YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

GENERAL VIEW OF EBZEBOOM, THE CAPITAL OF ARMENIA.

ARMENIA:

A YEAR AT ERZEROOM, AND ON THE FRONTIERS OF
RUSSIA, TURKEY, AND PERSIA.

BY THE HON. ROBERT CURZON,
AUTHOR OF ' VISITS TO THE MONASTERIES OF THE LEVANT.'

Ruined Armenian Church near Erzeroom.

MAP AND WOODCUTS.

LONDON:
JOHN MUEEAY, ALBEMAELE STEEET.
1854.

PREFACE.

Almost from time immemorial a border war
fare has been carried on between the Koordish
tribes on the confines of Turkey and Persia, in
the mountainous country beginning at Mount
Ararat towards the north, and continuing south
wards to the low lands, where the Shat al Arab
the name of the mighty river formed by the
junction of the Tigris and the Euphrates,
pours those great volumes of water into the
Persian Gulf. The consequence of the unsettled
.state of affairs in those wild districts was, that
the roads were unsafe for travellers ; merchants
were afraid to trust their merchandise to the
conveyance even of well-armed caravans, for they
were constantly pillaged by the Koords, headed
in our days by the great chieftains Beder Khan
Bey, Noor Ullah Bey, Khan Abdall, and Khan
Mahmoud. The chains of mountains which
occupy great part of the country in question are
for months every year covered with snow,
which even in the elevated plains lies at the
depth of many yards : the bands of robbers con-

PREFACE.

stantly on the watch for plunder of any kind
prevented the mountain paths from being kept
open, so that those who escaped from the long
lances of the Koords perished in the avalanches
and the snow-drifts by hundreds every year.
To put a stop, or at least a check, to so
lamentable a state of things, the governments of
Turkey and Persia requested the assistance of
England and Russia to draw up a treaty of
peace, and to come to a distinct understanding
as to where the line of border ran between the
two empires ; for hitherto the Koordish tribes
of Turkey made it a virtue to plunder a Persian
village, and the Persians, on their side, consi
dered no action more meritorious, as well as
profitable, than an inroad on the Turkish fron
tier, the forays on both sides being conducted
on the same plan. The invading party, always
on horseback, and with a number of trained led
horses, which could travel one hundred miles
without flagging, managed to arrive in the
neighbourhood of the devoted village one hour
before sunrise. The barking ofthe village curs
was the first notice to the sleeping inhabitants
that the enemy was literally at the door. The
houses were fired in every direction ; the people
awoke from sleep, and, trying in confusion to
escape, were speared on their thresholds by their

PREFACE.

invaders ; the place was plundered of every
thing worth taking ; and one hour after sunrise
the invading bands were in full retreat, driving
before them the flocks and herds of their
victims, and the children and girls of the village
bound on the led horses, to be sold or brought
up as slaves ; the rest having, young and old,
men and women, been killed without mercy, to
prevent their giving the alarm : their victors
frequently coming down upon them from a dis
tance of one hundred to three hundred miles.
In hopes of remedying these misfortunes a
conference was appointed at Erzeroom, where a
Turkish plenipotentiary, Noori Effendi ; a Per
sian plenipotentiary, Merza Jaffer Khan ; a Rus
sian commissioner, Colonel Dainese ; and an
English commissioner, Colonel Williams, of the
Royal Artillery, were to meet, each with a
numerous suite, to discuss the position of the
boundary, and to check the border incursions of
the Koordish tribes, both by argument and by
force of arms, the troops of both nations being
ordered to assist the deliberations of the con
gress at Erzeroom by every endeavour on their
part to keep the country in a temporary state of
tranquil ity. The plenipotentiaries on the part
of Turkey and Persia and the English and Rus
sian commissioners entered upon their arduous
b 2

PREFACE.

task at the beginning of the year 1842. Colonel
Williams, to whom the duties of the English
commission had been intrusted, was too unwell
to proceed to Erzeroom, and I was appointed in
his stead, being at that time private secretary
to Sir Stratford Canning, her Majesty's ambas
sador at Constantinople. Colonel Williams after
wards recovered so much that he was able to
set out, and we started together as joint commis
sioners, in company with Colonel (afterwards
General) Dainese, on the part of Russia, a gentle
man of very considerable talents and attain
ments. The discussions between the two
governments were protracted by every conceiv
able difficulty, which was thrown in the way of
the commissioners principally by the Turks. At
length, in June, 1847, a treaty was signed, in
which the confines of the two empires were
defined :- these, however, being situated in places
never surveyed, and only known by traditional
maps, which had copied the names of places one
from another since the invention of engraving,
it was considered advisable that the true situa
tions of these places should be verified in a
scientific manner ; consequently, a new commis
sion was named in the year 1848, whose officers
were instructed to define the actual position of the
•spots enumerated in the treaty above mentioned.

PREFACE. yj;
These commissioners consisted of Dervish Pasha
for Turkey, Merza Jaffer for Persia, Colonel
Williams for England, and Colonel Ktchirikoff
for Russia.
This party left Bagdad in 1848, surveyed the
whole of that hitherto unexplored region, among
the Koordish and original Christian tribes, which
extends to the east of Mesopotamia, till they
finished their difficult and dangerous task at
Mount Ararat, on the 16th of September, 1852.
The results of this expedition are, I hope, to be
presented to the public by the pen of Colonel
Williams, and will, I trust, throw a new and
interesting light upon the manners and customs
of the wild mountaineers of those districts, and
give much information relating to the Chal
deans, Maronites, Nestorians, and other Chris
tian Churches converted in the earliest ages by
the successors of the Apostles, of whom we know
very little, no travellers hitherto having had the
opportunities of investigating their actual condi
tion and their religious tenets which have been
afforded to Colonel Williams and the little army
under his command.
Armenia, the cradle of the human family, in
offensive and worthless of itself, has for centuries,
indeed from the beginning of time, been a bone
of contention between conflicting powers : scarcely
b 3

PREFACE.

has it been made acquainted with the blessings
of tranquillity and peace, through the mediation
of Great Britain, than again it is to become the
theatre of war, again to be overrun with bands
of armed men seeking each other's destruction,
in a climate which may afford them burial when
dead, but which is too barren and inhospitable
to provide them with the necessaries of life ; and
this to satisfy the ambition of a distant potentate,
by whose success they gain no advantage in this
world or in the next.
It is much to be deplored that the Emperor of
Russia, by his want of principle, has brought
the Christian religion into disrepute ; for through
out the Levant the Christians have for years
been waiting an opportunity to rise against the
oppressors of their fortunes and their faith. The
manner in which the Czar has put himself so
flagrantly in the wrong will be a check to the
progress of Christianity. That the step he has
now been taking has been the great object of his
reign, as well as that of all his predecessors since
the time of Peter the Great, will be illustrated
in the following pages.
The accession of a Christian emperor to the
throne of Constantinople will be an event of
greater consequence than is generally imagined ;
for the Sultan of Roum is considered by all

PREFACE. ix
Mahometans in India, Africa, and all parts of
the world, to be the vicegerent of God upon
earth, and the Caliph or successor of Mohamed ;
his downfall, therefore, would shatter the whole
fabric of the Mahometan faith, for the Sultan is
the pride and glory of Islam, and the pale
Crescent of the East will wane and set when
Kurie Eleison is chanted again under the ancient
dome of St. Sofia.
What an unfortunate mistake has been made in
not waiting for a real and just occasion for press
ing forward the ranks of the Cross against the
Crescent ! Then who would not have joined a
righteous cause ? — who would not have given
his wealth, his assistance, or his life, in the de
fence of his faith against the enemies of his
religion ?
I feel that, in laying this little book before the
public, I am committing a rash act, for I am
perfectly aware that it has many imperfections.
I was prevented from visiting several important
places in Armenia by an illness so severe, brought
on by the unhealthy climate, that I have not been
able to take an active part in life since that time.
The following pages were written in a very few
days, at a time when other occupations prevented
me from giving them that attention which should
always be afforded to a work that is intended
for the perusal of the public.

x PREFACE.
Nevertheless I consider that, as the countries
described are so little known, and as it is not
improbable that events of great importance may
take place within their boundaries, I should be
open to greater blame in withholding any infor
mation, however humble, than in presenting to
the reader a meagre account of those wild and
sterile regions, whose climate and manners are
so different from those which are generally
described in the works of oriental travellers.
These sketches, slight as they are, may per
haps be found useful to the members of any
expedition which the chances of war may occa
sion to be sent into those remote countries, by
giving them beforehand some intimation of the
preparations necessary to be made for their
journey through a district where they would
encounter at every step difficulties which they
might not have been led to expect in a latitude
considerably to the south of the Bay of Naples.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTEE I. Pace
The "Bad Black Sea'' — Coal-field near the Bosphorus — Trebi
zond from the sea — Fish and turkeys — The bazaars — Coronas
— Ancient tombs — Church of St. Sofia — Preservation of old
manners and ceremonies — Toilette of a person of distinction —
Russian loss in 1828-9 — Ancient prayer — Varna — Statistics
of Wallachia — Visit to Abdallah Pasha — His outward appear
ance — His love of medical experiments — Trade of Trebizond . 1
CHAPTER II.
Departure from Trebizond — A rough road — Turkish pack-horses
— Value of tea — The pipe in the East — Mountain riding —
Instinct of the horse — A caravan overwhelmed by an avalanche
— Mountain of Hoshabounar — A ride down the mountain —
Arrival at Erzeroom ........ 24
CHAPTER III.
The Consulate at Erzeroom — Subterranean dwellings — Snow-
blindness — Effects of the severe climate — The city : its popu
lation, defences, and buildings — Our house and household —
Armenian country houses — The ox-stable . . . .34
CHAPTER IY.
Narrow escape from suffocation — Death of Noori Eftendi — A
good shot — History of Mirza Tekee — Persian ideas of the prin
ciples of government — The "Blood-drinker" — Massacre at
Kerbela — Sanctity of the place — History of Hossein — Attack
on Kerbela, and defeat of the Persians — Good effects of com
missioners' exertions ........ 52

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER V. Page
The boundary question — Koordish chiefs — Torture of Artin, an
Armenian Christian — Improved state of Bociety in Turkey —
Execution of a Koord — Power of fatalism — Gratitude of Artin's
family .......... 77
CHAPTER VI.
The clock of Erzeroom — A Pasha's notions of horology — Patho
logy of clocks — The tower and dungeon — Ingenious mode of
torture — The modern prison ...... 100
CHAPTER VII.
Spring in Erzeroom — Coffee-house diversions — Koordish exploits
— Summer employment — Preparation of tezek — Its varieties
and uses .......... 108
CHAPTER VIII.
The prophet of Khoi — Climate — Effects of great elevation above
the sea — The genus Homo — African gold-diggings — Sale of a
family — Site of Paradise — Tradition of Khosref Purveez —
Flowers — A flea-antidote — Origin of the tulip — A party at
the Cave of Ferhad, and its results — Translation from Hafiz . 115
CHAPTER IX.
The bear — Ruins of a Genoese castle — Lynx — Lemming — Cara
guz — Gerboa — Wolves — Wild sheep — A hunting adventure
— Camels — Peculiar method of feeding — Degeneration of do
mestic animals ......... 133

CHAPTER X.
Birds — Great variety and vast numbers of birds — Flocks of geese
— Employment for the sportsman — The captive crane — Wild
and tame geese — Their pious and profane ancestors — List of
birds found at Erzeroom ........ 143

GONTENTS.

