagia Sophia.

Like most of the ancient churches we are about to visit during the course of our journey south, Hagia Sophia is a building of small dimensions according to modern ideas. The interior has a length of not more than 69 feet from the inner door to the head of the apse, with a breadth, excluding the side porches, of 36 feet. A building of this size is admirably adapted to the art of the painter in fresco, while his work derives the greatest possible advantage from the features of the design. The lofty vaulted spaces of the dome and apse were once resplendent with bright effects; and on the walls were depicted the richly-apparelled figures of the princes of the Comnenian line. From the partial glimpses of the paintings obtained by various travellers, it is possible to realise, at least in some measure, the former splendour of the scene. At the entrance above the door was seen the image of Alexius, first emperor of Trebizond, surrounded by his court, like Justinian at Ravenna; in his hands the golden globe of empire, and on his forehead a white diadem. On the right of the same door stood the first Manuel (r. A.D. 1238–63), the prince who was known as “the great captain,” and who, according to the description at the side of the figure, was the founder of this monastery. The emperor was without crown, but his forehead was encircled by a cinglet with a double row of pearls. The front of the royal robe was adorned on either side by a band of large circular medallions, bearing the device of the single-headed eagle; a similar ornament, engraved with the equestrian figure of St. Eugenius, hung upon the royal breast. Many of the successors of these two princes were without doubt represented on the remaining spaces of the walls; while the portraits included those of saints and evangelists, all attired in costliest style. The apse displayed a group of three figures, of whom the central one appears to have designated St. Paul; on his right hand St. James and on his left St. John were identified by written scrolls. From the inner sides of the arches, as from the vault of heaven, the faces of angels looked down. The floor was paved by a rich marqueterie of marbles; you admired in particular a design of geometrical character in which the tracing was done in black marble on a ground of vivid reds and pinks and greens.

But the impression which we should take away from this elaborate interior would be one of sadness, perhaps of pain. The art, the life, here represented, was an art in shackles, an expiring phase of life. The peculiar wooden quality of these expressionless faces may be gauged by the examples which have been preserved for us by the care of Texier. Strict conventions had taken the place of realities alike in life and in art; and how sad after the unsurpassed beauty of Hellenic vigour are the gaudy get-up and childish love of baubles which mark the declining years of the Greek world! Vanished, or hidden from sight behind the inexorable whitewash, lies the vivid evidence of that departed age; repugnant alike to the spirit and to the mission of Mohammedanism, this rich collection of Christian images must, from the first, have courted effacement. At the time of our visit the walls had been recently limed over to purify the edifice after the service of State prison to which, during the prevalence of cholera in the town, it had been temporarily assigned. In the upper storey of the campanile, a later work of the fifteenth century, the frescos are still exposed; but it is evident that they can never have possessed much importance. The baptistery, which is said to have been covered with such paintings, has been removed many years ago. It stood near the edge of the terrace, on the north.

Before retracing our steps towards the city, it is worth while to extend the excursion to the neighbouring ruin of Mevla Khaneh (House of gods, No. 23), if only for the sake of a ramble through the pleasant country lanes and a view over the peaceful landscape of the bay. Against the background of the line of heights, at a distance from Hagia Sophia of about three-quarters of a mile, the scanty remains of a heathen temple emerge from a leafy brake which fills a recess of the hillside. Portions of a tower and doorway, the lower parts of two walls have escaped the ravages of time. Small square niches are seen in the walls at close intervals, said to have contained the statues of the gods. From the floor of the temple rise tall elm trees, festooned with wild vine; and an ancient laurel tree bends over the ivy-grown masonry. Rarely do people pass this way; and, on the occasion of our visit, we were the unwilling authors of a rather serious offence. Among the lanes below the ruin we surprised a young woman, combing her long hair on the margin of a stream from which she had just stepped out.

One may return to Trebizond by the old road towards Platana, which has been replaced by a new chaussée nearer the shore. From the Kavak Meidan, with its one fine plane tree, we proceed through the quarter of Sotke towards the gate of the same name in the wall of the lower fortress. The riparian quarters on the east of the city are well worthy of a visit; they may be reached either by crossing the crowded spaces of the fortified enclosure, or by making the more pleasant circuit by the side of the sea. Choosing the second alternative, we soon arrive at the angle of the wall, and are treading the broad strip of sand. All the elements of the picturesque are present in the varied scene—the line of walls, the massive tower just on the east of the gate of Molos, the broad-prowed ships drawn up on the shore, the groups of people in motley attire. In the autumn large quantities of nuts are spread out on the sand, awaiting shipment to France. The tower is flanked on the west by the parapet of a modern battery, while on the east it is adjoined by the vault through which the stream issues which comes from the western ravine. In front of the vault there is a little bridge. The submerged remains of a semicircular mole—a work of the old Greek times—are indicated by a line of surf in the sea. It is evident that the entrance to this harbour was on the east. On that side too there is a tower, projecting into the waves with the form of a wedge, and still joined to the north-eastern angle of the fortress by the substructures of a massive wall.

It is through an opening in that wall that we pass from the life of the sea-shore into the more intense and throbbing life of the bazar. In old times one of the great gates gave issue from the lower fortress to the important riparian quarters on the east. This gate, the bazar gate or gate of Mumkhaneh (candle factories), has been removed to give space to a broad street. The stream from the eastern ravine, which passes outside the walls, is taken by a tunnel through this crowded quarter. The bazars adjoin the fortress; they are well stocked and extensive. The more one walks in Trebizond, the more one is impressed by the shyness of the women; nowhere in the East have I seen them more ashamed to show the face. Nowhere does one realise more keenly the loss of colour and gaiety which this muffling and veiling of women entails. A fine example of an old Italian magazine may be seen in this neighbourhood; it is called the Bezestan (repository of stuffs, No. 16). Where the bazar is at its busiest, a massive square building of stone and brick rises above the lines of booths with their shadowed recesses. It is entered by four doors, of wood plated with iron, one on each side. In the centre is a well; the roof rested on four piers and sprang from vaultings at each angle of the square. The piers and vaultings still remain, but the roof is gone. The place is occupied by sellers of quilts, or coverlets stuffed with cotton, which take the place of blankets in the East.

South of this building, beyond the large mosque of the quarter, which is without architectural interest, are situated the two Greek churches of Aivasil and Aiana, the first almost on the fringe of the bazars. Aivasil (No. 14) has been rebuilt, or rather the site of the old church has been covered by a modern and tasteless erection. But a long stone, part of a frieze, containing an inscription of Justinian, which belonged to the earlier edifice, is still preserved as an historical relic in the body of the church. Aiana (No. 13), its close neighbour, is, on the other hand, quite intact, and remains a most interesting example of the beginnings of Christian architecture. A small and unpretentious building of stone, not too evenly put together, with the arches over the little windows constructed of brick, it would almost escape notice were it not for a large bas-relief in marble which is inserted into the wall over the door on the south. Although the stone is cracked and the sculpture has suffered mutilation, one can recognise that there is represented a colossal seated figure, with a smaller figure, holding a shield, at her feet. The interior is built of brick, and consists of a nave and two aisles, the principal apse being flanked by two side apses.[3] But there is no dome; and the scanty light which falls on the withered frescos comes from nine little windows in the walls. Each aisle has two arches, the more easterly pair resting on piers, and the more westerly on marble pillars with Ionic capitals. One remarks the narrowness of the apse, in which is placed a primitive altar, resembling those in the oldest Armenian churches. It consists of a horizontal slab resting on a circular stone, and on the side of the slab is a Greek inscription. Several of the frescos remain with which the walls were once covered, the building being still used as a church. Besides Biblical subjects, one observes several portraits upon the wall on the west. The greater portion of the space is filled with the pictures of saints and monks; but on the north side there is represented a colossal figure, of which the head has unfortunately been effaced. The figure is attired in a purple robe, with bands of gold embroidered in black, the same costume as that in which the Emperor Alexius III. is depicted in the Bull at Sumelas. He holds a circular ornament or emblem in his left hand. An inscription, partially effaced, is seen on the wall below the figure.[4] Such is this relic of the early city, with its spoils of still earlier temples, bridging the periods of the old worship and the new.

TREBIZOND AND SURROUNDINGS, drawn out on the spot in 1898.

Returning to the commercial quarter from the narrow alleys which surround this building, we pass an old house which is an example of a style of architecture now rapidly being replaced by the modern villa. The exterior, with its projecting upper storey and semicircular, roofed balcony, where the inmates would enjoy the freshness of the afternoon, produces an impression at once of somewhat costly solidity and of picturesque charm. The rooms are panelled in wood, both walls and ceilings; and screens of open woodwork, placed before the windows, preserve the privacy of the life within. In the little niches and in the details of the ornamentation the spirit is that of Persian art.

The magazines of the merchants are situated along the shore between the fortified city and the point of Güzel Serai. Proceeding eastwards, we need scarcely stop to visit the Greek cathedral (No. 12), a large modern building of extraordinary ugliness on the margin of the sea. On the south side of this pretentious church we are shown the tomb of the last of the Georgian kings. A road leads upwards through the crowded Christian quarter, Frank Mahalla, past the wall and tower of Güzel Serai (No. 10). These buildings date, I believe, from a comparatively recent period; but they occupy the site of the famous fortress of Leontocastron, long in dispute between the Comnenian emperor and the Genoese. The companion fort of Daphnus, another Genoese possession, probably stood in the bay on the west, where the quarter of Dia Funda, an Italian corruption of the Greek name, faces the modern anchorage. The walls of Güzel Serai overlook a park of artillery, drawn up on a grassy platform at the point.

Our walk through the eastern suburb may be protracted to the slope of Boz Tepe, where an ancient nunnery, famous for its frescos, commands the landscape of the city from a well-chosen site just outside its extreme fringe (No. 6). Adjacent to the building, which presents the appearance of a fortress, was placed the summer residence or pleasure-house whence the Grand-Comneni used to survey their beauteous capital. I can well remember the ruin of this palace, with its blank windows, such a pleasant frame to the charming view which they overlooked. Alas! this fragment has disappeared, to make room for an ugly guest-house which the avaricious nuns have built in its place. The chapel of the nunnery, dedicated to the Virgin, Panagia Theoskepastos, is built into the side of the cliff, its inner end being, in fact, a cave. Damp has blurred the frescos; but one may still recognise the royal portraits upon the north wall. The upper portions of two kingly figures, attired in purple robes, and on their right hand, side by side, two queens with jewelled crowns, still colour the mouldy side of the cave, and are almost hidden by a row of stalls. They have been identified by inscriptions which, I presume, have become effaced, as Alexius III. and his queen Theodora; as Andronicus and Eirene, mother respectively and son of the first-named prince.

Nor should the traveller omit a visit to the church of St. Eugenius (No. 19), although he may not have time to visit the grottoes in the face of Boz Tepe, and to protract the excursion beyond the embouchure of the Pyxitis to the site of Xenophon’s camp. That famous church is situated in the opposite direction, and has been already mentioned in the description of the upper fortress. It stands on the margin of the eastern ravine, almost opposite to the great polygonal tower. The site is separated from the slopes of Boz Tepe by a second and smaller ravine, which shows remains, on the western bank, of walls and towers. Houses cluster round the building, their horizontal outlines topped by its gables and crowned by its polygonal, drum-shaped dome. St. Eugenius dates from the period of the Grand-Comneni; but the frescos on the western wall, which some travellers have noticed, are now nothing more than patches of colour. It is a somewhat larger edifice than Hagia Sophia, which, although less graceful, it resembles in some respects. The dome rests upon two fluted columns on the west side, while, on the east, it is supported by piers. A flood of light fills the interior, which is plain and bare, the church having been converted to the service of Islam by the Ottoman conqueror. It was here that Mohammed II. is said to have worshipped on the first Friday after the capture of the city by his troops. The event is commemorated by the name of New Friday (Yeni Juma) under which the mosque is known.