CHAPTER Xr. Page
Excursion to the Lake of Tortoom — Romantic bridge — Gloomy
effect of the Lake — Singular boat • — " Evaporation " of a pistol
— Kiamili Pasha — Extraordinary marksman — Alarming illness
of the author — An earthquake — Lives lost through intense
cold — The author recovers . . . . . . 155
CHAPTER XII.
Starts for Trebizond — Personal appearance of the author —
Mountain-pass — Reception at Beyboort — Misfortunes of Mus-
tapha — Pass of Zigana Dagh — Arrival at Trebizond . .165

CHAPTER XIII.
Former history of Trebizond — Ravages of the Goths — Their
siege and capture of the city — Dynasties of Courtenai and the
Comneni — The "Emperor" David — Conquest of Trebizond
by Mehemet II  176
CHAPTER XIV.
Impassable character of the country — Dependence of Persia on the
Czar — Russian aggrandisement — Delays of the Western Powers
— Russian acquisitions from Turkey and Persia — Oppression of
the Russian government — The conscription — Armenian emi
gration — The Armenian patriarch — Latent power of the Pope
— Anomalous aspect of religious questions . . . .191
CHAPTER XV.
Ecclesiastical history — Supposed letter of Abgarus, King of Edessa,
to our Saviour, and the answer — Promulgation and establish
ment of Christianity — Labours of Mesrob Maschdots — Separa
tion of the Armenian Church from that of Constantinople —
Hierarchy and religious establishments — Superstition of the
lower classes — Sacerdotal vestments — The holy books — Romish
branch of the Church — Labours of Mechitar — His establish
ment near Venice — Diffusion of the Scriptures . . .212

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XYI. Page
Modern division of Armenia — Population — Manners and customs
of the Christians — Superiority of the Mahometans . . • 231
CHAPTER XVII.
Armenian manuscripts — Manuscripts at Etchmiazin — Compara
tive value of manuscripts — Uncial writing — Monastic libraries
— Collections in Europe — The St. Lazaro library . . .236
CHAPTER XVIII.
General history of Armenia — Former sovereigns — Tiridates I.
receives his crown from Nero — Conquest of the country by the
Persians, and by the Arabs — List of modern kings — Misfor
tunes of Leo V. ; his death at Paris ..... 243

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Frontispiece : General View of Erzeroom.
Title-page : Ruined Armenian Church near Erzeroom.
Erzeroom. View from the house of the British Commissioners. To face page 41
Koordish Gallows ....... page 95
Fundook .....
Ruined Tower in the Castle of Tortoom
Quarantine Harbour, Trebizond
Boat on the Lake of Tortoom
Map of Armenia ....

• „ 132
To face page 155175 157"
At the end.

ARMENIA.

CHAPTEE I.
The " Bad Black Sea" — Coal-field near the Bosphorus — Trebizond
from the sea — Fish and turkeys — The bazaars — Coronas —
Ancient tombs — Church of St. Sofia — Preservation of old
manners and ceremonies — Toilette of a person of distinction —
Russian loss in 1828-9 — Ancient prayer — Yarna — Statistics
ofWallachia — Visit to Abdallah Pasha — His outward appear
ance — His love of medical experiments — Trade of Trebizond.
Fen a kara Degniz. — The Bad Black Sea.
This is the character that stormy lake has ac
quired in the estimation of its neighbours at
Constantinople. Of 1000 Turkish vessels which
skim over its waters every year, 500 are said to
be wrecked as a matter of course. The wind
sometimes will blow from all the four quarters
of heaven within two hours' time, agitating the
waters like a boiling caldron. Dense fogs
obscure the air during the winter, by the assist
ance of which the Turkish vessels continually
mistake the entrance of a valley called the False
Bogaz for the entrance of the Bosphorus, and are
wrecked there perpetually. I have seen dead

2 ARMENIA. Chap. I.
bodies floating about in that part of the sea,
where I first became acquainted with the fact that
the corpse of a woman floats upon its back, while
that of a man floats upon its face. In short,
at Constantinople they say that everything that
is bad comes from the Black Sea : the plague,
the Russians, the fogs, and the cold — all come
from thence ; and though this time we had a
fine calm passage, I was glad enough to arrive
at the end of the voyage at Trebizond. Before
landing, however, I must give a passing tribute
to the beauty of the scenery on the south
coast, that is, on the north coast of Asia Minor.
Rocks and hills are its usual character near the
shore, with higher mountains inland. Between
the Bosphorus and Heraclea are boundless fields
of coal, which crops out on the side of the hills,
so that no mining would be required to get the
coal ; and besides this great facility in its pro
duction, the hills. are of such an easy slope that
a tramroad would convey the coal-waggons
down to the ships on the sea-coast without any
difficulty. No nation but the Turks would
delay to make use of such a source of enormous
wealth as this coal would naturally supply,
when it can be had with such remarkable ease
so near to the great maritime city of Con
stantinople. It seems to be a peculiarity in

CnaP- I. TURKISH COAL-MINES. 3
human nature that those who are too stupid
to undertake any useful work are frequently
jealous of the interference of others who are
more able and willing than themselves, as the
old fable of the dog in the manger exemplifies.
I understand that more than one English com
pany have been desirous of opening these im
mense mines of wealth, on the condition of
paying a large sum or a good percentage to
the Turkish Government ; but they are jealous
of a foreigner's undertaking that which they
are incapable of carrying out themselves. So
English steamers bring English coal to Con
stantinople, which costs I don't know what, by
the time it arrives within a few miles of a spot*
which is as well furnished with the most useful,
if not the most ornamental, of minerals as New
castle-upon-Tyne itself.
Beyond Sinope, where the flat alluvial land
stretches down to the sea-shore, there are forests
of such timber as we have no idea of in these
northern regions. Here there are miles of trees
so high, and large, and straight that they look
like minarets in flower. Wild boars, stags, and
various kinds of game abound in these magnifi-
* Since this was written, the coal-field of Eragle' has been opened
under the direction of English engineers, and the coals are sent to
Constantinople. b 2

4 ARMENIA. Chap. I.
cent primaeval woods, protected by the fevers
and agues which arise from the dense jungle
and unhealthy swamps inland, which prevent
the sportsman from following the game during
great part of the year. The inhabitants of all
this part of Turkey, Circassia, &c, are good
shots with the short heavy rifle which is their
constant companion, and they sometimes kill a
deer. As their religion protects the pigs, the
wild boars roam unmolested in this, for \hem
at least, " free and independent country." The
stag resembles the red deer in every respect,
only it is considerably smaller ; its venison is
not particularly good.
Trebizond presents an imposing appearance
from the sea ; it stands upon a rocky table-land,
from which peculiarity in its situation it takes
its name — rpaire^a being a table in Greek, if we
are to believe what Dr.  used to tell us at
school. There is no harbour, not even a bay, and
a rolling sea comes in sometimes which looks,
and I should think must be, awfully dangerous.
I have seen the whole of the keel of the ships at
anchor, as they rolled over from one side to the
other. The view from the sea of the curious an
cient town, the mountains in the background,
and the great chain of the Circassian mountains
on the left, is magnificent in the extreme. The

CnaP- L TURKEYS OF TREBIZOND. 5
only thing that the Black Sea is good for, that
I know of (and that, I think, may be said of
some other seas), is fish. The kalkau balouk,
shield-fish — a sort of turbot, with black prickles
on his back — though not quite worth a voyage
to Trebizond, is well worth the attention of the
most experienced gastronome when he once gets
there. The red mullet also is caught in great
quantities; but the oddest fish is the turkey.
This animal is generally considered to be a bird,
of the genus poultry, and so he is in all outward
appearances ; but at Trebizond the turkeys live
entirely upon a diet of sprats and other little
fish washed on shore by the waves, by which it
comes to pass that their flesh tastes like very
exceedingly bad fish, and abominably nasty
it is; though, if reclaimed from these bad
habits, and fed on corn and herbs, like other
respectable birds, they become very good, and
are worthy of being stuffed with chesnuts and
roasted, and of occupying the spot upon the
dinner-table from whence the remains of the
kalkan balouk have been removed.
On landing, the beauty of the prospect ceases,
for, like many Oriental towns, the streets are
lanes between blank walls, over which the
branches of fig-trees, roofs of houses, and boughs
of orange and lemon trees appear at intervals ;

6 ARMENIA. Chap. I.
so that, riding along the blind alleys, you do not
know whether there are houses or gardens on
each side.
The bazaars are a contrast, from their life
and bustle, to the narrow lanes through which
they are approached. Here numbers of the
real old-fashioned Turks are to be seen, with
turbans as large as pumpkins, of all colours and
forms, steadily smoking all manner of pipes.
I do not know why Europeans persist in
calling these places bazaars : charchi is the
Turkish for what we call bazaar, or bezestein
for an enclosed covered place containing various
shops. The word bazaar means a market, which
is altogether a different kind of thing.
The bazaars of Trebizond contain a good deal
of rubbish, both of the human and inanimate
kind. Cheese, saddles, old dangerous-looking
arms, and various pedlery and provisions, were
all that was to be seen. Many ruined buildings
of Byzantine architecture tottered by the sides
of the more open spaces, some apparently very
ancient, and well worth examination. In the
porches of two little antiquated Greek churches
I saw some frescoes of the 12th century, appa
rently in excellent preservation ; one of por
traits of Byzantine kings and princes, in their
royal robes, caught my attention, but I had not

Chap. I. CORONAS. 7
time to do more than take a hasty look at it.
The tomb of Solomon, the son of David, king of
Georgia or Immeretia, standing in the court
yard of another Greek church, under a sort of
canopy of stone, is a very curious monument ;
and in two churches there are ancient coronas,
which seemed to be of silver gilt, eight or ten
feet in diameter, most precious specimens of
early metal-work, which I coveted and desired
exceedingly. They were both engraved with
texts from Scripture, and saints and cherubims
of the grimmest aspect, so old and quaint and
ugly that they may be said to be really pain
fully curious. While on this subject I may re
mark that I am not aware where the authority
is to be found for introducing the quantities of
coronas which are now hung up in modern an
tique churches in England. I never saw one
in any Latin church, except at Aix-la-Chapelle ;
there are, I presume, others, but they certainly
never were common or usual anywhere in
Europe. All those I know of are Greek, and
belong to the Greek ceremonial rite. I have
never met with an ancient Gothic corona, and
should be glad to know from whence those
lately introduced into our parish churches have
been copied.
On the other side of the town from the land-

8 ARMENIA. Chap. I.
ing-place, a mile or so beyond the beautiful old
walls of the Byzantine citadel, is a small grassy
plain, with some fine single trees. This plain is
situated on a terrace, with the open sea on the
right hand, on a level of fifty or more feet
below. The view from hence on all sides is
lovely. The glorious blue sea — for it is not
black here — on the right hand ; the walls and
towers crumbling into ruin behind you, the
hills to the left, at the foot of which, built
on the level grass, are several ancient tombs,
whether Mahomedan or Christian I do not
know ; they are low, round towers, with conical
roofs, like old-fashioned pigeon-houses, but rich
in colour, with old brick and stone and marble.
Parasitical plants, growing from rents and
crevices occasioned by time, are left in peace
by the Turks, who, after all, are the best con
servators of antiquity in the world, for they
let things alone. There are no churchwardens
yet in Turkey ; there are no tasty architects,
with contemptible and gross ignorance of anti
quity, architecture, and taste, to build ridiculous
failures for a confiding ministry in London, or
a rich gentleman in the country, who does not
pretend to know anything about the matter,
and falls into the error of believing that if he
pays well he will be well served, and that a

Chap- I. ST. SOFIA. 9
man who has been brought up to build build
ings must know how to do it : and this know
ledge is displayed in the production of the
British Museum, the National Gallery, and other
original edifices.
The spleen aroused in writing these words is
calmed by the recollection of the ruins of the
fortified monastery, as it would appear to have
been, before my eyes at the further end of this
charming open plain ; a Byzantine gatehouse
stands within a ditch surrounding a considerable
space, in which some broken walls give evidence
of a stately palace or monastery which once rose
there ; but there still stands towering to a great
height the almost perfect church of St. Sofia —
the Holy Wisdom, not the saint of that name, but
the deity to whom the great cathedral of St.
Sofia is dedicated at Constantinople. This
church is curious and interesting in the ex
treme ; it is most rich in many of the pecu
liarities of Byzantine architecture outside, and
within there are very perfect remains of frescoes,
in a style of art such as I have hardly seen
equalled, never in any fresco-paintings. The
only ones equal to them are the illuminations
in the one odd volume of the MyvoXoyla in the
Vatican Library, and some in my own. There
are several half-figures of emperors in brilliant
B 3

10 ARMENIA. Chap. I.
colours, in circular compartments, on the under
sides of some arches, and numerous other paint
ings, of which the colours are so vivid that they
resemble painted glass, particularly where they
are broken, as the sharp outlines of what is left
betoken that they would be still as bright as
jewellery where they have not been destroyed
by the plaster, on which they are painted, giving
way. The position, beauty, and antiquity of this
Christian relic in a Mahomedan land, give a
singular interest to the church of St. Sofia at Tre
bizond. I longed to give this place a thorough
examination. Perhaps a portrait of some old
Comnenus would present itself to my admiring
eyes. Many likenesses of bygone emperors,
Csesars, and princesses born in the purple, might
be recovered in all the splendour of their royal
robes and almost sacred crowns and diadems, to
gladden the hearts of antiquarians enthusiastic
in the cause, and who, like myself, would be
ten times more delighted with the possession of
a portrait, or an incomprehensible work of art
of undoubted Byzantine origin, than with the
offer of the hand, even of the illustrious Anna
Comnena herself. Her portrait, after the lapse
of 600 years, would be most interesting ; but I
do not envy the Csesar who obtained the honour

Chap. I. OLD CUSTOMS PRESERVED. 11
of an alliance with that princess of the casrulean
hose. At this point, feeling myself entangled
with the reminiscences of Byzantine history,
I must branch off into a little episode relating
to the singular preservation of ancient man
ners and ceremonies still in use, or, at least,
remaining in the year 1830 in Wallachia and
Moldavia. The usages and the etiquette of
those Courts, together with the names and
the costumes of the great officers of state, are
all derived from those of the Christian court
of Constantinople before the disastrous days
of Mohammed the Second. Now that those
fertile lands are overrun by the descendants of
the Avars, and the fierce tribes of northern
barbarians, who so often in the middle ages
carried fire and sword, tallow and sheepskins,
almost to the walls of the city — djv /3oAli> . «j
rrjv fioWv — from whence comes Stamboul, I may
be, perhaps, excused if I put in a few lines re
lating to another country, but which, I think,
are interesting during the present state of the
affairs of the Turkish empire.
In the year 1838 I left Constantinople on
my way to Yienna. I went to Varna, and
from thence proceeded up the Danube in a
miserable steamer, on board of which was a

12 ARMENIA. Chap. I.
personage of high distinction belonging to a
neighbouring nation, whose manners and habits
afforded me great amusement. He was cour
teous and gentlemanlike in a remarkable degree,
but his domestic ways differed from those of our
own countrymen. He had a numerous suite
of servants, three or four of whom seemed to
be a sort of gentlemen; these attended him
every night when he went to bed, in the standing
bed-place of the crazy steamer. First they
wound up six or seven gold watches, and the
great man took off his boots, his coat, and I
don't know how many gold chains ; then each
night he was invested by his attendants with a
different fur pelisse, which looked valuable and
fusty to my humble eyes. Each morning the
same gentlemen spread out all the watches, took
off the fur pelisse, and insinuated their lord into
a fashionable and somewhat tight coat, not the
one worn yesterday ; but on no occasion did I
perceive anything in the nature of an ablution,
or any proof that such an article as a clean shirt
formed a part of the great man's travelling
wardrobe. Varna is situated on a gentle slope a short
distance from the shores of the Black Sea, and
three or four miles to the south of a range of
hills, between which and the town the unfor-

Chap. t. RUSSIAN LOSS IN THE WAR OF 1829. 13
tunate Russian army was encamped during the
war of the year 1829. I say unfortunate, and
all will agree with me, if they take into consi
deration a fact which I write on undoubted
authority. When the Russians invaded Turkey
in 1828, they lost 50,000 men by sickness alone,
by want of the necessaries of hfe, and neglect
in the commissariat department : 50,000 Rus
sians died on the plains of Turkey, not one man
of whom was killed in battle, for their advance
was not resisted by the Turks.
In the next year (1829) the Russians lost
60,000 men between the Pruth and the city
of Adrianople. Some of these, however, were
legitimately slain in battle. When they arrived
at Adrianople the troops were in so wretched a
condition from sickness and want of food, that
not 7000 men were able to bear arms : how
many thousands of horses and mules perished
in these two years is not known. The Turkish
Government was totally ignorant of this deplo
rable state of affairs at Adrianople till some time
afterwards, when the intelligence came too late.
If the Turks had known what was going on, not
one single Russian would have seen his native
land again ; even as it was, out of 120,000 men,
not 6000 ever recrossed the Russian frontier
alive. Since the days of Cain, the first mur-

14 ARMENIA. Chap. I.
derer, among all nations, and among all reli
gions, he who kills his fellow-creature without
just cause is looked upon with horror and dis
gust, and is pursued by the avenging curse of
God and man. What then shall be thought of
that individual who, without reason, without
the slightest show of justice, right, or justifiable
pretence, from his own caprice, to satisfy his
own feelings, and lust of pride, and arrogance,
destroys for his amusement, in two years, more
than 100,000 of his fellow-creatures ? Shall not
their blood cry out for vengeance ? had not each
of these men a soul, immortal as their butcher's ?
had not many of them, many thousands of them
perhaps, more faith, more trust in God, higher
talents, than their destroyer ? Better had it been
for that man had he never been born !
The following prayer is translated from one
at the end of an ancient Bulgarian or Russian
manuscript, written in the year 1355 : — " The
Judge seated, and the apostle standing before
him, and the trumpet sounding, and the fire
burning, what wilt thou do, oh my soul, when
thou art carried to the judgment ? for then all
thy evils will appear, and all thy secret sins will
be made manifest. Therefore now, beforehand,
endeavour to pray to Jesus Christ our Lord —
O do not thou reject me, but save me."

Chap. I. VARNA. 15
The fortifications of Varna are very flat and
low, though they are said to be of great strength,
but, as the town is built of wood, I should
think there would be little difficulty in setting
it on fire by the assistance of a few shells
or red-hot shot, from ships at sea or batteries
on the land. From all such fortresses I am de
lighted to escape : the bastions, ditches, and ram
parts keep me in, though they are intended to
keep others out. There is nothing picturesque
in a modern stronghold, as there are no battle
ments and towers, or anything pleasing to the
eye ; only, whichever way you turn, you are
sure to be stopped by a green ditch with a frog
in it ; I therefore only remained long enough at
Varna to see that there was nothing to be seen.
The principality of Wallachia contains
1,500,000 inhabitants liable to taxation, 800
nobles, and 15,000 strangers, subjects of various
Powers. It is governed by a Prince (Gika), who reigns
for life. The civil list amounts to —

50,000 Austrian ducats yearly.
All the officials are paid by the Government.
The revenues of the principality are derived from tribute,
which amounts to ... 300,000 ducats yearly.
The salt-works, which yield . . 150,000 „
Domains of the Prince . . . 30,000 „
The customs  70,000 „

Total

550,000

16 ARMENIA. chaP- *•
The expenses are Yearly —
x J ^ Ducats.
Civil List of the Prince  50,000
The Ottoman Porte for tribute . . . 30,000
Salaries of officials ..'.... 150,000
Troops, 4000 men  100,000
Ten quarantine stations on the Danube . . 20,000
Hospitals  5,000
Schools  12,000
Post  30,000
Repair of roads  8,000
Total . . 405,000
The capital of Wallachia is Bucharest, con
taining 12,000 houses and 80,000 inhabitants,
of whom 10,000 are strangers.
There is one Metropolitan, who lives at Bu
charest, and has a revenue of 10,000 ducats;
and three bishops, of Rimnik, Argessi, and
Buzeo, who have 8000 each. The salary of the
first minister is 3600 ducats yearly. There are
three ranks of nobles. The highest consists of
sixty individuals, who have the right of electing
the prince ; the second numbers 300, and the
third 440. The Prime Minister is called the
Bano ; the Commander-in-Chief Spathar ; the
Minister of the Interior the Great Dvornic ; the
Minister of Justice the Great Logothete. The
greatest family is that of Brancovano, the re
venue of its chief being 12,000 ducats. The
titles of the great officers of State, and the
principal people about the Court of the Hos-
podar, are derived from the institutions of the

Chap. I. WALLACHIA. 17
Byzantine emperors. These nobles are divided
into three classes. The following is the order of
their precedence : — 1st Class.
1. Bano . . . Marshal of the Palace.
2. Dvobnic . . Lord Chamberlain.
3. Spathar . . Commander-in-Chief.
4. Logothete . Chief Secretary.
5. Postemic . . Foreign Minister.
6. Aga .... Inspector of Police.
2nd Class.
1. Clochiae . . Commissary-General.
2. Pahakme . . Cupbearer.
3rd Class.
1. Seedae . . . Commander of 1000 men.
2. Pitab . . . Inspector of the Ovens.
3. Consepist . . Registrar-General.
It is in the power of the Government to raise
any of these nobles a step after a service of
three years. Before the year 1827 these officers
were paid by contributions raised on the subjects
of the Prince, who were then exempted from
any other taxes. The Bano had 120 men, the
Dvornic 100, the Paharme 25, and so on ; from
these they took as much as they could, one man
averaging three ducats a year in value to his
lord. The treaty of Adrianople contains an article
insuring the independence of the interior ad-