One is fortunate if it be possible to spend the later afternoons of days devoted to the study of the town among the restful surroundings of the pleasant country-side, upon the slopes of the adjacent hills. Such was my privilege in 1898. Our tents were pitched on the lofty plateau north-west of the city, the view ranging on the one side to the rocky cliffs of Boz Tepe, and, on the other, to the distant promontory of the sacred mountain. The crowded impressions of the day would take proportion and perspective. One saw a city which, in spite of the modern aspect of certain quarters, has lost little of the romance of the Middle Age. The earlier imprint upon its buildings is that of the era of Justinian;[5] their actual appearance is due to the Grand-Comneni; a great sleep has bridged the interval to the present time. Yet the life of the place, such as it is, pursues the old channels, and the throng in the streets is to-day not less heterogeneous than it was four centuries ago. The French, the Austrians, and the Russians conduct the carrying trade with Europe, reviving the function of the Genoese. The wares they bring are largely of British origin, and are largely imported by British merchants trading in Persia. Strings of Bactrian camels may be seen in the streets, about to start on the long stages which separate the seaport from Erzerum and Tabriz. The various peoples of Asia and of Europe still meet in the bazars.[6] But the romance of the city can never have equalled the romance of her surroundings, Nature being the subtlest weaver of mysteries, the mother with unending fables in whom the romantic spirit finds the only wholesome refuge from the dull realities of daily life. The most permanent memory which the traveller may take away from his visit may be the fruit of those half-hours between daylight and night which he spends in his encampment above the town. When once the sun has set there ensues a period of twilight, in which the glow of the south appears to be blended with the gorgeous effects of northern latitudes. Indeed, the view over the sea by day recalls the colouring on our English coasts; and the little silken Union Jack which fluttered over the tent of my companion, who was acting as consul, would often seem to wave on a field of its native blue. But in the evening there is produced a combination of elements, at once much softer and much sterner than the setting of our English scenes. The spirit of Scythia, of the frozen North, meets the languid Mediterranean spirit, and spreads a robe of fire and paleness over the sea. Only the cypresses and the luxuriant foliage preserve the identity of the sinuous bays; and the succession of meridional ridges which feature the coast towards Cape Ieros are clothed with a forest of trees, fretting the splendour of the western sky.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE

For the topography and antiquities of Trebizond I would refer the student who may be desirous of going more closely into the subject to the following works:—Ritter, Erdkunde von Asien, vol. xviii. pp. 852 seq.; and in particular to the following authorities, cited by Ritter, viz. Travels of Evliya, translated by von Hammer, London 1850, vol. ii. pp. 41 seq.; Tournefort, Voyage du Levant, Paris 1717, vol. ii. pp. 233 seq.; Hamilton, Researches in Asia Minor, etc., London 1842, vol. ii. appendix v. p. 409 (inscription No. 49, over the gateway); Fallmerayer, J. P., Fragmente aus dem Orient, 2nd edition, Stuttgart 1877, with which should be read the Original-Fragmente of the same author, published in the Abhandlungen of the Academy of Munich (Hist. Classe), vols. iii. and iv., 1843–44. Fallmerayer was the first to investigate the subject in an adequate manner; his descriptions are charmingly written; and, while I have availed myself freely in composing a part of this chapter of the results of his researches, I must also acknowledge having come under the spell of his personality (for a slight biography of the historian see Mitterrutzner, Fragmente aus dem Leben des Fragmentisten, Brixen 1887).

Among those who have advanced our knowledge of the place since Ritter wrote I would cite the following:—Texier, 1839, Description de l’Arménie, etc., Paris 1842, two vols. folio, with plates (see also the magnificent work by Texier and Pullan, L’Architecture Byzantine, London 1864); Pfaffenhoffen, Essai sur les aspres Comnénats ou blancs d’argent de Trébizonde, Paris 1847; Finlay, Mediæval Greece and the Empire of Trebizond (vol. iv. of History of Greece, revised edition, Oxford 1877); Tozer, Turkish Armenia, London 1881, pp. 450 seq. I have also had access to a book in Armenian which was shown to me at Trebizond, and which is entitled: History of Pontus, by the Rev. Father Minas Bejeshkean (Mekhitarist), a native of Trebizond, Venice 1819.[7]

The plans which accompany this chapter were made at the close of my second journey by kind permission of the Turkish Government, and after I had already perused the accounts of my predecessors. There is one point in connection with the topography which one would like to feel sure about, namely, upon what eminence in the neighbourhood the statue of Hadrian was set up. I fancy it must have been erected on the Karlik Tepe, a bold peak about four miles south of the town, commanding a magnificent view. A small chapel now stands upon the summit.

The history of the empire of the Grand-Comneni of Trebizond forms a most instructive episode in the immemorial struggle between the East and the West. It was Fallmerayer who may be said to have given this history as a new possession to knowledge in his admirable Geschichte des Kaiserthums von Trapezunt, Munich 1827, followed by the Original-Fragmente, cited above. These sources have been utilised by Finlay in his History of Greece and Trebizond; but it is to be regretted that Fallmerayer himself did not rewrite his Geschichte after his later discoveries of new and important material. The outline of the subject may, perhaps, be presented in the following brief notice.

The further one pursues one’s studies of the countries west of India, whether in the camp or in the library, the larger looms the stately fabric of the Roman Empire of the East, and the more is felt the need of a work dealing comprehensively with this great subject. Our historians have allowed their interest to be absorbed by Europe; upon Asia and the rule of the Cæsars over some of the fairest portions of her vast territories for a period, which, commencing with the Roman Republic, may be said to extend down to the suppression of the despots of Trebizond by the Ottoman Turks in the latter half of the fifteenth century, they have scarcely bestowed more than an impatient glance. The period covers the bloom and fall of at least six great Asiatic dynasties—the Arsakids, Sasanians, Arab caliphs, Seljuk Turks, shahs of Kharizme, Tartar khans. It comes to an end among the ruins of Asiatic prosperity, when the Turkomans are pasturing their flocks among the débris of civilisation, and the Ottoman sultans, deriving their origin from a nomad Turkish tribe, are being carried to their zenith by the former subjects of the Cæsars, severed in the corps of Janissaries from their Western culture and Christian religion, and living only with the breath of their Mohammedan and Oriental king. This startling revolution in the political and economical condition of Asia, the effects of which are operative at the present day, may be traced back to the decisive blow which was struck at the Roman Empire of the East by the victory of the Seljuk sultan, Alp Arslan, over the Cæsar Romanus near Melazkert in Armenia in the year 1071. The three centuries of imperial rule in Asia which succeeded this event reveal few and spasmodic interruptions to the inclined plane of Western relapse. Then the darkness finally closes in; Constantinople falls (1453), and Western commerce is expelled from the Black Sea.

The empire of Trebizond takes its place in this great tragedy of history when the end is already in view. In the same year and the same month in which the Latins took Constantinople and the nobility of the imperial capital fled to the cities of Asia (April 1204), two youthful scions of the illustrious House of Comnenus appeared at the head of a body of Georgian mercenaries before the gates of Trebizond. The Comneni, whose name perhaps reveals an Italian origin, emerge into the light of history in the latter part of the tenth century, from a private station among the Greek nobility of Asia, where their hereditary estate was situated near Kastamuni, a town in the interior, which one may reach at the present day by a carriageable road from the port of Ineboli on the Black Sea. Manuel Comnenus, the first to bring fame to the family, was prefect of all the East under the Cæsar, Basil the Second (in 976); and his son, the scholarly Isaac Comnenus, was chosen by his contemporaries to occupy the imperial throne. The nephew of Isaac, the Emperor Alexius Comnenus (r. 1081–1118), is well known for the part which he played during the crusading era; and he was followed on the Byzantine throne by two of the most martial figures of that age of heroes, Kalo-Joannes (r. 1118–43) and Manuel (r. 1143–80). Manuel was succeeded by his cousin Andronicus Comnenus (r. 1182–85), an emperor who did much to purify the corrupt provincial administration of the Byzantine monarchy, and who perished in a domestic revolution, due to his severe measures against the high nobility. The murder of this prince was followed at no long interval by the Latin conquest of the capital; and the two Comneni who came to Trebizond in 1204 were sons of Manuel, son and heir to Andronicus, who had also perished in the aforesaid revolution.

Their names were Alexius and David; and they were assisted in their enterprise by their paternal aunt, Thamar, the offspring of their grandfather and a Georgian lady. The political condition of Trebizond during the interval between the murder of Andronicus and the Latin conquest of the capital is not definitely known; but the Greek city was probably feeling the pressure of the neighbouring kingdom of Georgia at the time of the advent of the two Greek princes. The prospects of relief, on the one hand, from this pressure, and, on the other, from dependence upon the rotten court of Constantinople under the hopeful rule of an illustrious family, must have operated as powerful inducements to the townspeople to welcome the new régime. Alexius Comnenus is accepted as master of the city, and his rising fortunes attract to his victorious standard some of the noblest of the refugees from the capital, flying into Asia before the Latins. Others range themselves round the person of Theodore Laskaris in Bithynia; and two rival Greek or Roman empires are established upon Asiatic soil, that of Nicæa, or Nice, the capital of Bithynia, and the empire of Trebizond.

The successors of Laskaris fought their way back to Constantinople, which was recovered from the Latin barons in 1261. A much less splendid fate was reserved for the family of Alexius Comnenus; yet the little empire on the Black Sea survived the restored Byzantine Empire; and a space of nearly a hundred years separates the fall of the last of the Greek cities of the interior (conquest of Philadelphia by the Sultan Bayazid in 1390) from the overthrow of the rule of the Comneni at Trebizond (1461). During a period of over 250 years these petty Greek princes contrived to elude the storms of Mussulman conquest behind the wall of mountains interposed between the interior and the coast. Sometimes as vassals of the Oriental dynasties, at other times in a state of independence, they ruled over the beautiful city and a narrow strip of seaboard of varying extent. Their possessions even included a part of the Crimea, of which the tribute was conveyed across the expanse of waters in the imperial galleys. Proud of their pompous titles of Grand-Comneni and Emperors of the Romans, or lords of all Anatolia, Georgia, and the Transmarine, they supplied their deficiencies in real power by elaborate ceremonials, and substituted the gorgeous cult of their patron saint, Eugenius, for the devotional exercises of the Christian religion. They might be consigned without regret to the limbo of history, were it not for the cause of which they were the late and debased representatives, but which, nevertheless, they contributed to sustain. Their territory afforded a home and holding ground to commerce; and, when the land routes through Asia Minor fell into disuse owing to the increase of anarchy, Trebizond became an emporium of the trade with the further Asia, diverted to the more secure avenue of the Armenian plains. This trade was conducted with great spirit by the Genoese from their factories at Trebizond, until Grand-Comneni, Italian merchants, and all the apparatus of civilisation were swept away by the Ottoman sultan, Mohammed the Second (1451–81). This type of Oriental exclusiveness came marching across the mountains some years after his conquest of Constantinople (1453). The citadel of Trebizond was given over to the Janissaries, the palace to a pasha; the last of the Comneni was transported to an exile in Europe, whence, not long afterwards, he was summoned to the capital and commanded to abjure the Christian faith. The firmness of his refusal and the dignity of his martyrdom cast a parting ray of glory through the shadows which had already closed upon his House. His body and those of the princes who died with him were thrown to the dogs beyond the walls of Constantinople. Only one-third of the inhabitants of Trebizond, and these the dregs of the populace, were suffered to remain in their native city. The remainder were compelled to emigrate, and their estates were confiscated. In 1475 the policy of expulsion of all Western influences was crowned by the Ottoman occupation of Caffa and Tana, the more northerly depôts of the Genoese in the Black Sea. European ships were expelled from these waters; where trade was banished ensued barbarism; and for three centuries these shores were forgotten by the West. A new era found expression in the Treaty of Adrianople (1829), which secured the free navigation of this sea. The first steamer made her appearance in 1836, and since then commerce has steadily increased. It flows along the shore, to be distributed throughout the interior, until it reaches the solid barrier of the Russian frontier. It is carried across Asia just outside that barrier on the backs of camels and mules. On the far side of the wall is heard the whistle of the locomotive, and the rumble of a train which not a bale of the hated products of European industry is permitted to invade.