18 ARMENIA. Chap. I.
ministration of the country. On the 18th of
May, 1838, an order was brought from Constan
tinople by Baron Rukman, in which it was
stated that the general assembly are to insert a
clause in the constitution, which obliges them
to have leave of the Russians before any altera
tion whatever is made in the regulation of the
interior. The army cannot be increased, or any
differences made in the administration of the
quarantine, &c, without permission from Russia,
which is in direct contradiction to the Treaty of
Adrianople. Sentence of death is abolished by
the constitution, but great offenders are sent to
the mines for life.
Having accomplished our Httle tour to
Wallachia, we will recross the sea to Trebizond,
and return to the inspection of that ancient city,
so famous in the romance of the middle ages.
The Pasha and Governor, Abdallah Pasha, resides
in the citadel, a large space of ruinous buildings,
surrounded by romantic walls and towers, in the
same style as those of Constantinople. As in
duty bound, we proceeded in great state to
pay a visit of ceremony to the viceroy. As
our long train of horsemen wound through
the narrow streets, and passed under the long
dark tunnel of the Byzantine gateway, we must
have looked quite in keeping with the pic-

Chap. 1. VISIT TO ABDALLAH PASHA. 19
turesque appearance of that ancient fortress.
From the gloomy gate we emerged into a large
ruinous court or space of no particular shape,
but surrounded by tumbledown houses, with
wooden balconies festooned with vines. I was
struck with the absence of guards and soldiers,
who are usually drawn up on these occasions in
a wavy line, to do honour or to impose upon the
awe-stricken feelings of the Elchi Bey.
We passed through another court, if I re
member right, till we found a number of ser
vants and officials waiting our arrival at an
open door, and, having dismounted, with the
assistance of numerous supporters we scrambled
up a large, dark, crazy wooden stair, at the top
of which, on a curtain being drawn aside, we
were ushered into a large, lofty room, where we
beheld the Pasha seated on the divan, under a
range of windows, at the upper end of the
selamlik, or hall of reception. Then commenced
the regular exercise of formal civilities, bows,
and inquiries after each other's health, carried
on in a thorough mechanical manner, neither
party even pretending to look as if he meant
anything he said. We smoked pipes, and drank
coffee, and made a little bow to the Pasha after
wards in the most orthodox way, till we were
bored and tired, and wished it was time to come

20 ARMENIA. Chap. I.
away ; but this sort of visit is a serious affair,
and I don't know how long we sat there, with
the crowd of kawasses and chiboukgis staring
at us steadily from the lower end of the hall.
What the Pasha looked like, and what manner
of man he was, it was not easy to make out,
seeing that to the outward eye he presented the
appearance of a large green bundle, with a red
fez at the top, for he was enveloped in a great
furred cloak ; he seemed to have dark eyes, like
everybody else in this country, and a long nose
and a black beard, whereof the confines or limits
were not to be ascertained, as I could not readily
distinguish what was beard and what was fur.
Every now and then his Excellency snuffled, as
if he had got a cold, but I think it was only a
trick ; however, when he lifted up his voice to
speak, the depth and hollow sound was very
remarkable. I have heard several Turks speak
in this way, which I believe they consider dig
nified, and imagine that it is done in imitation
of Sultan Mahmoud, who, whether it was his
natural voice or not, always spoke as if his voice
came out of his stomach instead of his mouth.
Abdallah Pasha paid us his compliments in this
awful tone, and, till I got a little used to it, I
wondered out of what particular part of the
heap of fur, cloth, &c, this thorough-bass pro-

Chap. I. ABDALLAH PASHA. 21
ceeded. I found, to my great admiration, that
the Pasha knew my name, and almost as much
of my own history as I did myself; where he
had gained his very important information I
know not, but an interest so unusual in any
thing relating to another person induced me to
make inquiries about him, and I found he was
not only a man of the highest dignity and
wealth, possessing villages, square miles and acres
innumerable, but he was a philosopher ; if not a
writer, he was a reader of books, particularly
works on medicine. This was his great hobby.
In the way of government he seemed to be a most
patriarchal sort of king : he had no army or
soldiers whatever ; fifteen or sixteen cawasses
were all the guards that he supported. He
smoked the pipe of tranquillity on the carpet of
prudence, and the pashalic of Trebizond slum
bered on in the sun ; the houses tumbled down
occasionally, and people repaired them never ;
the secretary of state wrote to the Porte two or
three times a year, to say that nothing parti
cular had happened. The only thing I won
dered at was, how the tribute was exacted, for
transmitted it must be regularly to Constanti
nople. Rayahs must be squeezed : they were
created, like oranges, for that purpose; but,
somehow or other, Abdallah Pasha seems to

22 ARMENIA. Chap. I.
have carried on the process quietly, and the
multitudes under his rule dozed on from year to
year. That was all very well for those at a
distance, but his immediate attendants suffered
occasionally from the philosophical inquiries of
their master. He thought of nothing but physic,
and whenever he could catch a Piedmontese
doctor he would buy any quantity of medicine
from him, and talk learnedly on medical sub
jects as long as the doctor could stand it. As
nobody ever tells the truth in these parts, the
Pasha never believed what the doctor told him,
and usually satisfied his mind by experiments in
corpore viii, many of which, when the accounts
were related to me, made me cry with laughter.
They were mostly too medical to be narrated in
any unmedical assembly.
Trebizond is not defensible by land or sea,
nor could it be made so from the land side, as
it is commanded by the sloping hills imme
diately behind it. From there being no bay or
harbour of any kind, its approach is dangerous
during the prevalence of north winds, which
lash the waves against the rocks with fury.
Inns are as yet unknown ; there are no khans
that I know of, of any size or importance as
far as architecture is concerned ; but large
stables protect the packhorses which carry the

Chap. I. TREBIZOND. 23
bales of goods imported from Constantinople
for the Persian trade, the bulk of which has
now passed out Of the hands of the English into
those of the Greek merchants. The steamer
running from Constantinople is constantly laden
with goods, and much more would be sent if
additional steamers were ready to convey it.
Our party was received under the hospitable
roof of Mr. Stevens, the Vice-Consul, whose
courtyard was encumbered with luggage of all
sorts and kinds, over which katergis or mule
teers continually wrangled in setting apart dif
ferent articles in two heaps, each two heaps being
reputed a sufficient load for one horse. This
took some days to arrange, and our time was
occupied with preparations for the journey
through the mountains.

24 ARMENIA. Chap. II.

CHAPTEE II.
Departure from Trebizond — A rough road — Turkisk pack-horses
— Value of tea — The pipe in the East — Mountain riding —
Instinct of the horse — A caravan overwhelmed by an avalanche
— Mountain of Hoshabounar — A ride down the mountain —
Arrival at Erzeroom.
At last we were ready ; the Russian Commis
sioner travelled with us, and we sallied out of
the town in a straggling line, up the hill, along
the only road known in this part of the world.
This wonder and miracle of art extends one
mile, to the top of a little hill. It is said to have
cost 19,000r?. It ascends the mountain side in
defiance of all obstacles, and is more convenient
for rolling down than climbing up, as it is nearly
as steep as a ladder in some places. When you
get to the top you are safe, for there is no more
road as far as Tabriz. A glorious view re
wards the traveller for his loss of breath in
accomplishing the ascent. From hence the road
is a track, wide enough for one loaded horse,
passing through streams and mud, over rocks,
mountains, and precipices, such as I should
hardly have imagined a goat could travel upon ;
certainly no sensible animal would ever try to do

Chap. II. A ROUGH JOURNEY. 25
so, unless upon urgent business. Pleasure and
amusement must be sought on broader ways ;
here danger and difficulty occur at every step ;
nevertheless, the horses are so well used to
climbing, and hopping, and floundering along,
that the obstacles are gradually overcome. In
looking back occasionally, you wonder how in
the world you ever got to the spot you are
standing on. The sure-footedness of the horses
was marvellous ; we often galloped for half an
hour along the dry course of a mountain torrent,
for these we considered our best places, over
round stones as big as a man's head, with larger
ones occasionally for a change ; but the riding-
horses hardly ever fell. The baggage-horses
encumbered with their loads tumbled in all
directions, but these unlucky animals were
always kicked up again by the efforts of a posse
of hard-fisted, hard-hearted muleteers, and were
soon plodding on under the burthens which it
seems it was their lot to bear for the remainder
of their lives. If this should meet the eye of
any London cab-horse — for what may we not
expect in these days of march of intellect and
national education? — let him thank his lucky
star that he is not a Turkish pack-horse, made
to carry something nearly as heavy as a cab

26 ARMENIA. Chap. II.
up and down rocks as inaccessible as those im
mortalized in the famous verse —
" Commodore Rogers was a man
Exceedingly brave — particular ;
And he climb'd up very high rocks,
Exceedingly high — perpendicular."
Thus saith the poet ; what Commodore Rogers
would have said if he had been of our party I
don't know. Those ladies and gentlemen who,
leaning back in easy carriages, bowl along the
great roads of the Simplon, may imagine what
travelling there may have been over the Alps
before the roads were made, while the nature of
the ground is such, in two or three places, that,
unless at an incredible expense in engineering,
and a prodigious daily outlay to keep them clear
of snow, no road ever could be made ; yet this
is the only line of communication between Con
stantinople and Persia. Through these awful
chasms and precipices all the merchandise is
carried which passes between these two great
nations. The quiet Manchester stuffs, accus
tomed to the broad-wheel waggons of Europe
and the railways and canals of England, must
feel dreadfully jolted when they arrive at this
portion of their journey. How the crockery
bears it is easily understood by those who open
the packages of this kind of ware at the end of

Chap. II. VALUE OF TEA.

27

the journey, when cups and saucers take the
appearance of small geological specimens, though
some do survive, notwithstanding the regular
custom of the muleteers to set down their loads
every evening by the summary process of
untying with a jerk a certain cunning knot
in the rope which holds the bales in their places
on each side of the packhorse : these imme
diately come down with a crash upon the ground,
from whence they are rolled along and built
up into a wall, on the lee side of which a fire
is lit and the muleteers sleep when there is no
khan to retire to for the night.
On this journey I for the first time learned
the true value of tea. One of the kawasses of
the Russian Commissioner had a curious little
box, covered with cowskin, tied behind his
saddle ; about twice a-day he galloped off like
mad, his arms and stirrups, &c, making a noise
as he started like that of upsetting all the fire-
irons in a room at home. In about half an
hour we came up with him again, discovering
his whereabouts by seeing his panting horse led
up and down by some small boy before a hovel,
into which we immediately dived. There
we found the kawass kneeling by a blazing fire,
with the cowskin box open on the ground be
side him, from whence he presently produced
c 2

28 ARMENIA. Chap. II.
glass tumblers of delicious caravan tea,* sweet
ened with sugar-candy, and a thin slice of
lemon floating on the top of each cup. This
is the real way to drink tea, only one cannot
always get caravan tea, and, when you can, it
costs a guinea a pound, more or less ; but its
refreshing, calming, and invigorating powers
are truly remarkable.
In former days, in many a long and weary
march, I found a pipe of great service in quiet
ing the tired and excited nerves ; having no
love for smoking under ordinary circumstances,
these were the only occasions when a long chi
bouk did seem to be grateful and comforting.
That this is pretty universally acknowledged
I gather from the habit of all the solemn old
Turks in Egypt and hot climates during the
fast of Ramadan, who invariably take a . good
whiff from their pipes the moment that sunset
is announced by the firing of a gun in cities,
or on the disappearance of its rays towards the
west in the country. Supper does not appear
to be looked forward to with the same im
patience as the first puff from the chibouk. No
pipe, however, possesses the agreeable qualities
* Caravan tea is tea which is brought by caravans, over land, from
China, through the great deserts of Tartary : it is much superior to
the tea which comes by sea.

Chap. 11. MOUNTAIN RIDING. 29
of a cup of hot good tea made in this way ; no
other beverage or contrivance that I know of
produces so soothing an effect, and that in so
short a time. In a few minutes the glasses, and
the little teapot, and two canisters for tea and
sugar-candy, retired into the recesses of the
cowskin box ; the poor horses, who had had
no tea, were again mounted, and on we rode
over the rocks and stones, one after the other,
in a long line, the regular tramp, tramp,
tramp, interrupted every now and then by the
crash of one of our boxes against a rock, and
the exclamations of the katergis as its bearer
wallowed into a hole or tumbled over some
horrible place, from whence it seemed impossible
that he should ever be got up again. However,
he always was, and at last we hardly took notice
of one of these little accidents, and notwith
standing which we generally got through the
mountains at the rate of about thirty miles a day.
On the second day from Trebizond we ar
rived at the snow ; the hoods with which we had
provided ourselves were pulled over our heads.
I tied my bridle to the pommel of my saddle,
put my hands in my pockets, and nevertheless
galloped along, — at least the horse did, and all
the better for my not holding the bridle. In
mountain travelling this is perhaps the most

30 ARMENIA. Chap. II.
necessary of all the whole craft and art of horse
manship, not to touch the bridle on any occasion,
except when you want to stop the horse ; for,
in difficult circumstances, a horse or a mule goes
much better if he is left to his own devices. In
some dreadful places, I have seen a horse smell
the ground, and then, resting on his haunches,
put one foot forward as gently as if it was a
finger, cautiously to feel the way. They have a
wonderful instinct of self-preservation, seeming
quite aware of the perils of false steps, and the
dangers by which they are surrounded on the
ledges of bleak mountains, and in passing bogs
and torrents in the valleys below.
At Beyboort we were received by the governor,
a Bey, who gave us a famous good dinner or sup
per, whereof we all eat an incredible quantity, and
almost as much more at breakfast next morning.
At Gumush Hane, where there are silver-mines,
a goodnatured old gentleman who was sitting
by the roadside gave me the most delicious pear
I ever tasted. This place is famous for its pears.
Being situated in a deep valley, the climate
is much better than most parts of the country
on this road. Here we put up in a good house,
slept like tops, and waddled off next morning,
as before. I had an enormous pair of boots lined
with sheepskin, which were the envy and ad-

Chap. H. HOSHABOUNAR. 31
miration of the party : they were amazing snug
certainly, and nearly came up to my middle.
If they had been a little bit larger, I might
have crept into one at night, which would
have been a great convenience; they were of
the greatest service on horseback, but on foot
I had much difficulty in getting along, and
was sorry I had neglected to inquire how
Jack the giantkiller managed with his seven-
league boots. Before arriving at Beyboort we
passed the mountain of Zigana Dagh, by a place
where a whole caravan accompanying the harem
of the Pasha of Moush had been overwhelmed
in an avalanche, over the icy blocks of which
we made our way, the bodies of the unfortunate
party and all the poor ladies lying buried far
below. Beyond Gumush Hane rises the moun
tain of Hoshabounar, which is a part ofthe chain
that bounds the great plain of Erzeroom. This
was the worst part of the whole journey : we ap
proached it by interminable plains of snow, along
which the track appeared like a narrow black
hne. These plains of snow, which look so even to
the sight, are not always really so ; the hollows
and inequalities being filled with the snow, you
may fall into a hole and be smothered if you
leave the path. This path is hardened by the
passage of caravans, which tread down the snow
into a track of ice just wide enough for a single

32 ARMENIA. Chap. II.
file of horses ; but while you think you are on a
plain, you are in fact riding on the top of a wall
or ridge, from whence if your horse should
chance to slip you do not know how deep you
may sink down into the soft snow on either side.
At the top of the mountain we met thirty
horses, which the Pasha of Erzeroom had sent
for our use. We had above thirty of our own,
so now there were sixty horses in our train.
The Russian Commissioner and I left all these
behind, and rode on together with two or three
guards, accompanied by the chief of the village
where we were to sleep. At last we came to the
brow of the hill — we could not see to the bottom
from the snow that was falling — it was as steep
as the roof of a house, and the road consisted
of a series of holes, about six inches deep, and
about eighteen inches apart, the track being about
sixteen inches wide. To my surprise, the. chief
of the village, a man in long scarlet robes, im
mediately dashed at a gallop down this road, or
ladder as they call it ; the Russian Commissioner
followed him ; and I, thinking that it would not
do for an Englishman to be beat by a Russian
or a Turk, threw my bridle on my horse's neck
and galloped after them. Never did I see such
a place to ride in ! Down and down we went,
plunging, sliding, scrambling in and out of the
deep holes, the snow flying up like spray around

Chap. II. ARRIVAL AT ERZEROOM. 33
us, to meet its brother snow that was falling
from the sky. It was wonderful how the
horses kept their feet ; they burst out into per
spiration as if it had been summer. I was as
hot as fire with the exertion. Still down we
went, headlong as it seemed, till at last I found
myself sliding and bounding on level ground,
and, rushing over some horses which were stand
ing in an open space, I discovered that I was in
a village, and was presently helped off my pant
ing horse by the gentleman in the red pelisse,
who showed the way into a cow-stable, the usual
place in which we put up at night. Thus
ended the most extraordinary piece of horseman
ship I ever joined in. It was not wonderful
perhaps for the rider, but how the horses kept
their feet, and how they had strength enough to
undergo such a wonderful series of leaps and
plunges, out of one hole into another, appeared
quite astonishing to me. The next day we pro
ceeded to Erzeroom, and at a village about two
hours' distance we were met by all the authorities
of the city on horseback. Some horses with mag
nificent housings were sent by the Pasha for the
principal personages, and we rode into the town
in a sort of procession, accompanied by perhaps
200 well -mounted cavaliers caracoling and
prancing in every direction. o 3

34 ARMENIA. ChaP- III.

CHAPTER III.
The Consulate at Erzeroom — Subterranean dwellings — Snow-
blindness —Effects of the severe climate — The city : its popu
lation, defences, and buildings — Our house and household —
Armenian country houses — The ox-stable.
We were hospitably entertained at the British
Consulate till the Pasha could get a house pre
pared for us to occupy during our stay ; but, as
Mr. Pepys says, " Lord, to see ! " what a place
this is at Erzeroom ! I have never seen or heard
of anything the' least like it. It is totally and en
tirely different from anything I ever saw before.
As the whole view, whichever "way one looked,
was wrapped in .interminable snow, we had not
at first any very distinct idea of the nature of the
ground that there might be underneath ; the tops
ofthe houses being flat, the snow-covered city did
not resemble any other town, but appeared more
like a great rabbit-warren ; many of the houses
being wholly or partly subterranean, the doors
looked like burrows. In the neighbourhood of
the Consulate (very comfortable within, from the
excellent arrangements of Mr. Brant) there were
several large heaps and mounds of earth, and it

Chap. III. EFFECTS OF THE CLIMATE. 35
was difficult to the uninitiated to discriminate
correctly as to which was a house and which
was a heap of soil or stones. Streets, glass win
dows, green doors with brass knockers, areas,
and chimney-pots, were things only known
from the accounts of travellers from the distant
regions where such things are used. Very
few people were about, the bulk of the popu
lation hybernating at this time of the year
in their strange holes and burrows. The bright
colours of the Oriental dresses looked to my
eye strangely out of place in the cold dirty
snow ; scarlet robes, jackets embroidered with
gold, brilliant green and white costumes, were
associated in my mind with a hot sun, a dry
climate, and fine weather. A bright sky there
was, with the sun shining away as if it was > all
right, but his rays gave no heat, and only put
your eyes out with its glare upon the snow.
This glare has an extraordinary effect, some
times bringing on a blindness called snow-blind
ness, and raising blisters on the face precisely
like those which are produced by exposure to
extreme heat. Another inconvenience has an
absurd effect : the breath, out of doors, congeals
upon the mustaches and beard, and speedily
produces icicles, which prevent the possibility
of opening the mouth. My mustaches were

36 ARMENIA. Chap. III.
converted each day into two sharp icicles, and
if anything came against them it hurt horribly ;
and those who wore long beards were often
obliged to commence the series of Turkish
civilities in dumb show ; their faces being fix
tures for the time, they were not able to speak
till their beards thawed. A curious phenome
non might also be observed upon the door of
one of the subterranean stables being opened,
when, although the day was clear and fine
without, the warm air within immediately con
gealed into a little fall of snow ; this might be
seen in great perfection every morning on the
first opening ofthe outer door, when the house
was warm from its having been shut up all
night. Erzeroom is situated in an extensive elevated
plain, about thirty miles long and about ten wide,
lying between 7000 and 8000 feet above the level
of the sea. It is surrounded on all sides with
the tops of lofty mountains, many of which are
covered with eternal snow. The city is said to
contain between 30,000 and 40,000 inhabitants,
but I do not myself think that it contains
much more than 20,000 ; this I had no correct
means of ascertaining. The city is said to
have been, and probably was, more populous
before the disasters of the last Russian war.

Chap. III. DEFENCES OF ERZEROOM.

37

It stands on a small hill, or several hills, at the
foot of a mountain with a double top, called
Deve Dagh, the Camel Mountain. The original
city is nearly a square, and is surrounded by a
double wall with peculiarly-shaped towers, a
sort of pentagon, about 20 towers on each side,
except on the south side, where a great part of
the walls is fallen down. Within these walls,
on an elevated mound, is the smaller square of
the citadel, where there are some curious ancient
buildings and a prison, which I must describe
afterwards ; a ditch, where it is not filled up
with rubbish and neglect, surrounds the walls
of the city ; and beyond this are the suburbs,
where the greater part of the population reside.
Beyond this an immense work was accomplished
as a defence against the Russian invaders. This
is an enormous fosse, so large and deep and
wide as to resemble a ravine in many places.
It was some time before I was aware that this
was an artificial work ; as there are no ramparts,
walls, or breastworks on the inner side of that
immense excavation, it can have been of no more
use than if it did not exist, and did not, I be
lieve, stop any of the Russians for five minutes.
They probably marched down one side and up
the other, supposing it to be a pleasing natural
valley, useful as a promenade in fine weather,

38 ARMENIA. Chap. III.
and the prodigious labour employed in such a
work must have been entirely thrown away.
The palace of the Pasha, that of the Cadi and
other functionaries, are within the walls of the
town ; the doorways are the only parts of the
houses on which any architectural ornaments
are displayed ; many of these are of carved
stone, with inscriptions in Turkish beautifully
cut above them. There are said to be seventeen
baths, but none of them are particularly hand
some, though the principal apartment is covered
with a dome, like those in finer towns. The
mosques amount, it is said, to forty-five : I
never saw half so many myself. Many of them
are insignificant edifices ; the principal one, or
cathedral, as it may be called, is of great size,
its flat turf-covered roof supported by various
thick piers and pointed arches. The finest
buildings are several ancient tombs : these are
circular towers, from twenty to thirty feet in
diameter, with conical stone roofs beautifully
built and ornamented. There must be twenty
or thirty of these very singular edifices, whose
dates I was unable to ascertain ; they probably
vary from the twelfth to the sixteenth century,
judging from a comparison of their ornamental
work with Saracenic buildings in other parts of
the world.