Let the progressive states of modern Europe take heed lest their domestic rivalries result in the conversion of the Black Sea into a Russian lake, and the re-establishment of the old and melancholy order.

[1] J. P. Fallmerayer, born in 1790, the son of humble parents, whose flocks he tended on the mountain-sides as a boy. Died in 1861; a great scholar, a great writer, whose work has not yet received all the recognition which it deserves. [↑]

[2] Finlay, Mediæval Greece and the Empire of Trebizond, Oxford, 1877, p. 340. [↑]

[3] The dimensions of the interior are: length to head of apse, 33 feet; breadth, 21 feet 7 inches. [↑]

[4] The ornament is as follows:

The inscription is:

I notice that M. Gabriel Millet identifies this figure as a Saint Michael (op. infra cit. p. 436). [↑]

[5] Bejeshkean (op. infra cit.) publishes the inscription of Justinian on the face of the old gateway of Tabakhaneh, which has now disappeared. It records the restoration of the public edifices of the city by that emperor. See also Hamilton, op. infra cit. [↑]

[6] The population of Trebizond at the present day is estimated at 45,000 souls. [↑]

[7] Since writing this chapter two articles in the Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique (Paris) for 1895 have come to my notice. They are: G. Millet, Les monastères et les églises de Trébizonde, pp. 419–459; and J. Strzygowski, Les chapiteaux de Sainte Sophie de Trébizonde, pp. 517–522. [↑]

CHAPTER II

ASCENT TO ARMENIA

It had never been our intention to enter Armenia by the well-beaten avenue of Trebizond and Erzerum. The season was advanced; our first objective was Ararat; and it appeared doubtful whether, even with the utmost possible expedition, we should be able to accomplish the ascent of the mountain before the commencement of the winter snows. The attack is no doubt feasible from the side of Turkey; at least on two occasions it has been successful; but the journey is long from Erzerum to Bayazid, and the stages must be covered by your own horses; there is no posting system to furnish you with relays. Nor is it likely that you will find the same facilities at Bayazid that are offered in Russian territory, through the courtesy of the Russian Government, by the detachment of Cossacks which is stationed on the northern slopes. These considerations were decisive in determining us upon the approach from Georgia; but I was also anxious on other grounds to become acquainted with the Russian provinces of Armenia before investigating the condition of those under Turkish rule. With these purposes we rejoined our steamer on the night of the 16th of August and continued the voyage to Batum.

August 17.—From Trebizond to the Russian port is a run of a hundred miles; the early morning saw us skirting the redoubts that line the shore and doubling the little promontory on which the lighthouse stands. In the bight or tiny inlet that recedes from that low headland a depth of water of some thirty fathoms may be found; yet the bay as a whole is shallow and full of silt, and it is only on this western side, close in upon the land, that such soundings are obtained. The largest vessels may be seen brought up so near to the beach that their lofty sterns almost overhang its shelving slopes. But the space is not extensive in this favoured quarter, and if this natural harbour is protected on the east by the wall of the coast range, it is exposed towards the north. The Russians have endeavoured to overcome these disadvantages by constructing a long breakwater of solid masonry, which projects from the side of the mountains into the bay; for years they have been engaged in dredging operations, but they have been hampered by the continual tendency of the anchorage to fill with sandy deposit along the eastern shore.

I should not trouble or divert my reader with a humble incident of travel, were it not that I am anxious to dispel the prevailing prejudices which attribute an unusual degree of severity to the service of the customs at this port. Some years ago, when returning from Persia to Europe, I had been summoned to the fearful presence of the presiding officers and had been amiably dismissed; but on that occasion I was invested with the more innocent character of an export, whereas now it was with the savoury attributes of imports from Great Britain that we were walking into the lion’s mouth. Stories were abroad of ladies who had arrived in silken dresses and who had been seen to issue from the portals of this redoubtable Custom-House in whatever garments may have escaped the confiscation from their persons of the more valuable products of European looms. It was therefore with some apprehension and not without anxiety that we awaited the arrival of the inspector and his men. Their white caps and white tunics are soon in evidence on the ship’s ladder; they step on deck, appear uncertain and desirous of information; then, after a cast or two, we see them settling to the line. In a remote corner of the deck, almost covered by the gigantic frame of Rudolph, lies a pile of miscellaneous but extremely creditable luggage, of which the hapless owners are ourselves. When the Swiss is interrogated he smiles blandly; the salute on their side is not less gracious and more effusive; then they leave the steamer and we are free. What is the incident? If you measure it by the paradoxical nature of the occurrence, it was more than an incident, it was an event. For the rest we were not slow to discover the explanation; there is not in Russia a more courteous official or kinder personality than the Director of Customs at Batum. M. de Klupffell is a veteran sportsman, and, as such, a friend of Englishmen; in my cousin he found an ardent votary of his own science and a companion in its pursuit; and we were linked together by a number of pleasant memories before the day of departure hurried us apart.

Five valuable days, of which not a minute was vacant, were consumed in completing the preparations for our journey and in procuring a supplementary supply of letters of introduction to those in authority at the centres through which we should pass. We were about to enter a country which, both for strategical and political reasons, is hedged in with scarcely visible but extremely palpable restrictions, and for the unprepared and ill-recommended traveller is almost of the nature of forbidden ground. There are wide districts in which our consul at Batum is not permitted to travel; I am sure he would not venture to cross the threshold of Kars. To make certain of being allowed to move about without hindrance and to enjoy the luxury of the confidence that your presence will be tolerated and that you will not suddenly be summarily expelled, it is necessary to supply yourself with a special authorisation from the proper Minister at St. Petersburg. But our ambassador at the Russian capital refuses to put forward the application; he has made a rule which nothing will induce him to break through. At Constantinople our embassy is of course completely helpless; there remains the doubtful method of private approach. The days were swelling into weeks while we lingered on the Bosphorus; it was useless to proceed without some form of pass in our pockets, but the precious months of summer were gliding away. At length we were sufficiently provided with recommendations to be warranted in trusting fortune to do the rest; we owed much to the kindness of our Russian acquaintances at Constantinople, and we were able to realise a fact of which we subsequently received such abundant evidence, that the highest Russian officials are as a rule enlightened men of the world as well as the kindest and most hospitable of hosts.

On the side of Georgia there are two principal approaches to Armenia, and the traveller who desires to consult his comfort may be advised to restrict his choice to these two roads. The more westerly ascends the valley of the Kur river and reaches the highlands about Akhaltsykh by the romantic gorge and passage of Borjom; the other, further east, leaves the railway between the Black Sea and the Caspian at the station of Akstafa, some fifty miles below Tiflis, and, mounting from the trough of the Kur along the course of the Akstafa, issues upon the open country on the west of Lake Sevan, near the posting-stage of Delijan.[1] A bifurcation at that point leads by one branch to Alexandropol and by the other to Erivan. You may ride in a victoria and with relays of post-horses on either of these roads. Both conduct you from the steppes at the southern foot of Caucasus and from levels that are comparatively low across or aslant the grain of the peripheral ranges to the edge of the Armenian tableland. Those ranges are the continuation upon the east of the mountains which we have followed from the Bosphorus to Batum; they stand up like a wall from the flats of the Rion and from the plains which border the lower course of the Kur, with much the same appearance as we saw them rise with ever-increasing proportions along the floor of the Black Sea. Beyond those lowlands a mighty neighbour, the parallel chain of Caucasus, faces them on the north. Only at one point do these two great systems join hands together, in the belt of mountainous country which separates the watershed of the Kur from that of the Rion and which the railway crosses by the pass of Suram (about 3000 feet). This linking chain is known to geographers under the name of the Meschic or Moschic; geologists are inclined to connect it with the structure of Caucasus; our senses might invest it with a separate existence, a transverse barrier as it were, thrown from range to range across the hollow which extends from sea to sea.

I was disinclined for several reasons to traverse this barrier, so that we might avail ourselves of either of the main roads. Erivan was our destination, the railway and the valley of the Akstafa our readiest means of access; but I was already familiar with the trough of the Kur between Tiflis and the Caspian, and I had read so many accounts of this approach to Armenia that the natural features of the several stages between the Georgian river and Lake Sevan seemed imprinted upon my mind. I was also anxious to gain some knowledge of the western portion of the tableland, of which I had only succeeded in obtaining from the literature of travel a wholly insufficient idea. To these districts the route by Borjom is at once the best-known avenue and that which combines with a lavish display of magnificent scenery the comforts of a beaten track. But to worm myself up the valley of the Kur to the Armenian highlands was, I thought, to miss an occasion which might not subsequently be offered of realising at the outset of our long journey the essential features and characteristics of the country we had come to see. In Asia so vast is the scale upon which Nature has operated, so much system has she bestowed upon her works, you may follow for hundreds of miles the same manifestations, till from some favourable point of vantage you may discover unfolded before you the clue and the abiding principles of her extensive and majestic plan. What approach was better calculated to offer large views over Nature and to instruct us in her designs than one which scaled the walls of the girdle ranges where they tower highest above land and sea? From Batum it might be possible to penetrate the mountains of Ajara, and debouch upon some of the most elevated regions of the plateau from which the upper waters and earliest affluents of the Kur decline; but the lower reaches of the Chorokh and its alpine tributaries intersect a most intricate and savage country, where the process of elevation has resulted in dislocation of the range, and has produced convulsions which, while they afford a most interesting field to the geologist and to the student of mountain-structure, have placed obstacles in the way of human communications which the traveller is not required to overcome. By following the bend of the chain up the coast and along the Rion until it again assumes a normal course, he may avoid this knot of ridges and maze of valleys and at the same time obtain a clearer and more definite conception of the geography of these lands. We learnt that there was a road from the plain of the Rion up the side and to the summit of the range; we soon decided upon the superior attractions which it promised, and took our tickets for the capital of the country on the west of the Meschic barrier, the ancient city of Kutais.