Chap. III. BUILDINGS OF ERZEROOM. 39
The most beautiful buildings of Erzeroom are
two ancient medresses or colleges, or perhaps
they may be considered more as a kind of alms
houses, built for the accommodation of a certain
number of Mollahs, whose duty it was to pray
around the tomb of the founder, adjoining to
which they are erected. One of these stands
immediately to the left hand on entering the
principal gateway of the town ; above its elabo
rately-sculptured door are two most beautiful
minarets, known by the name of the iki chifteh.
These are built of an exceedingly fine brick,
and -are fluted like Ionic columns, the edges of
the flutings being composed of turquoise-blue
bricks, which produces on the capitals or galle
ries, as well as on the shafts, the appearance of a
bright azure pattern on a dark-coloured ground.
The roof of this very beautiful building has
fallen in, but the delicacy of the arabesques, cut
in many places in alto-relief in a very hard
stone, would excite admiration in India, and
equals the most famous works of Italy. The
other medresse is in a still worse condition, a
great cannon-foundry having been erected in
the middle of it. The whole building is broken,
smoked, and injured ; still what remains shows
how fine it must have been.
There are one or two Greek churches and

40 ARMENIA. Chap. III.
two Armenian churches here, both very small,
dark, cramped places, with immensely thick
walls and hewn-stone roofs. They appear to
be of great antiquity, but can boast of no other
merit. Adjoining the principal one, in which
is a famous miraculous picture of St. George,
they were building a large and handsome church,
which is now completed, in the Basilica form,
with an arched stone roof. Cut stone being
very expensive, and indeed, from the want of
good masons, very difficult to procure, the priests
bethought themselves of a happy expedient to
secure square hewn stone for the corners, door
way, windows, &c, of the new cathedral.
They told their flock that, as the ancient tomb
stones were of no use to the departed, it would
be a meritorious act in the living to bring them
to assist in the erection of the church. They
managed this so well, that every one brought
on his own back, or at his own expense, the
tombstones of his ancestors, and those were
grieved and offended who could not gain ad
mission for the tombstones of their families to
complete a window or support a wall. The
work advanced rapidly during the summer, and
any large, flat slabs of stone were reserved for the
covering of the roof. It promised to be, and I
hear now is, a handsome church, strong and solid

Jffil

Chap. III. OUR OWN HOUSE. 41
enough to resist the awful climate, and the
snow which lies there for months every year.
The Armenian inscriptions and emblems on the
stones have a singular effect ; but I think, under
the circumstances, the priests were quite right
to build up with the tombstones of the dead, a
house of prayer for those about to die.
In course of time a house was ready for
our reception : though not so large as those of
some of the great authorities, it was one of the
largest class of houses in Erzeroom, and a de
scription of its arrangements will convey an
idea of what most of the others were. It was
situated in a very good position on the top of
a hill, close to the house of the Russian Commis
sioner, and on the same side of the town as
those of the English and Russian consuls. From
its small, doubly - glazed windows we looked,
over a narrow valley covered with houses, on
the walls and tower of the citadel, which
stood on the hill directly opposite. The walls
and towers, and the principal gateway of
the town, with its two graceful minarets, to
the left hand, and a distant prospect of the
great plain and the river Euphrates, and the
mountains over which we had travelled, to the
right, completed our view, which was perhaps
the best, enjoyed by any house in the place.

42 ARMENIA. Chap. III.
Our house, like most of the others, was built
with great solidity, of rough stone with large
blocks at the corners ; the roof was flat, and
covered with green turf. The windows were
small, like port-holes, but the door was a large
arch, through which we rode into the gloomy
sepulchral-looking hall, out of which opened the
stables on the right hand, the kitchen and offices
and some other rooms on the left, while in front
a dark staircase of square stones and heavy
beams looked as if it had tumbled through the
ceiling, and gave access to the upper floor.
There was a little garden or yard under the
windows, where we planted vegetables, and in
one part of which several English dogs, two
Persian greyhounds, and an Armenian turnspit,
walked about in the daytime. The railing be
tween this and the garden part of the yard was
a triumph of art, accomplished by a Turkish
guard, who turned his sword into a ploughshare
when not wanted to look terrific. We had also
nineteen lambs, who grazed on the top of the
highest part of the house, where they were
carried up every morning, except occasionally
when there was such a wind that they would
be in danger of being blown away. We had I
know not how many sheep with large tails ;
these took a walk every day with a shepherd,

Chap. III. OUR HOUSEHOLD. 43
who led out all the sheep belonging to the
inhabitants of that part of the town. Every
house having a few, they are marked, and all
come home every evening to their respective
houses, and go out again the next morning,
and eat what they can get upon the mountains.
Our household contained, besides ourselves and
servants, one white Persian cat, with a spot on
his back, and his tail painted pink with hennah
(this race, with long silky hair falling to the
ground as it walks along, comes from Van) ; five
pigeons, and one hen, the rest having fallen vic
tims to the rapacity of mankind; and a lem
ming,* who lived in a brass foot-tub and eat
biscuits. This last beast was sadly frightened
by a mouse which I put into his habitation one
day, and which made use of his back to jump
out, after receiving a severe bite in the tail. He
generally slept all day, and took a small walk
in the tub in the evening.
All the building except the hall and stable
had a garden on the roof, that part only being
two stories high. The kitchen and some of the
other rooms were lit by a skylight, the earth at
the back of them being on a level with their
* Those who take an interest in natural history, should read the
accounts of the extraordinary migrations of the lemmings, which
occur periodically in Norway, after a fixed number of years.

44 ARMENIA. Chap. III.
ceilings. The walls of the upper floor were not
exactly over those below, but were supported by
immense beams, some of which had given way,
and the principal room leant over to the left
frightfully. Those rooms which are lit by
windows have two rows of them one above the
other, except the dining room and ante-room,
which had only one row, too high from the
floor to look out of, but very convenient for
looking into, from the upper garden and the
terrace of the next house. The' rooms had all
whitewashed walls, wooden flat ceilings curi
ously carved and painted. On the floors there
was blue cloth instead of carpets, and divans of
red cloth. A few chairs, and some lumber
ing deal tables, with covers on them, at which
we wrote, concluded our list of furniture and
" genuine effects." The great difficulty was
the eating and drinking part of the arrange
ments. Everything except bread and meat came
on horses from Constantinople, and about one-
third of the bottles brought from thence were
usually broken. Glass, for the windows, was a
curious and expensive luxury, oiled paper being
generally used, with a little bit of real glass to
peep out of in each, or sometimes only in one
window. Wood also was very dear, as there
were no trees within a distance of thirty hours.

Chap. III. ARMENIAN COUNTRY HOUSES. 45
The climate is not too cold for the growth of
timber, I should think, for there were a few
poplars in the yards near the houses, but the
people are too improvident to plant trees, and,
except some prodigiously large cabbages, horti
culture is not much practised near the town.
The country houses of Armenia are con
structed somewhat differently from those of the
towns. When a man wishes — I cannot call it to
build a house, or erect a house, or set up a house,
as none of these terms are applicable — but when
a house is to be constructed, the following is the
way in which it is set about. A space of ground
is marked out, perhaps nearly an English acre
in extent ; then the whole space is excavated to
the depth of about five feet : one part of the ex
cavation is set apart for the great cow-stable ;
this may be fifty or one hundred feet long, and
nearly as wide. Having got so far, some trees
are the next requisite ; these trees being cut
down, the trunks are chopped into lengths of
eight or nine feet, the general height of the
rooms, and are placed in two or four rows to be
used as columns down the great stable; the larger
branches, without being squared or shaped, are
laid across from pillar to pillar as beams ; the
smaller branches are laid across these, the twigs
on the top, till the entire trees are used up ; the

46 ARMENIA. Chap. III.
twigs are sometimes tied up in fagots, sometimes
not : over this is spread some of the earth
that was excavated from below ; this is well
trodden down, then more earth is added, and
on the top of all is laid the turf which
formed the surface of the soil before it was
moved. Round the stable, in no particular order,
smaller rooms are formed ; if they are large, their
roofs are supported by columns like the stable.
In a large house there are often two stables. The
space of ground taken up by a rich man's house
is prodigious, the turfed roof forming a small
field. The lesser rooms in this subterranean
habitation are divided from the stable and from
each other by rough stone walls well filled up
with clay or mud ; their ceilings are contrived by
laying beams across each other, two along and
two across, in the form of a low pyramid, so
that the ceiling is a kind of low square dome :
the smaller rooms form store-rooms and apart
ments for the women. Each room has a rough
stone fireplace opposite the door ; and in the roof,
generally over the door, there is one window
about eighteen inches square, glazed with a piece
of oiled paper. Outside, these windows looklike
large molehills, with a bit of plaster on one side
surrounding the oiled paper, or glass, which
transmits the light. Inside, the window is per-

Chap. III. ARMENIAN COUNTRY HOUSES. 47
ceived at the end of a funnel, widening greatly
towards the room, and contrived so as to throw
the light to the centre of the apartment opposite
the fireplace, where a fire of tezek, or dried cow-
dung and chopped straw, is constantly smoulder
ing. Over the chimney-piece hangs an iron
lamp of simple construction, which with the help
of the fire produces a dim light in the long
nights of winter. There is a divan, usually
covered with most beautiful Koordish carpets
which last for ever, on each side of the fireplace ;
and large wooden pegs, projecting from the
walls, serve to hang up guns, pistols, cloaks, and
anything else. Some of these rooms are rather
roughly pretty in appearance ; the floors are
covered with tekke, a thick grey felt, and, among
smart people, Persian carpets are laid over the
felt, their beautiful colours producing a rich and
comfortable effect. About half way up the
chimney is a wooden door or damper, which is
opened and shut by means of a string ; and when
it is very cold weather, and they want to be snug
and fusty down below, this door is shut, and the
room becomes as hot as an oven ; the chimney
does not rise more than two feet above ground,
and has a large flat stone on the top to keep the
snow from falling in, as well as the lambs and
children; the smoke escapes by apertures on

48 ARMENIA. Chap. III.
the sides just below the coping-stone. The
chimneys look like toadstools from the outside,
rising a little above the snow or the grass which
grows upon the roof. These subterranean
habitations are constructed, not on the side of a
hill, but on the side of a gentle slope ; and all
the earth excavated for the house is thrown
back again upon the roof in such a manner that
on three sides there is often no sign of any
dwelling existing underneath. The entrance is
on the lower side of the slope, and there the
mound is often visible, as it is raised four or five
feet above the level of the hill-side. There are
no fences to keep people off the roof, which has
no appearance different from the rest of the
country. It is often only the dirt opposite the
doors, the cattle, and people standing about,
which gives information of a small village being
present ; particularly during the eight months
of snow and ice and intense cold, when no one
stirs abroad, except for matters of importance.
When a house is ruined and deserted, these
holes are sometimes rather dangerous, as the
horse you are riding may put his foot into
an old chimney and break his leg, there being
very frequently no appearance of a habitation
below, while you are passing through the open
desolate country, of which the roof seems to

Chap. III. ARMENIAN COUNTRY HOUSES.