August 22.—Rain was falling as we slowly steamed away from the station; it is almost always raining at Batum. The clouds cannot leap the gigantic bulwark of the mountains at this south-eastern angle of the sea; they cling to the fir-clad slopes or put out hands and scale the escarpments until they become exhausted and dissolve. The town was soon behind us as we wound along the foot of the range on the narrow respite of the shore—Batum, with her grim defiance of the written law of Europe, with her peaceful situation at the gate of the oil industry, of which she receives the products by the railway from the Caspian to distribute them over all the world; a creation of modern Russia on the familiar official pattern of spreading boulevards with fine shops and large hotels. Here is the starting-point of the first train which skirts the coast of the Euxine—and even this remote example of the species turns aside from the mysterious seaboard to the cities of the interior after a brief space of some twenty miles. Yet within such limits we are carried through the wildest piece of country that may be found between the mouth of the river Rion and the entrance to the Black Sea, a district endowed with extraordinary fertility, which still remains unexploited and unreclaimed. It is inhabited here and there by a few straggling settlements, which contrast to the splendour of his natural surroundings the squalor of uncivilised man. We have outreached the furthest extension of the fringe of Greek elements; Georgian peoples live in the valleys of the interior and are thinly scattered upon the malarious coast; while further east, where the chain has left the sea and is aligned upon the plains, lowlands as well as mountains, the skirts of the range and its innermost recesses are the home of a population of Georgian race. Between Trebizond and the Russian fortress first the Lazis and then the Ajars may perhaps be regarded as transitional factors to the new order which commences after you have left Batum. I should not venture to pronounce upon the racial connections of the Lazis; they may represent the aboriginal occupants of their country, the wild tribes who harassed the army of Xenophon and were the settled plague of the Byzantine governors and of the emperors of the Comnenian line. The Ajars would appear to be of mixed parentage; like the Lazis they profess the Mohammedan faith. The Georgian districts which we are now entering still retain the names of the several independent principalities to which they formerly belonged, and except in the case of Abkhasia, up in the north at the foot of Caucasus, the Christian religion almost exclusively prevails. First comes Guria along the shore and the bend of the mountains; Imeritia extends on either bank of the Rion and as far as the pass of Suram; Mingrelia is the name of the country on the north of the Kolchian river, and it is bounded by Imeritia in the east.

For a distance of some fifteen miles the landscape was monotonous; on the one hand the almost vertical bulwark of the mountains, on the other the little grey waves breaking on the stony shore. But just before we arrived at the station of Kobulety the oppressive proximity of the range was relaxed, the country opened, and between low forest and maize-grown clearings the soil-charged waters of a river wound their way down towards the sea. It was the commencement of the scenery which is characteristic of Guria, a tract of virgin woodland which clothes the spurs of the receding chain and the alluvial flats and marshes of the coast. Rolling hills take the place of the abrupt wall of rock; they are covered with a jungle of bush and little trees, which is broken here and there by irregular patches planted with Indian corn. Dark streams heavy with loam descend between high banks. Not a village could we see, nor any human habitation; distant prospects were obscured by a veil of mist. Yet the day was fairly fine, and, if the clouds were deeply banked on the horizon, the zenith often burst to pure blue. As we proceeded, the forest increased both in grandeur and in luxuriance; clusters of magnificent trees rose from the bush and above the brushwood, until the features of hill and spur became lost beneath the lofty overgrowth and transformed to masses or ledges of tall stems and spreading branches outlined against the sky. The withered forks of lifeless trunks stood out in grim relief from this ground of shadow, or were projected in weird tracery upon the field of light—an eloquent proof that no human hand had yet disturbed the natural order of these primeval woods. The sea was lost behind leafy brakes festooned with luscious creepers, which flourish with almost tropical development in this warm climate and upon this soaking soil. Not a single road did we see; the stations are mere stages, and the only sign of the presence of man was one of the long-legged dappled pigs so common in Imeritia, which was trespassing on the line.

Such are the characteristics which broadly prevail between Kobulety and Lanchkhuty, a space of some twenty-four miles. But we had not yet reached the latter station, which is situated due north of the capital of Guria, Ozurgeti, when new features were discovered in the scene. On the left hand the view opened across an even country where the sappy stems and reed-like forms and flowers of the maize-plants alternated with stretches of unreclaimed bush; and in the distance a bold hill, only partially wooded, projected into the plain from a long, vague line of mountains which closed the horizon on the north. We felt that these must surely be the spurs of Caucasus, and that the Phasis would shortly be disclosed.

You cross that fabled river—the modern Rion—by the commonplace method of a railway bridge; it flows between high banks through the wide expanse of these surroundings on the southern margin of the plain. Some distance east of these lower reaches the impetuous current that has pierced the Caucasus, from which it issues at Kutais, has been deflected by the mountains of the southern border, which turn it towards the west. You do not follow its tortuous course, which skirts the outworks of these mountains as they stretch inwards from the coast; the ground is flat, the railroad points more directly for the capital at the foot of the great chain on the north.

Mile upon mile the plain of the Rion was unfolded about us, a fertile province which might be made the granary of Georgia, but which would now appear to produce little else but the lowest of the cereals, an endless succession of plantations of Indian corn. The land is ill-reclaimed; little labour has been expended, and the bush starts up among the canes. At the stations we remarked groups of women and young girls clad in loose cotton dresses with cotton kerchiefs on their heads. Geese strutted along the line or paddled in the shallow streams, and we became familiar with the strange appearance of the Imeritian pigs. But still no village! At rare intervals a wooden hut with a large verandah, and here and there among the maize one of the rude wooden stages erected to command a prospect over the fields.

As we advanced, the dim and misty boundary of the Caucasus took shape and colour about the lower slopes. The soft hues of vegetation, the brighter flashes of naked strata were distinguished from the uncertain background of rock and cloud; bold ridges with fantastic outlines stood up on the horizon; but here and there the white vapour was still clinging to their highest parapets and spreading fanwise to the brief circle of clear sky. Above them lay a world of half-lights and banked cloud-masses, the veiled presence of the main chain. Behind us rose the wooded ridges of the southern range, till they vanished in the folds of the murky canopy which they hold so firmly and love so well; but the marshes had disappeared and the lowest spurs which met the plain were almost devoid of trees. On our point of course the two great ranges appeared to mingle together and arrest our even progress towards the east.

For a second time we were overlooking the stream of the Rion to regain the left bank. It was flowing with a rapid current in a direct line from the Caucasus, channelling the beached-up shingle of an extensive bed. In places the waters spread in shallow lakes and deposit a thick sediment of soil. This upper portion of the plain is barren and stony; it is partially covered with a low jungle of bush. It is confined on either side by the meeting flanks of the mountains; and as we made our way due north with the river serpenting beneath us, all prospect on our right hand was shut out by rising ground clothed with a forest of low oak trees.

On the opposite slopes, among the deepening tints of wood and clearing, beneath the growing distinction of light and shade, we could discern the white faces of a few scattered houses and then the gardens among which they stood. Two larger buildings were apparent, crowned with conical cupolas, of which the roofing was coloured a soft green. Such are the outskirts of Kutais; the town is hidden from the plain. Towering above the scene and almost infinitely high, we might feel vaguely but could scarcely see the gigantic framework of Caucasus, except where here and there a dazzling light among the clouds revealed the presence of a snowfield in the sky.

We were tempted to linger in the capital of Imeritia, and I can confidently recommend to the more leisurely traveller a protracted stay in this fascinating place. You will never tire of the beauty of site and grandeur of surroundings, while few street scenes are more picturesque than those which are disclosed during an afternoon ramble in the Jewish quarter of Kutais. It is a convenient centre for excursions into the recesses of Caucasus, and you have only to follow the windings of the valley of the Rion to be introduced to the inmost sanctuaries of the chain. In the ruins of the noble cathedral beyond the outskirts of the town, in the neighbouring and well-preserved monastery of Gelat, with its enchanting prospect from the slopes of Caucasus over the open landscape of the south, both the archæologist and the student of architecture will discover an abundant source of interest; while, if the study of Nature herself be among the objects of your journey, what richer field could be offered to the geologist or the naturalist than these mountains and untouched forests and flowery hills? But we ourselves were hurried away by the exigencies of travel after a short sojourn of two and a half days, and my present purpose must be confined to the elucidation of those natural features which accompanied the early stages of our ascent to Armenia, and which were unfolded to our view in an extensive panorama from the declivities about Kutais.

I shall therefore take my reader to some convenient standpoint in the environs, let us say to the cliffs on the right bank of the Rion and the hill upon which the massive ruins of the cathedral rise on the sky-line above the leafy brakes (Fig. 6, a). I can show you the position from the opposite bank of the river in a picture which was taken over a mile above the town from the road which ascends the valley and which we followed on our way to Gelat (Fig. [6]). The Rion is flowing from you into the middle distance coming from the north; Kutais itself is hidden by a wooded promontory (Fig. 6, d); but you see the group of buildings which compose the Armenian and the Catholic churches, and which crown the extreme northerly projection of the site (Fig. 6, b). Three bridges span the Rion where it sweeps past the town confined between lofty banks, and lead from the busy streets to the peaceful heights which overlook them and command all the landscape of the plain. I cannot imagine a more charming walk than by the hill church of St. George (Fig. 6, c) to the pleasant eminence which I have already described.

Fig. 6. Banks of the Rion above Kutais.

We reach our point, and there before us expands the open landscape of which the second photograph embraces a considerable part (Fig. [7]). We are standing on the southern slopes of Caucasus, with a wide belt of hill and ridge behind us, and, beyond and far above such familiar natural features, the white serrations and air-borne snowfields of the inmost chain. The atmosphere is fresh and crisp even at this season and with this temperature;[2] and banks of white cloud float in the sky. At our feet lies Kutais, with head upon the hillside and foot upon the margin of the plain; the eye follows the winding river which has just escaped from Caucasus and is flowing outwards towards the opposite range; the horizon is closed by that wall of mountain, emerging solid from a tender veil of mist. The plain itself is flat as water; it is coloured with the golden hues of the ripening maize-fields and featured by a labyrinth of vague detail. On the left hand, outside the photograph, a little north of east, you just discern high on the slopes beyond the left bank of the Rion the site of the monastery of Gelat; and the other day we thought we could descry from its lofty terrace, at the base of a distant promontory of Caucasus the shimmer of the sea in the west.

Fig. 7. Plain of the Rion from the Southern Slopes of Caucasus; Kutais in the Foreground.

Let us realise for a moment the meaning of the landscape, and allow the mind to assist the eye. The opposite mountains belong to the girdle of ranges which buttress the Armenian tableland, the same which we have followed along the coast of the Black Sea, and which we left at our entrance upon the plain of the Rion stretching eastwards away from the shore. Here they constitute the barrier which separates the lowlands of Imeritia from the highlands about Akhaltsykh in the south; and, if you wish to examine the structure of this barrier more closely, you will find that the back or spine of the system consists of a ridge which extends in an easterly direction to about the longitude of Tiflis. The Caucasus, with an axis inclining south-eastwards, steps up to this latitudinal chain, and just east of Kutais the two systems join hands in the belt of picturesque hill scenery which divides the watershed of the Kur from that of the Rion, and which we already know under the name of the Meschic linking range. East of Tiflis the axis of the Armenian border ranges is turned towards south-east, and follows a direction parallel with that of Caucasus along the trough of the Kur towards the Caspian Sea. Like the Caucasus here in the north, its opposite neighbour, that southern bulwark extends from sea to sea; and some geographers have applied to it the name of Little Caucasus, a misleading and, if we attach importance to the phenomena of Nature, a most inappropriate name. For while the northern range may be described as an isolated and independent structure—independent in appearance at least—which rises on the one side from about the same levels as those to which on the other side it declines, that on the south is in reality nothing more than a succession of steps or buttresses which lead up to and flank the Armenian highlands. The first stages of our journey will conduct us up the slopes of those mountains, from a plain which does not much exceed the sea-level, across a ridge of which the pass has an altitude of about 7000 feet, to plains which range between a height of 7000 and not less than 3000 feet above the sea.

August 25.—From Kutais to where the southern range perceptibly commences to gather, about the village of Bagdad, is a direct distance of close on fifteen miles. So even is the plain that the road makes little deviation and covers the space in seventeen miles. At half-past eight on the morning of the 25th of August our victoria, drawn by four horses abreast, made its start from the little hotel in which we had lodged; it was followed by the cart which we had engaged for the luggage and to which was harnessed a similar team. We had hired both conveyances for the whole of the journey to Abastuman on the further slopes of the southern range; the regular avenue of communication with that summer watering-place is by the valley of the Kur and Borjom, and it is necessary to make your own arrangements if you desire to take the Imeritian road. We spent five hours upon the first stage of only seventeen miles; our coachman was obliged to harbour the strength of his horses for the long ascent to the summit of the chain, and we were always halting to take photographs and to realise the interest of the magnificent scenery which forms the distant setting of these lowlands. We were crossing the uppermost portion of the plain of the Rion, where it rises to the belt of hill and mountain which links the northern with the southern range; long stretches of woodland with an undergrowth of wild rhododendron had taken the place of the expanse of golden maize-fields, broken by little trees and intervals of bush. To emerge from the shady avenue upon a tract of open country was to feast our eyes upon a landscape of no ordinary character. On the one hand the airy pinnacles and gleaming snowfields of Caucasus, on the other the forest-clad walls of the Armenian border chain; in the west the varied detail that covers the floor of the plain as with a carpet, and behind us the spurs meeting in the east.

We were impressed by the hush of life over the plain and in the woodlands, by the sparseness of human habitations, and by the absence of traffic along the road. Such are the certain signs in the East of economical stagnation, when man is idle and the earth sleeps. It was therefore with pleasure that about one o’clock we came upon a tiny village and lingered beneath a spreading tree. Not very far from this little settlement we crossed a stream at the base of the mountains, and at half-past one we came to a halt in the street of the village of Bagdad, after a short but perceptible rise. We noticed some vineyards during the course of our upward progress; the elevation of Bagdad, according to the single reading of my barometer, is 922 feet.[3]

It is at Bagdad that you begin the ascent of the mountains of the southern border. So broad is the range, the pass so lofty and the road so tortuous, that it would be no easy matter to cross them in a single day. The direct distance measured on a map from the village to the pass is no less than seventeen miles, and along the road you cover some thirty-one miles. There is a hut at about half-way which is a convenient night’s quarter, and we resolved to make it the goal of our second stage.

We left Bagdad at three o’clock, with the valleys still open about us, with the wooded slopes rising on every side. After we had passed to the right branch of the stream which we had crossed below the village, the gradients commenced to make themselves felt, and here and there among the foliage the first fir trees started, the delicate blue firs. We followed the course of the running water up the spacious valley, through the forest which clothes the range from foot to summit and stands up along the ridges against the sky.

The saturated atmosphere and warm climate of the seaboard were still with us; the one feeds, the other stimulates this luxuriant growth. Even on this fine day the clouds still lingered in the uppermost hollows, and when at four o’clock we opened up a beautiful side valley, all the landscape of wooded fork and winding torrent reflected the silvery hues of a crown of captive vapour clinging to the recesses at the head of the glen.

Verst after verst we might count our progress on the white milestones, but we rarely observed a sign of the presence of man. A Georgian wayfarer, staff in hand, a peasant’s cottage with its wide verandah, were the infrequent incidents in a scene which still belonged to Nature, and with which such figures and such objects harmonised. At last at the side of the road where the forest was thickest we came upon a solitary little cabin, a neat wooden structure, which we at once recognised as our shelter for the night. It was a quarter-past seven o’clock and we had reached an altitude of 1900 feet.[4] During the space of some fourteen miles from our mid-day station, the valley to which we had throughout been faithful had narrowed to a deep trough; and an hour before our arrival at the hut of Zikari the read was taken for a short space along the left bank of the stream, in order to avoid a projecting buttress of its eastern wall.

Fig. 8. Road in the Forest.

August 26.—Some distance below the hut the stream which we had followed is joined by a tributary coming from the east; the two branches of the fork collect a number of smaller affluents which have their sources near the summit of the chain. In continuing our course next morning up the more westerly of these branches, we were rapidly transported to the more open landscapes of the higher slopes, and made our way almost in a direct line for the pass, circling the outworks of the principal ridge. Filmy white clouds were suspended from the pine woods above us, when at a quarter-past seven we again took to the road; but for five hours the forest trees remained with us and increased rather than diminished in size. In one place it was a lime of unusual proportions rearing a maze of branches from a quadruple trunk; at another we stood in wonder before a gigantic beech which measured 17 feet 6 inches round the base. The undergrowth was supplied by laurel and holly, and cascades leapt from the rocks. The reader may see our road as it wound through this sylvan scenery (Fig. [8]), but he must allow his imagination to supply the inherent deficiencies of photographic methods. The rare inhabitants of these solitudes are of Georgian race and wear the dress of Georgia (Fig. [9]), but their straggling tenements are few and far between.

Fig. 9

Above the forest the groves of fir, higher still the grassy slopes and naked crags—such is the familiar order of mountain scenery as you slowly rise to the spine of a range. The two last features became apparent at the sixty-sixth verst-stone, or some twelve and a half miles from the hut. A profusion of wild raspberries were growing on the mossy banks and provided us with a delicious meal. We remarked the sharpness of the summits of the ridge above us and read the number of the seventy-second verst. The pass is just above this lofty standpoint, and we left the carriage to reach it by a short cut. We arrived there after a brief climb to find a fresh breeze blowing and all the wide belt of mountain at our feet.

I doubt whether there exists in the nearer Asia a standpoint which commands a prospect at once so grand and so instructive as that which is unfolded from the summit of the Zikar Pass (Zikarski Perival; altitude by my Hicks mountain aneroid, 7164 feet; Russian survey, 7104 feet). With its double front towards north and south and the contrasting features of the dual landscape, it may be said to overlook two worlds. On the north the view ranges across the broad belt of wooded mountains, which culminate in this ridge, to the gigantic barrier of the Caucasus of which the peaks are distant some ninety to a hundred miles (Fig. [10]). Invisible in the hollow lies the plain of the Rion; the crests before you, boldly vaulted and clad with forest to the very summits, sweep away to a dim horizon of grey mist; above that uncertain background the snows and glaciers of Caucasus appear suspended in the air among the clouds. Dense vapour shrouds the scene, and above the flashes of the snow a long bank of white cloud spreads fanwise up the sky.

Fig. 10. View North from the Zikar Pass.

But turn to the south—the forms and texture of the earth’s surface, the lights and shadows falling through a rarer atmosphere from lightly floating filaments of cloud, are those of a new world (Fig. [11]). The pine wood still struggles down the hillside, and gathers from the blighted trunks around you to clothe the first valleys of the southern watershed. But the view will no longer close with successive walls of mountain; the road ceases winding up the slopes of successive outworks; every vertical line, each deep vaulting relaxes and disappears. The highest plains of the tableland attain about the same elevation as the pass upon which you stand; all the outlines in the distance are horizontal, all the shapes shallow-vaulted and convex. If you follow the long-drawn profiles of the loftier masses, it is the form of a cone that breaks the sky-line, and never that of a peak. The colours are lightly washed ochres and madders; the surface of the volcanic soil is bare of all vegetation; the shadows lie transparent and thin. Such was our first view of Armenia and such the impression which our later travel confirmed.

Fig. 11. View South from the Zikar Pass.

[1] A railway, connecting the capital of Georgia, Tiflis, with Alexandropol and Kars, has been completed since the date of this journey. It winds its way up the valley of the Borchala. [↑]

[2] At 11.15 A.M. 83° F. [↑]

[3] Temperature 86° F. [↑]

[4] Temperature at 10 P.M. 72° F.; 6.30 A.M. 66° F. [↑]

CHAPTER III

TO AKHALTSYKH

Where else except in London will you see clever driving? Is not England the only country where you can trust your coachman to shave his corners and keep his team in hand? With four horses abreast the process is perhaps not easy, especially down a fairly steep incline. We were pursued by a landau which contained some Russian officers who had been spectators of our photographic and hypsometrical operations on the summit of the pass; our driver became inspired with the spirit of rivalry, and within a few minutes the trot had developed into a canter, the canter into a headlong career. On the left hand a deep abyss, on the right a mossy bank, and the post of danger occupied by our plump little dragoman who sat on the left-hand box seat! The carriage grazed the bank and, before we had time to pull the Armenian to us, struck and overturned. No damage to the horses or to the rest of the company, but the unfortunate dragoman, moaning and sobbing on the road! Happily his contusions were not serious, and a draught of brandy almost restored him to the possession of himself. Assisted by our kind acquaintances, who were the unwitting cause of the disaster and who had hurried to the scene, we conveyed him down the slope to where a gay picnic party were regaling themselves with cakes and tea and a variety of strong liqueurs. At once the ladies busied themselves with the bruised and dust-covered youth, whose numbed senses quickly revived under their care. But the incident delayed us, and it was night before we arrived at the outskirts of Abastuman, situated in the pine woods some ten miles south of the pass, at an elevation of 4278 feet. We were tempted to pitch our tents above the village, on the banks of a pleasant stream; but the darkness as well as the lateness of the hour decided us to have recourse to a crowded hotel.

We were again in the midst of wealth and luxury—an oasis strangely incongruous with the solemn character with which these vast and lonely landscapes are impressed. The strains of music floated on the air; a dance was proceeding, to which after a hurried meal my cousin and myself repaired. All that was most brilliant in the official world of the Caucasus was gathered in the bright ball-room; and as we made our way there through the garden we met a group of returning guests gathered about a slender and youthful figure, to whom all appeared to defer. It was the Grand Duke George of Russia, since Tsarevich, who was residing in this lofty station alike in winter as in summer for the benefit of his health. In the afternoon of the following day, which was devoted to work and to preparations, came a message from His Imperial Highness inviting us to mid-day dinner; so we deferred our start from early morning to a later hour. His villa was situated just above the street of pleasure-houses among the fir trees which clothe the valley from trough to ridge; and on the opposite side of the road the slope had been converted into a park, which contained living specimens of the big game of the Caucasian wilds. The dinner was al fresco in the garden of the villa; the Grand Duke welcomed us in perfect English and placed my cousin on his right and myself on his left hand. Opposite me and on my cousin’s right sat the Duke of Oldenburg, a practised sportsman and a charming personality, whose lively humour made the talk flow. On my left I had a graver but extremely well-informed gentleman whose conversation impressed me, but whose name I forgot to record. M. Asbeleff of the suite of His Highness was also of the party, and most kindly provided us with introductions which were of great service to us at a later stage of our journey. Quite a respectable number of guests were gathered round the circular table, the majority clad in the white cotton tunics which are the summer uniform of the official class.