49

be a part. There are stories, perhaps founded
on fact, of hungry thieves lifting the flat stone
off the top of the chimney and fishing up the
kettle in which the supper was stewing over
the fire below, with a hooked stick — a feat which
would not be at all difficult if the cook was
thinking of something else, as sometimes will
happen even in the best regulated families.
The most curious and remarkable part of
the house is the great ox-stable, which often
holds some scores of cattle. Out of this stable
they do not stir, frequently, during the whole
winter season, and it is the breath and heat of
these animals which warm the house ; besides
which, they manufacture all the fuel for the
establishment : they are fed upon straw, bruised
to small bits by the sledge which is driven round
the threshing-floor to separate the corn from the
husk after harvest-time. In one corner of this
huge dim stable, near the entrance door, a
wooden platform is raised three feet from the
ground : two sides of it are bounded by the stone
wall of the house, in one of which opposite the
door is the fireplace ; the other two sides of the
square platform have open wooden rails to keep
off the cows. This original contrivance is the
salemlik, or reception-room, where the master
sits, and where he entertains his guests, who, as

50 ARMENIA. Chap. III.
they stumble into the obscure den from the glare
of the sun shining on the snow outside, are
received with a yell by all the dogs, who live
under the platform. This place is fitted up
with divans and carpets ; arms and saddles hang
against the walls ; the horses of the chief are
tethered nearest to the rails, the donkeys and
cows further off. Among the horses there is
always an immense fat tame sheep ; this is an
universal custom in every stable in Turkey, under
or above ground. Among some of the Koordish
tribes, a young wild boar is kept in the stable
with the horses — a remarkable custom among
Mahomedans, who consider the whole race of
swine as unclean beasts ; this is the only case in
which they are tolerated. A small flock of other
sheep are sometimes scampering about, or kept
from doing so, among the cows ; chickens peck in
the litter, and several grave cats have their
allotted places on the divans of the chief, his
wife, and others of his family. A vacant, that
is, cowless space is left between the steps lead
ing up to the platform and the entrance door
of the house ; this part answers to the entrance-
hall, as man and beast pass through it on
coming in or going out, immediately before the
eyes of the master of the house. From hence
a sloping passage about six feet wide leads, to;

Chap. III. ARMENIAN COUNTRY HOUSES. 51
the open air ; it has an outer door at the upper
end, and an inner door below : this passage may
be from ten to twenty feet long. The outer
door is a common strong wooden one, but the
inner doors all over the house are as singular
as the rest of the arrangements. The house
door is of the usual size for the cows and horses
to pass through, the others are not more than
five feet high ; they are constructed in the
following manner : the bare wooden valve is
first covered with ketche or felt, and on the
inside the skin of a sheep with its legs and
arms on, just in the shape in which it came
off the animal when it was skinned, being
dyed red, is nailed over the felt. On the other
side of the door, down the middle, is a long
square pipe or box, in which hangs a heavy log
of wood attached to a cord fixed to the upper
part of the door-case, which keeps the door shut,
as it swings to again after it has been opened,
and keeps out the drafts, and keeps in the warm
air generated by cows, fires, and lamps, so that
the atmosphere is always temperate within,
while the cold is such without, that men are
frozen to death if they stand still even for a
short time in the rigorous climate of an Arme
nian winter.

D 2

52 ARMENIA. Chap. IV.

CHAPTER IV.
Narrow escape from suffocation — Death of Nbori Effendi — A good
shot — History of Mirza Tekee ¦ — Persian ideas of the principles
of government — The "Blood-drinker" — Massacre at Kerbela
— Sanctity of the place — History of Hossein — Attack on
Kerbela, and defeat of the Persians — Good effects of Commis
sioner's exertions.
The first aspect of affairs at Erzeroom was
not very satisfactory in any way. The cold and
dismal weather was enough to prevent all enjoy
ment out-of-doors, and in-doors we had little
cause of rejoicing. On first taking possession
of our house, my companions had the narrowest
possible escape of death from suffocation. The
grooms in the stable below the drawing-room
had lit an immense fire of charcoal, not for
any particular object beyond that common to
all servants of all countries, that of wasting
their masters' goods, which they had not to pay
for themselves. The fumes from the charcoal
penetrated the ceiling, when most fortunately
the Russian Commissioner came in, and, finding
his two English friends in a half-stupefied
state, helped them out of the room on to the
terrace, where they both fell down fainting
on the snow, and were only recovered after

Chap. IV. DEATH OF NOORI EFFENDI.

53

some time and difficulty. If the Russian Com
missioner had not arrived so opportunely they
would soon have perished. I did not participate
in this risk, because I was laid up at the Con
sulate with an attack of fever, which effectually
prevented my moving to my own house.
A nother misfortune occurred almost at the
same period. Noori Effendi, the Turkish Pleni
potentiary, died suddenly of apoplexy in his
bath ; he had been ambassador in London and at
Vienna. All prospect of getting on with our
affairs was put off by this unfortunate circum
stance. Subsequently, Enveri Effendi, formerly
secretary to Noori, was appointed in his place,
but he did not arrive for some time after the
death of his former chief.
Mirza Jaffer, an old acquaintance of mine
when he was ambassador from Persia to the
Porte, was too unwell to leave Tabriz, and Mirza
Tekee was appointed Persian Plenipotentiary
instead. On his arrival within sight of Erzeroom
from Persia, all the great people, except the
Pasha and the commissioners, went out on horse
back to meet him, and accompany him on his
entry into the town. There was a great con
course and a prodigious firing of guns at full
gallop, which, as the guns are generally loaded
with ball cartridge, bought ready-made in the

54 ARMENIA. Chap. IV.
bazaar, though intended as an honour, is a some
what dangerous display. Unable to resist so pic
turesque a sight, I had ridden out on the Persian
road, though I did not join the escort, and,
having returned, I was walking up and down
on the roof of the house watching the crowds
passing in the valley below, and looking at the
great guns of the citadel, which the soldiers
were firing as a salute. They fired very well,
in very good time, but I observed several petty
officers and a number of men busily employed
at one gun, the last to the left hand near the
corner of the battery. At length this gun was
loaded. A prodigious deal of peeping and
pointing took place out of the embrasure, and,
just as I was turning in my walk, bang went the
cannon, and I was covered with dust from some
thing which struck the ground in the yard in a
line below my feet. On looking down to see
what this could be, I saw a ball stuck in the
earth : the soldiers had all disappeared from the
ramparts of the citadel, and I found they had
been taking a shot at the British Commissioner.
A very good shot it was too, exactly in the line,
but the ball not being heavy enough had fallen
a little short, so I was missed. They had manu
factured a ball with a large stone, wound round
with rope to make it fit the gun, to shoot at the

Chap. IV. MIRZA TEKEE. 55
Frank, and that was the occasion of all the peep
ing and crowding of the men round the gun
which I had observed.
As Mirza Tekee is now no more, and he was
beyond all comparison the most interesting of
those assembled at the congress of Erzeroom,
I will give a short account of his history.
Mirza Tekee was the son of the cook of
Bahman Meerza, brother of Mahomed Shah,
and governor of the province of Tabriz. The
cook's little boy was brought up with the chil
dren of his master and educated with them ;
being a clever boy, as soon as he was old enough
he was put into the office of accounts, under the
cqmmander-in-chief, the famous Emir Nizam,
who was employed in drilling the Persian army
in the European style. Tekee became Vizir ul
Nizam or Adjutant-General in course of time,
under the old Emir Nizam, and also amassed
great wealth; and as the Shah did not like
the idea of paying the expenses of his Pleni
potentiary — " base is the slave that pays" —
he sent Mirza Tekee to Erzeroom with many
flattering speeches and promises, none of which
he intended to fulfil. The cunning old prime
minister, Hadji Meerza Agassi, who was sedu
lously employed in feathering his own nest,
was jealous of Mirza Tekee, and very glad to

56 ARMENIA. Chap. IV.
get him safe out of the way. The Turks and
Persians, as everybody knows, hate each other
religiously, which seems always to be the worst
sort of hatred. The Soonis and the Shiahs are
as it were Protestants and Papists in the Ma-
homedan faith ; and if these two countries are
ever reconciled for a time, the smouldering flame
is sure to break out again at the first convenient
opportunity, and it will do so to the end of time.
In 1845 the Turks, who disliked Mirza Tekee
with more than common aversion, from his digni
fied bearing and stately manners, gave out vari
ous accusations against him and some members
of his household. A fanatical mob of many
thousand indignant Soonis surrounded all that
quarter of the town, attacked the Persian Pleni
potentiary's house, which was besieged for some
hours, and volleys after volleys of rifle-shots
were fired at the windows, while from within
Mirza Tekee only permitted his party to fire
blank cartridges. Izzet Pasha, a drunken old
gentleman of eighty, who had succeeded Kiamili
Pasha as governor of Erzeroom through the
intrigues of Enveri Effendi, sat on horseback
and looked on, and took no part in the dis
turbance, though he had all his troops, amount
ing to several thousand men, under arms. For
this conduct he was turned out of his govern-

Chap. IV. MIRZA TEKEE. 57
ment, and was succeeded by Bahri Pasha, who
in 1847 was shot dead by one of his own servants,
of the name of Delhi Ibrahim — accidentally or
not, does not appear.
Colonel Williams did everything in his power
to assist Mirza Tekee, and risked his life in
the affray ; but he received no assistance from
the Pasha or any of the authorities, who made
no attempt to quell the riot.
The Turks swore they would have blood, and
that one of the Persians must be given up to
them as a sacrifice. A poor man, who had
called that morning to say that he was going
to Tabriz, and would be happy to carry any
letters or messages there, was thrown out of the
window and torn to pieces by the mob. Another
Persian, a gentleman, secretary to Mirza Tekee,
was killed by a butcher the same day, in another
part of the town, where he was walking in
ignorance of the disturbance that was going on.
The Mirza's house was pillaged, the roof and
doors broken in, and everything destroyed that
the mob could get hold of. He. himself was
only saved by barricading a strong room in a
back part of the house, where he and his ser
vants defended themselves for many hours,
till the Turks dispersed of their own accord.
The Sultan afterwards sent him 80001. in
D 3