A purée or thick soup was served, which I thought delicious, but which brought a twinkle from the playful eye of the Duke. As each successive dish of this dinner à la Russe made its appearance a smile came from across the table, or “Isn’t it nasty?” or some even less mildly deprecating words. I ventured to demur to his good-humoured criticism and to submit that, if the French alone possessed the art of cooking, the Russians succeeded, where the English failed signally, in making things taste nice. The champagne came in for a particular share of attention, having been produced by the Duke from his vineyards at Kutais. My cousin let out the secret that we had already made its acquaintance: that we had visited his cellars and had been greatly interested in his enterprise, especially on the evening at the hut of Zikari, when we had regaled ourselves with a bottle of his sparkling wine. He now insisted on our taking a little case with us, and promised it should be dry to suit what he said he knew to be our taste. My companion on the left discussed the objects of our journey, and was of opinion that we might succeed in reaching the slopes of Ararat before the first snows commenced. I told him that we were also anxious to study the condition of the country, and the conversation turned upon the limitations which he said were imposed in India upon foreigners travelling with similar aims. Can there be anything more fatuous than such restrictions? We both agreed that it was perfectly possible to guard against political intriguers and at the same time to leave bona-fide travellers free. The Grand Duke spoke English like an Englishman, and you could not have a more amiable host. We remarked that his features resembled those of his cousin, the Duke of York, of whom a portrait was placed on his writing-table together with the photographs of other members of our Royal House.

Two four-horsed posting carriages had been prepared for the drive to Akhaltsykh, distant 16½ miles. By four o’clock we had rejoined the rest of our party and were leaving behind us the pleasant station of Abastuman. We followed the tripping stream down the narrow valley, the rocky and beetling sides studded with firs from foot to summit; and from among them a ruined castle, ascribed as usual to Queen Thamar, frowned out upon the passage which it controls. But we had not gone far before a complete change came over the landscape; the valley opened, distant prospects were disclosed. Before us lay the scenery which is typical of Armenia and upon which our eyes had rested from the summit of the Zikar Pass. Nature is seldom abrupt in her processes; a transitional character invests the first slopes of the southern watershed; the narrow belt of pine-clad ridges interrupts the contrast between the luscious forests which cover the range on the side of the Black Sea littoral and the barren highlands through which the upper waters of the Kur descend. We had issued from those recesses, and around us in a wide circle were unfolded the Armenian plains. The view ranged over an open country, for the most part bare of vegetation, and featured by a succession of convexities in the friable surface, from the foreground of hummock and hill to the sweeping outlines of the higher masses, changing colour and complexion with every change in the sky.

The ground was crumbling with excessive dryness; the soil is rich, and would no doubt yield crops of great value were it cultivated on a liberal scale. Yet all the cultivation we could see was of the nature of little patches of yellow stubble or lightly ploughed land. It was evident that the primitive methods of the East had not been superseded, and that agriculture still partook of the precarious character which is the outcome of centuries of political disturbance—the peasant uncertain of reaping what he has sown. Stony tracts interrupted these plots of reclamation, but in general the surface was apt for the plough. The springs of life had been exhausted by the drought of an Eastern summer; the fertile earth was bare as water, and transparent tints of pink and ochre invested the landscape far and wide. A spirit of vastness and loneliness breathed over the scene; the air was clear and crisp and recalled the bracing climate of the Persian tablelands.

Such characteristics were strange to some among our party, for only my cousin and myself knew the interior of Asia and recognised in the note which was now for the first time sounded the commencement of a familiar theme. We pursued our way in silence, each absorbed by his own reflections and all responsive to the same spell. Through the bleak landscape wound the little river and stretched the white line of the road. Here and there on the margin of the water or beyond the irregular border of the pebble-strewn bed a little orchard or a patch of garden planted with potatoes, formed a spot of verdure contrasting with the hues around.[1]

Where were the villages? For it seemed that there must be inhabitants who had gathered this scanty harvest and ploughed the surface of the darker soil. They select the slope of a hill or the rise of an undulation; the door and front of their dwellings are alone visible, the back is caverned into the shelving ground; you must pass close to such a settlement and by daylight to notice the incidence of a human element in the scene. We came upon four villages of this pattern before the mid-way station was reached. They were peopled by Tartars, who were occupied in threshing and winnowing the season’s corn. The husks were flying in the air and the bright cottons of men and women fluttered in the breeze.

Benara, the posting-house which supplied us with fresh horses, is situated close to the bank of the stream, at no great distance above the point where it joins the Koblian Chai, a river which collects the drainage of the extreme north-western angle of the tableland. A little below this junction the united waters receive a further affluent, known as the Poskhov Chai, which gathers the streams from south-west and south-east. Even at this season the three combined form a river of fair size, flowing through the plain on an easterly course in a bed of many channels, and joining the Kur after passing through the town of Akhaltsykh. This river is usually called the Akhaltsykh Chai.

Our road followed its course, taking an abrupt bend eastwards and still faithful to the left bank. Some hillocks closed the view on the north for a short space; then they flattened, and in that direction the great plain rolled around us, bounded in the distance by hummock hills. At intervals we caught a glimpse of the pine-clad ridges of the border range, standing up on the horizon in the east. Behind us the long-drawn outlines and bare slopes of the mountains of the tableland, and towards the south the ground rising from the right bank of the river to the summit-line of a mountain mass of this character which has the hummock formation throughout.

Massed battalions of Russian soldiers, it seemed a whole army corps, were drawn up on the plain. We were passing a permanent camp with pavilions and stationary cannon, and for some distance the ground was dotted with white tents. A review was proceeding, and the dark uniforms of the troops gave their columns the appearance of a series of black blocks. A hymn was being sung; the stately music swelled over the hushed scene.

What a contrast between the landscape and such accidental incidents, the Russian road, the Russian camp! On the road little piles of stones heaped at regular intervals; but the country without a fence, without boundaries or divisions, a mere expanse of rolling soil.

The first town or larger village that we saw was Suflis, rising among orchards from the right bank. It is backed by the bleak mountain mass which the river skirts; the flat roofs, ranged in tiers, were scarcely distinguishable from the shelving ground, but the vertical lines of several minarets were seen from afar. Could you be shown a more typical example of a tumble-down Eastern township? Yet you are on the threshold of an important fortress and provincial centre where modern appliances are in vogue.... Suflis passed, we approached more closely to the river; the mass on our right broke off in cliffs to the margin of the water, while on our left hand a low ridge, which had the appearance of an outcrop of volcanic rock, stepped up to the border of the stream. The road followed down the defile, skirting huge boulders and overtowered by bold crags; until the heights on our left were crowned with masonry, partly ruinous; and before us, across the river, where the gorge opened, the cherry-coloured roofing of the modern town of Akhaltsykh was outspread among gardens on the level ground. A little further down we crossed a substantial bridge, and, without entering the town, pitched our tents on the sand of the river-bed. It was nearly seven o’clock, and night had fallen before our camping operations were complete.

From the Olympian eminence of the Grand Duke’s circle at Abastuman and from the steps of the Imperial throne, we came near to being hurled forth at Akhaltsykh into the abyss of a Russian prison. The gods must surely weep at the sorry manner in which their human ministers interpret their laws. Day broke without any shadow of presentiment—a fresh and breezy morning, the river rippling before us, and on the opposite bank the ancient fortress edging the steep crags and outlined on the luminous sky. The delicious sleep beneath a tent was followed by an early bathe; the town was silent, but, as we made our way up the margin of the current, a little village was discovered, of which the feminine occupants were already descending the slope with their many-shaped water-jars and divesting themselves of their loose cottons to splash on the brink of the stream. A little later we passed their hovels and recognised them as Armenians, and admired the beauty of one among them, now busy with the routine of her household, who with her arched eyebrows, aquiline nose, massive forehead, and coal-black tresses reminded us of Biblical heroines. The fascination of travel consists in its many-coloured contrasts; nothing ruffled the composure of our mood of detachment as we left this peaceful scene to explore a fresh hive of human beings with the easy confidence of men to whom the land belongs. Our first visit was as usual to the civil governor; he was to conduct us to the hive, remark upon the peculiar qualities of the honey, and deferentially withdraw while we pursued our own investigations into the mysteries of insect life. If our attitude could be convicted of any element of such fatuous vanity, the illusion was quickly and rudely dispelled. We were taken to a mean structure on the southern outskirts of the town, which resembled wooden boxes placed one above another, with broad wooden verandahs running round. These balconies were indeed the distinguishing feature; and, when we observed the groups of ill-miened loafers who loitered within them, it was hard to believe that we were anywhere else but in Turkey visiting a pasha at the Serai. After some palaver with the menials, who were not disposed to excessive courtesy, it transpired that the governor had left that very morning on a visit to Abastuman. We asked to see his deputy, and were ushered into the presence of a broad-shouldered official whose little eyes and cast of face were essentially Russian, and who did not receive us with any excessive show of warmth. Such is the manner of deputies all the world over—but our disappointment turned to surprise when who should enter the apartment but Wesson, closely escorted by a formidable individual whom we at once recognised as a commissary of police!

Fig. 12. Portrait of Ivan.

May I introduce the reader to Ivan Kuyumjibashoff, a personality no less alarming than his name (Fig. [12]), and may I take this early opportunity to place him on his guard against the fallacy that the Armenians are not a martial race? For this man was a pure Armenian, in spite of the Russian termination of -off instead of -ean. Erzerum was his native city; his family had emigrated to Russia, and during the last war against the Turks Ivan had gained the cross of honour for personal bravery in the field. At his side hung a sword of which the scabbard and hilt were adorned with chased silver; the blade was his special pride, being of ancient Khorasan workmanship, a trophy from the Kurds. His features inspired fear; his skin of leather was the result of exposure; but we had not yet learnt that, like all true warriors who are not barbarians, the lion’s fierceness was tempered by the meekness of the lamb. A cloud settled over the face of the deputy as the massive fist turned the handle of the door and the heavy tread fell on the bare boards. Arrived at his side, Ivan whispered something in his ear, and I ventured to ask what might be the business of this man. The official replied that he was the emissary of Captain Taranoffsky, the chief of the so-called gendarmerie, and that he had been sent to conduct us to the presence of his superior, who would personally explain the purport of his summons. I enquired whether Colonel Alander was not the governor of Akhaltsykh, and his office the seat of supreme power; I was answered that there was another and separate jurisdiction which the governor did not control. The deputy added with an agreeable humour that, should we be thrown into prison, he would be powerless to take us out. Nothing therefore to be done but to follow Ivan; and would that his master had been as capable as himself!

In these Armenian provinces of Russia the machinery of administration is conducted by a handful of Russian officials through Armenians, who are employed even in the higher grades. The Armenian is a man of ancient culture and high natural capacity; neither the instinct nor the quality would be claimed by his Russian superior, who is the instrument of a system of government rather than a born ruler, and who in general is lacking in those attributes of pliancy and individual initiative which it is the tendency of rigid bureaucracies to destroy. Moreover the Russian official gives the impression of being overwhelmed by his system, like a child to whom his lessons are new; and, when you see him at work among such a people as the Armenians, you ask yourself how it has happened that a race with all the aptitudes are governed by such wooden figures as these. There are of course notable exceptions to this general statement, which resumes one’s experience of the subordinate officers rather than of those who are highest placed. Taranoffsky was about as bad a specimen of his class as it has been my misfortune to meet. A short man of portly figure, fat red face, and little eyes, he had all the self-assertion which so often accompanies small stature, all the unfriendliness which seems the almost necessary outcome of a lack of physical grace. I at once perceived all the elements of an unpleasant situation; nor were my apprehensions disproved by the result. We were taken to a hotel, deprived of our papers and letters, and placed under close police surveillance pending a decision as to our future fate. The warmest pass of arms was that which took place over our photographic negatives, which our persecutor peremptorily required. I represented that many of the films were as yet undeveloped, and was absolute in my refusal to give them up. On the other hand I expressed myself anxious that he should see them developed in his presence, for which purpose I begged him to prepare a dark room. I forget whether he accepted this tempting proposal; the negatives remained intact. Permission was given us to drive under escort to the monastery of Safar, and the arrival that night or the following morning of Colonel Alander appeared to alleviate the disfavour with which we were viewed. Not that these two imperia work harmoniously together! How can it be expected that they should? The political police are particularly active in fortress towns such as Kars or Akhaltsykh; but I understood from Ivan that they are pretty widely distributed over the country, and that their functions extend to tracking down Socialists and Nihilists, and in general to the diffusion of alarm and annoyance far and wide. “How ugly is man!” has exclaimed a French novelist; indeed how ugly at such moments he appears.

If the morning was consumed by these unforeseen complications, the afternoon held in store for the harried travellers a further contrast and a rich reward. The monastery of Safar is situated a few miles[2] south-east of Akhaltsykh on the lofty slopes of a volcanic ridge; the drive thither displays the landscape of the town and surrounding country, and the goal is a group of buildings, of which the principal church is a gem of architecture, instinct with the graces that adorn and elevate life. For awhile we followed down the right bank of the river along the road toward Akhalkalaki and the east; then, almost reversing direction, turned up a side track on the right hand, which conducted us, always rising, across the bleak undulations at the back of the modern town. Here and there the soil had been sown and was yellow with stubble, or lay exposed in patches of plough; but cultivation was only partial, and for many a mile not a village could be discerned. Far and near, the surface of the earth was of a hummocky nature, like sands modelled by children’s spades.

Fig. 13. Safar: St. Saba from the West.

After jolting along this track for some distance, we again struck a metalled road. It winds along the side of the ridge upon which Safar is situated, and overlooks a deep ravine. The slope of the ridge is clothed in places by a scanty growth of bush and dotted by low trees; but the ravine and opposite hillside are bare and stony, and the landscape is bleak and wild in the extreme. The only signs of life and movement proceeded from a village of which the tenements were built into that opposite slope. The peasants in their gay cottons were threshing the season’s harvest, and, as we returned, we saw them transporting it in little carts, drawn by eight oxen apiece, from the fields, where it had been left since the end of June in convenient places, up to the village threshing-floors. We were surprised at the evident prosperity of the occupants of this Georgian settlement; what could be more quaint than women with white gloves and parasols who dwelt in such hovels as those? We met several such groups on the road and about the monastery, which was the goal of their afternoon’s walk; several families also, who had come from afar, were encamped at Safar, at once a pilgrimage and a pleasant residence during the summer months.

A similar practice no doubt prevailed with the powerful governors of Upper Georgia, of that remote and extensive province of Semo-Karthli which comprised the uppermost valleys of the Kur and Chorokh and the mountains of Ajara to the Kolchian coast. Known under the title of atabegs, they flourished in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, became independent of the kings of Georgia, and were only suppressed at a late date by the Ottoman Turks.[3] Here was their seat of predilection during the heats of summer, and, except for the arid soil and crops of stones that cover the valleys, one cannot but approve their choice. You are at a height of some 1000 feet above the town of Akhaltsykh; deep below you flows the Kur, the river of Ardahan as they call it, on its way to pierce the barrier of the border ranges by the passage of Borjom. On the side of the ridge a narrow site, whence the ground declines abruptly to the abyss below, is filled by a cluster of little chapels, backed, at the extreme end, by an imposing church. I wish I could offer my reader an ampler description; but just at this point I am trusting entirely to my memory and bewailing the loss of a portion of the day’s notes. Counting the chapels, they would tell you that the monastery contained twelve churches, while according to our notions it possesses only one. That one is St. Saba, of which I offer two illustrations, one to present the ensemble of the building with the adjacent belfry (Fig. [13]), the other to exhibit the charming detail of the porch on the west (Fig. [14]).

Fig. 14. Safar: Porch of St. Saba.

In a treeless country, devoid of the rich bewilderment of a luxuriant Nature, and moulded on a scale which would mock the more ambitious creations of human effort and is everywhere present to the eye, such a jewel in stone as St. Saba and many another Armenian temple are seen at an advantage which they would scarcely possess in Western landscapes. Planted on the rough hillsides, overlooking vast expanses of plain and mountain, winding river and lonely lake, they offer at once a contrast to the bleakness of Nature and a quiet epitome of her startling forms. Take this church as an example of the most finished workmanship; what a pleasure to turn from the endless crop of chaotic boulders to the even surface of these walls of faced masonry which the dry climate preserves ever fresh, to the sharply chiselled stone-work of the elaborate mouldings and bands of arabesques! Or, if you extend the vision to comprise the distant scene about you, it will often happen that the mountain masses tower one above another like the roofs and gables by your side, and culminate in the shape of a dome with a conical summit which repeats these outlines, like a reflection, against the sky.

St. Saba, although created through the munificence of a Georgian atabeg, is probably the work of an Armenian architect, and may certainly be counted as an example of the Armenian style. If we may trust a mutilated inscription in the interior, which has been in part deciphered by Brosset, the present church was built by the Atabeg Sargis, the son of Beka, who flourished between 1306 and 1334; and, if we could only be certain of the signification of the four numeral letters which are plainly seen on the face of the wall at one side of the window of the western porch, we should perhaps be able to fix the exact date. Dubois, indeed, supposes that it was constructed by Manuchar, brother of the last of the atabegs, Kuarkuareh, who fought with such valour against the Turks. But Dubois is relying upon what he terms “constant tradition,” and Brosset cautions us against accepting anything that he has written about Safar. One would certainly not have thought that such a well-instructed traveller, as was Dubois, could have mistaken a monument of the fourteenth century for a production of the later years of the sixteenth; and personally I should be inclined to attribute the edifice to a period at least as early as the fourteenth century.[4]

August 30.—The Tartar who had accompanied us on the excursion to Safar had fired my cousin with an account of some stag and big game shooting which was to be found some four hours’ journey from the town. According to arrangement he made his appearance in the early morning, and found my cousin already prepared. I had resolved to devote the day to the town and outskirts, should our persecutors leave me free. But I had no sooner reached the bridge from our encampment on the bed of the river, in order to see my cousin on his way, than the plans of both of us were arrested by the advent of Ivan the Terrible, who rose from the cushions of a landau and summoned us to be seated at his side. I need not devote space to a repetition of fresh annoyances, since they had already almost reached their term. Was the departure of Colonel Alander connected with our arrival, and had he gone to satisfy himself about us at Abastuman? When at length we were able to see him he greeted us kindly, and furnished me with all the information of which I was in want. Let me therefore at once introduce the reader to the town of Akhaltsykh and to the people who dwell therein.

The view of the place which I offer (Fig. [15]) was taken on the road to Akhalkalaki from the right bank of the river, some distance below the bridge. Within the precincts of the town the camera was strictly interdicted, although, since our tents were pitched just opposite the fortress, we might well have sketched that old-fashioned stronghold from memory when the canvas was closed for the night. The river is flowing towards you through grassy meadows, which are verdant even at this season, and which are being browsed by flocks of sheep and goats. On the right bank, on the left of the picture, and stretching across the middle distance to a promontory which is washed by the stream, lies the modern town with its gardens and substantial houses (Fig. 15, a); on the opposite shore, following the cliff from the extreme right of the illustration, you have first the old town (b), then the fortress (c), and last the gorge (d).

Fig. 15. Akhaltsykh from the Road to Akhalkalaki.

The inhabitants of Akhaltsykh are censused at 15,000—at the time of our visit the registered figure was 15,120, although the latest tabulated statistics which Colonel Alander was able to show me gave a total of 15,914 for 1891. This total was divided in the following manner, according to religion and race: Gregorian Armenians, 9620; Catholic Armenians, 2875; Georgians and Russians, excluding the garrison, 782; Roman Catholics, 97; and 2540 Jews. I cannot help thinking that the proportion of Armenians is excessive, and that the governor has included among those of the Catholic persuasion a considerable number of Armenian Catholics who are of Georgian race. At Kutais I had been informed by a Roman Catholic priest that I should find among the communion of the Armenian Catholics at Akhaltsykh many Georgians whose ancestors had been devout Catholics and had become united to the Armenian Catholics, as the nearest Catholic Church, when the Georgian Church followed the Greek in cutting off relations with Rome. The Georgian kings forbade them to hold their services in Georgian, which had been their practice previously. These men were no doubt the converts of the old Roman Catholic missions; it is known that at the commencement of the thirteenth century the kings of Georgia were in correspondence with the popes, and that these communications and the despatch of missionaries to Georgia were continued in the following century.[5] The published statistics of 1886 give the number of Georgians as 2730 souls, and evidently include the large majority of them among the Roman Catholics. It is therefore probable that both lists fall into error, and that of the two the published table is the more reliable in all that concerns distinction of race. I append it in a footnote,[6] and have only to add in this connection that in both lists the number of males exceeds that of females, and that for this reason the totals are in general too small. In Colonel Alander’s list the male population amounts to 8335, in the published list to 8480 souls. The women must be at least as numerous as the men, although, owing to Eastern prejudices, they are much more difficult to count.

In several senses the town of Akhaltsykh has undergone a revolution during the course of the present century. At the commencement of this period we are introduced to a flourishing city of the Ottoman Empire, the capital of a pashalik, which was composed of six sanjaks or administrative divisions,[7] in close communication with the neighbouring cities of Kars and Erzerum and the emporium of an extensive traffic in Georgian slaves.[8] At this time it is said to have contained some 40,000 inhabitants, of whom the greater portion were Mussulmans.[9] The site of the city was the same as that of the old town of the present day, but the houses extended to the immediate confines of the citadel. The whole was defended by moats and a double row of walls with battlements and flanking towers. The right bank of the river was embellished by numerous gardens, but there does not appear to have been anything like a town upon this side. The citadel was remarkable for its beautiful mosque, with an imposing minaret more than 130 feet high. This minaret, like the mosque, was built of blocks of hewn stone; and, so solid was its structure, that it suffered little damage during the Russian bombardment, although hit by no less than seven cannon balls. Such was Akhaltsykh prior to its conquest by the Russians under Paskevich in 1828.[10] The conquerors introduced far-reaching changes, of which the evidence remains to the present time. They razed a portion of the town in the vicinity of the fortress, which had furnished cover to the Turks in the desperate attempt which they subsequently made to recapture their old stronghold. The outer walls of the city were either demolished or fell into ruin and disappeared. The mosque of the citadel was converted into a Russian church and shorn of its minaret.[11] A new town was founded on the right bank of the river and assigned to Armenian colonists. The Mussulman population emigrated into Turkey; and Akhaltsykh, which received a large body of Armenian immigrants from Kars and Erzerum, became practically a Christian town. The native inhabitants who were Christians erected belfries near their churches and heard with joy the sound of Christian bells. But it would seem that no great measure of prosperity attended this new birth. The immigrants were bent on doing business and opening shops; only those among them who were agriculturists did well. Commerce declined owing to the inclusion of the town within the frontier line of the Russian customs and the consequent interruption of relations with the neighbouring cities in the south. The traffic in slaves was, of course, abolished, and no considerable industry took its place. Akhaltsykh was shut up in her corner of Asia; for the impracticable barrier of the border ranges walls her off from the sea. Still the fact that the place was a frontier fortress of the Russian Empire must have been productive of at least a local trade. In 1833 the population appears to have numbered only 11,000 souls;[12] but it probably increased from that date, year by year. When Kars came into the permanent possession of the Russians, the newly-acquired fortress in part supplanted Akhaltsykh; and the progressive decline of the Turkish Empire has further contributed to relieve the Government of the necessity of providing the last-named stronghold with modern fortifications. At the time of my visit it was evident that the town was declining and losing importance year by year. I questioned several of the better-informed among the inhabitants as to the cause of this unhappy state of things. “You have long enjoyed the blessings of security,” I observed, “both for property and life; yet in place of a steadily increasing prosperity I see nothing but signs of impoverishment and falling-off.” As usual in the East, I received several answers; but all were unanimous in declaring that the principal reason was the depopulation of the surrounding country, owing to the persistent emigration of the Mussulmans and the want of colonists to take their place. Another cause, they said, was the decline in military importance to which I have already referred.

The modern town on the right bank was nearest to our encampment; may I therefore commence the account of what we saw at Akhaltsykh with a stroll through its garden-lined streets? The houses are nice little one-storeyed dwellings, some built of brick, others of stone. A feature were the quaint little spouts to carry off the rain-water, shaped at the ends to resemble dragons’ heads. I have already spoken of the “cherry-coloured roofing”—an effect which we discovered was due to no more interesting process than a coat of paint applied to corrugated iron. In a similar manner the roof of a church would be tinted a cool green, and the combination of these hues with the rich foliage was extremely pleasing to the eye. Where the scattered tenements collect together and you reach the business quarter, here and there a modern shop may be seen; but the handicrafts for which Akhaltsykh is in some degree famous are still carried on in those brick-built booths with their shadowed recesses which constitute the little world of the Eastern artificer, at once his workshop and the mart for his wares. We examined some of the productions of the workers in silver without being tempted to buy. We were made aware of the existence of a silk industry for which the raw material is brought from Georgia. We visited the schools and conversed with the masters; but the scholars were making holiday. Akhaltsykh possesses two important schools, the one belonging to the Armenian community, the other a Russian State school. That of the Armenians provides education to some 300 boys and youths, and to a still larger number of girls. Both the Gregorian Armenians and the Catholics attend this establishment; religious instruction is imparted to the members of either communion by teachers of their own persuasion in separate classes. We were told that the yearly income amounted to 14,000 roubles (£1400), exclusive of what was received from the girls; and that this sum included the receipts of the theatre which is attached to this enterprising school. The Russian institution boasts of 300 scholars, of whom 75 per cent are Armenians; it does not possess a branch for girls. On the other hand, it indulges in the modern fashion of technical instruction, a side which does not appear to be cultivated in the Armenian school. Its staff consists of fifteen teachers; a fee of twelve roubles (£1:4s.) a year is levied, but many poor pupils are admitted free. A few boarders are received, whose parents live at a distance; and I may here remark that, except in cases which I shall endeavour to specify, all the schools of which I shall make mention in the following pages are practically day-schools. We were taken to see the churches—commonplace edifices—of which the Armenians, with so many examples of noble architecture about them, ought really to be ashamed. The largest of them is called the cathedral, and belongs to the Gregorians; there is also, not far from it, an Armenian Catholic church. West of the cathedral on the hillside—it appears in my illustration—we were shown a second church belonging to the Gregorian community; but I do not remember its name. It was at Akhaltsykh that we were first impressed by the custom of the Armenians to kiss the ground when they face the altar in prayer. Such abject prostration in the dust we had never before witnessed in any Christian church. It was Oriental; it was pathetic—the gesture of a poor raya at the feet of his savage lord.... Last of all we were shown the Court of Justice, where a resident magistrate and visiting judges from Tiflis dispense the law behind a barrier of baize-covered tables beneath a life-size portrait of the Tsar. And that is what we saw of the modern town of Akhaltsykh; I doubt whether there is much more to be seen.

The old town on the left bank presents a striking contrast to its young rival across the water. You gain the bridge and pause for a moment to follow the many-channelled river threading the banks of yellow pebbles in its bed; flowing through a landscape of wild and bare hills, which streams with the garish daylight of the East. The road mounts the slope of the opposite cliff or convexity, which, a little further west, joins the more abrupt ridge of crag and precipice crowned by the battlements of the fortress. In this cliff, with its swelling shapes, soft soil and irregular hummocks, the Armenians have discovered a burrowing-ground exactly suited to their requirements; the gaping apertures of chimneys and windows threaten to engulf the guileless traveller who walks, unwitting, between the houses up the hillside. No vegetation relieves the monotony of the constant hues of ochre, and the tiers of clay and stone which represent the larger tenements mingle naturally with the stone-strewn surface of the friable earth. We saw two churches; one is administered by the Armenian Catholics, the other, which is situated a little above the first, is a Russian Orthodox church. Besides these larger buildings there are two chapels or prayer-houses, which scarcely attain the dignity of a church. These belong to the Gregorians, and we were told that the Roman Catholics have a small chapel within the precincts of the old town. But what interested us most was the Jewish quarter with its two spacious synagogues. We admired the simplicity of these airy chambers—in the middle the pulpit, the benches disposed around; and we pictured to ourselves the eager faces of the congregation, upturned from those benches to the grave preacher and mobile to every turn of his discourse. The Jew is a rare creature upon the tableland of Armenia; he finds it difficult to exist by the side of the Armenian, who is his rival in his own peculiar sphere.[13] There is a saying that in cleverness a Jew is equal to two Greeks, a single Armenian to two Jews.

The community gathered round us and almost filled the synagogue, in which we sat and rested for a considerable space. Two distinct types of physiognomy were represented; on the one hand the fat, florid cheeks and thick lips which are so characteristic of the coarser strain of Jew, on the other the cavernous features, wrinkled skin, aquiline nose and penetrating eyes which are the monument of the ancient refinement of the Jewish race. When we contrasted the destitution and even the misery of this quarter with the air of prosperity which the synagogue displayed, it was evident that the community were undergoing a period of adversity, and we enquired the reasons of this decline. They attributed their fallen state to the competition of the Armenians; the Armenians, they said, were good workers and a great people, the Jews few in numbers and isolated. There was nothing left for the poor Jew but to tramp round the villages, carrying his goods upon his back. They must emigrate, they were emigrating.... Alas! we thought, to what distant land across the mountains, across the sea, shall the poor Jew wander out? How shall he escape the dangers of the way, with the hand of the Government against him, with hatred and contempt dogging his weary steps? And the Christianity by our side appeared detestable to us, doubly odious by its want of every Christian virtue and by the mummery of its gaudy symbols and vulgar shows. The Jew carries with him the vastness of Asia, the sublimity of the worship of a single God; may the nations be fertilised by the powerful intellect and their religions elevated by the high conceptions of the Hebrew race!

The fortress, with which the old town naturally communicates, was to us strictly forbidden ground. Although I urged its worthlessness as a reason why we should be permitted to visit it, Captain Taranoffsky would on no account give way. The mosque, the present church, to which I have already alluded, was of course all that we wanted to see. It stands on the northern side of the fortress enclosure; the base of the minaret still remains and is crowned by a little cupola to which is affixed a cross. An inscription on the gate by which the court is entered gives as the date of construction the year of the Hegira 1166 (A.D. 1752–53).[14] Dubois informs us that the architect was an Italian;[15] but Brosset, who says that it was built upon the model of St. Sophia, is silent upon this point. For the character of the interior as it existed before the Russian occupation I may refer the reader to Dubois. The fountain in the centre of the court is supplied by an underground aqueduct which conveys the waters of a limpid spring, some seven miles off.[16]

From the old town we slowly made our way back to the encampment, enjoying the scene, observing the passers-by. Here and there we would meet a group of Russian soldiers in their white tunics, taking their evening stroll. Their large frames, fair hair, shaven faces and coarse features contrasted with the neatness of the Oriental type. Their little eyes, deeply set behind the flat nose, were answered on every side by the glances that proceeded from the large and lustrous eyes of the Armenian race. The sheep and cattle were winding into the town from the meadows, each animal finding its stable for itself.

[1] Radde (Reisen in Hoch Armenien, Petermann’s Mitth., Gotha, 1875, p. 59) says: “It appears that at least in this district potato culture is making considerable progress in recent times among the Armenians.” He attributes this to the example of the Molokans and Dukhobortsy. [↑]

[2] By the road the distance, according to our coachman, would be 15 versts or 10 miles; by the track which we followed 10 versts or 6½ miles. [↑]

[3] Dubois de Montpéreux, Voyage autour du Caucase, Paris 1839–43, vol. ii. [↑]

[4] Brosset, Voyage archéologique en Transcaucasie, St. Petersburg, 1849, 1re livraison, 2me rapport, pp. 119 seq., and atlas, plates v. and vi.; Dubois, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 292 seq. [↑]

[5] Brosset, op. cit. p. 143. [↑]

[6] Population of Akhaltsykh:—

  • (1) According to nationality: Armenians, 10,417; Georgians, 2730; Jews, 2545; others (including 145 Russians and 110 Poles), 424—Total, 16,116.
  • (2) According to religion: Gregorian Armenians, 9678; Catholic Armenians, 739; Roman Catholics, 2311; Jews, 2545; others (including 777 Russian Orthodox, 9 Lutherans, and 57 Sunni Mohammedans), 843. (Statistics concerning the populations of Transcaucasia derived from the family lists of 1886. Published by Government, Tiflis, 1893.)

[↑]

[7] They were: Akhaltsykh, Atzkur, Aspinja, Khertvis, Akhalkalaki, Ardahan (Dubois, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 284–85). [↑]

[8] The slave trade was carried on through Circassians, who kidnapped the inhabitants of Georgia proper and fled with them across the Turkish border to Akhaltsykh (Dubois, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 261–62; Haxthausen, Transcaucasia, London, 1854, p. 100). [↑]

[9] Adrien Dupré in Gamba, Voyage dans la Russie méridionale, Paris, 1826, vol. i. p. 403. [↑]

[10] For the interesting siege and capture of Akhaltsykh by Paskevich I may refer the reader to Monteith, Kars and Erzerum, London, 1856, ch. vi. pp. 182 seq.; Dubois, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 258 seq., and a note to Haxthausen, op. cit. p. 100. Eli Smith, who travelled in the country in 1830–31, informs us that the siege of Akhaltsykh was one of the two occasions upon which the Turks gave the Russians a fair trial of their bravery. The other was at Baiburt (Missionary Researches in Armenia, London, 1834, p. 82). [↑]

[11] Dubois saw it still standing in 1833. I cannot find when it was cut down. Brosset (op. cit. p. 149) mentions the conversion of the mosque. [↑]