58 ARMENIA. Chap. IV.
repayment of his losses in this disgraceful
outrage. In June 1847, after he had signed the treaty of
peace and commerce between Turkey and Persia
with Enveri Effendi and the British and Russian
Commissioners, he returned to Tabreez. On
the death of the Emir Nizam, he succeeded to
his office of commander-in-chief. During the
last illness of Mohammed Shah, Bahman Meerza
had been intriguing in hopes of succeeding to
the throne ; but being unsuccessful, and being
also found out, he escaped to Teflis, where he
still resides, and is protected by the Czar, who
keeps him in terrorem over the present Shab,
who may be dethroned any day, in which case
Bahman Meerza is all ready to reign in his stead.
When Mohammed Shah, who had done
nothing all his life but shoot sparrows with a
pistol, departed from this world, Mirza Tekee
marched the Persian army to Teheran, and seated
the young Prince Noor Eddin upon the throne.
Noor Eddin Shah gave him his sister in mar
riage : she is said to have been much attached to
her husband, who also succeeded to the immense
territorial possessions of Hadji Meerza Agassi,
the late prime minister of Persia. The Hadji
had been tutor to Mohammed Shah, and be
came one of the most famous of the Grand

¦ IV. MIRZA TEKEE. 59
Vizirs of that most blundering of dynasties.
As a matter of course, when he became rich
enough he was robbed by his master, having
been himself the greatest extortioner on record
for many years. The Shah had allowed him to
keep an enormous treasure in gold, silver, and
jewels, with which he retired to Kerbela, where
he died in the odour of sanctity in 1850.
Mirza Tekee was now seated on the highest
pinnacle of the temple of prosperity. The ex
tent of the possessions which the Shah had
handed over to him from the plunder of the
Hadji was so great as to be hardly credible, and
by a judicious squeezing, the towns, villages, and
domains would have yielded the revenue of a
petty king. However, all prime ministers are
detested — that is in human nature ; first, there
is the opposite party in politics, some of whom
think differently as to the form and manner in
which the taxes should be levied in Europe, the
villages racked in Persia. All — whatever they
may think on political subjects — feel sure they
ought to be in place, rather than the party then
in power ; if to these are added all thieves, rogues,
revolutionists, and those sorts of people, who
have a natural antipathy to all government,
law, or possession of wealth in the hands of any
man except the one individual himself, he being

60 ARMENIA. Chap. IV.
more jealous of his friend than of any other
person, a great mass of the population are not
only opposed to the minister for the time being,
but are in constant readiness to pull down
whatever is above them, good, indifferent, or bad.
It is said that the great enemy of Mirza Tekee
at Court was the Shah's mother, a lady who in
Persia and Turkey enjoys an extraordinary de
gree of power, wealth, and dignity. In Turkey,
the Sultana Valide has the right to build a royal
mosque, and to use a caique like that of her
son ; she is above the law, and can do anything
she likes. If she likes to do good, she can do
much good ; if she likes to do evil, she can do
much evil. Between those who were jealous of
the power and who hated the strong "govern
ment of Mirza Tekee, a powerful party was
created who got hold of the weak mind of
the young Shah, who owed everything in this
world to his Minister ; his destruction was
agreed upon, and he was given leave to go to
Koom, where he had an estate. So secretly
were affairs managed that his suspicions do not
seem to have been aroused ; his young wife
followed him, with all her train, looking for
ward to the pleasure of living with her husband
for a while in the quiet and retirement of a
beautiful country ; but when she arrived within

Chap. IV. MURDER OF MIRZA TEKEE. 61
sight of the town of Koom, a messenger came
out to meet her, and the news that he brought
was that Mirza Tekee had been killed by the
order of her brother the Shah, whose emissaries
had seized him unexpectedly in the bath. He
made a desperate resistance, but he was over
powered ; they opened his veins and held him
down till the Grand Vizir had bled to death.
No crime whatever was alleged against him : he
was murdered foully by the Shah, who thus de
stroyed one of his best and most honest subjects
at the instigation of some of the most infamous
and worst. This happened in the year 1851.
There is nothing, however, very unusual
in this termination of the life and fortunes of
the prime minister of Persia, only it is usually
done under more extenuating circumstances.
The singular ideas which they entertain of the
principles of government are summed up in the
notion that it is better to be in the hands of
one furious ogre than at the mercy of a hundred
tyrants. For this reason the tribes of the Kuz-
zulbash admire a truculent Shah such as Aga
Mahomed Shah, and they like a Grand Vizir
who lets nobody rob and plunder except him
self. When he is fat and fit for killing, the
blood-drinker on the throne cuts off his head,
or strangles him, as the case may be, and then

62 ARMENIA. Chap. IV.
takes possession of his property, throwing a sop
to the mob occasionally by allowing them to
sack the great man's house. I do not use the
above-mentioned epithet as a term of reprehen
sion or abuse, for Hunkiar is one of the recog
nized titles of the Sultan of Turkey and of other
Eastern sovereigns. The treaty of Hunkiar
Skellessi, which made so great a sensation in
its day, was so called from the name of a place
on the Asiatic shores of the Bosphorus. The
name means the " Blood-drinker's Stairs " — an
appellation at this time equally suited to either
of the " high contracting Powers."
The Plenipotentiaries and Commissioners
being assembled, everything was in the greatest
danger of falling to pieces on the outset, by the
very first despatches which we received, as these
related to a frightful massacre which had just
taken place at Kerbela, where 22,000 Persians
were reported to have been killed by the Turks.
Kerbela, in the pashalic of Bagdad, is a Turkish
fortified place, containing the tomb of Hossein,
the brother of Hassan, and son of Ali, the great
saint of the Shiah, or Persian form of the Ma-
homedan religion. Not only do an immense
number of Persians habitually reside there, but
every one who has the power strives to retire
there in his latter days, that he may lay his

Chap. IV. KERBELA. 63
bones in the neighbourhood of the golden dome
which covers the ashes of Hossein. Those who
die at a distance are so anxious at least to be
buried at Kerbela, that the great article of
commerce in that direction consists of the dead
bodies of Persian men and women, which are
brought by thousands every year from all parts
of the dominions of the Shah by endless cara
vans of horses, mules, and camels, many hun
dreds of which unlucky animals pass their whole
lives from year to year in carrying these horrid
burthens, which infect the air in all the villages
through which they pass.
So great is the sanctity of Kerbela, that in
the estimation of the sect of Ali it even may be
said to surpass that of Mecca, for they among
Mahomedans are those who " by their tradi
tions have made the law of none effect."
The history of the death of Hossein is so inter
esting an episode in the history of this country,
that I am tempted to give a short account of it,
for the benefit of those who may not be well
acquainted with the history of the successors of
Mahomet, and upon whose fortunes so much of
the welfare and also the policy of the various
nations of the East, from the seventh century
to the present time, depends — premising that
the principal cause of the rancorous hatred

64 ARMENIA. Chap. IV.
which always has existed and still exists in full
force between the Sooni Turks, and the Shiah
Persians, is principally founded upon events
connected with the death of the Imaum Hossein,
and the feeling is kept up in full vigour in
Persia by a sort of drama, representing the fol
lowing history, which is enacted before the
Shah, and in every town in Persia, every year,
at the annual feast of Noo Rooz, which con
tinues for ten days. In one of the acts of this
most curious ceremony, a Frank ambassador is
brought before the audience, who intercedes for
the life of Hossein and his followers with the
general of the army of Yezid. Who he can have
been there is no means of knowing, but he may
possibly represent an ambassador from the
Greek Emperor of Constantinople, who may
have been passing on his way to the court of
the Caliph. However this may be, his presence
produces a kindly feeling towards Europeans in
the minds of the Persian populace.
On the death of Ali (a.d. 661) his eldest son
Hassan was proclaimed Caliph and Imaum in
Irak ; the former title he was forced to resign
to Moawiyah ; the latter, or spiritual dignity,
his followers regarded as inalienable. His rival
granted him a pension, and permitted him to
retire into private life. After nine years, passed

Chap. IV. HISTORY OF HOSSEIN. 65
for the most part in devotional exercise, he was
poisoned by his wife Jaadah, who was bribed to
perpetrate this execrable crime by Yezid, the
son of Moawiyah.
On the death of Moawiyah (a.d. 679), his
son Yezid, who succeeded, having provoked
public indignation by his luxury, debauchery,
and impiety, Hossein was persuaded by the dis
contented people of Irak to make an attempt for
the recovery of his hereditary rights. The in
habitants of Cufa and Bassorah were foremost in
their professions of zeal for the house of Ali, and
sent Hossein a list of more than 124,000 persons,
who, they said, were ready to take up arms in
his cause.
Hossein did not take warning from the in
constancy and treachery which these very per
sons had shown in their conduct towards his
father and brother. Assembling a small troop
of his personal friends, and accompanied by a
part of his family, he departed from Medina, the
place of his residence, and was soon engaged in
crossing the desert. But whilst he was on his
journey, Yezid's governor in Irak discovered the
meditated revolt, capitally punished the leaders
of the conspiracy, and so terrified the rest that
they were afraid to move. When Hossein ar
rived near the banks of the Euphrates, instead

66 ARMENIA. Chap. IV.
of finding an army of his devoted adherents, he
discovered that his further progress was checked
by the overwhelming forces of the enemy. De
termined, however, to persevere, he gave per
mission to all who pleased to retreat while there
was yet time ; to their disgrace, many of his
followers left him to his fate, and he continued
his route to Cufa, accompanied only by seventy-
two persons. But every step increased his diffi
culties, and he attempted to return when it was
too late. At length he was surrounded by the
troops of the Caliph in the arid plains of Ker
bela, his followers were cut off from their supply
of water, and, when he offered to negotiate, he
was told that no terms would be made, but that
he should surrender at discretion. Twenty-four
hours were granted him for deliberation.
Hossein's choice was soon made : he deemed
death preferable to submission, but he coun
selled his friends to provide for their safety
either by surrender or escape. All replied that
they preferred dying with their beloved leader.
The only matter now to be considered was, how
they could sell their lives most dearly ; they
fortified their little encampment with a trench,
and then tranquilly awaited the event.
That night Hossein slept soundly, using for a
pillow the pommel of his sword. During his

Chap. IV. HISTORY OF HOSSEIN. 67
sleep he dreamed that Mahomet appeared to
him, and predicted that they should meet the
next day in Paradise. When morning dawned
he related his dream to his sister Zeinab, who
had accompanied him on his fatal expedition.
She burst into a passion of tears, and ex
claimed, " Alas ! alas ! my brother ! What a
destiny is ours ! My father is dead ! my mother
is dead ! my brother Hassan is dead ! and the
measure of our calamities is not yet full ! "
Hossein tried to console her. " Why should
you weep ? " he said ; " did we not come on earth
to die ? My father was more worthy than I ;
my mother was more worthy than I ; my brother
was more worthy than I. They are all dead ;
why should not we be ready to follow their
example ? " He then strictly enjoined his family
to make no lamentation for his approaching
martyrdom, telling them that a patient submis
sion to the divine decrees was the conduct most
pleasing to God and his Prophet.'
When morning appeared, Hossein, having
washed and perfumed himself, as if preparing
for a banquet, mounted his steed, and addressed
his followers in terms of endearing affection
that drew tears from the eyes of the gallant
warriors. Then, opening the Koran, he read
the following verse : " 0 God, be thou my refuge

68 ARMENIA. Chap. IV.
in suffering, and my hope in affliction." But the
soldiers of Yezid were reluctant to assail the
favourite grandson of the Prophet ; they de
manded of their generals to allow him to draw
water from the Euphrates, a permission which
would not have been refused to beasts and in
fidels. " Let us be cautious," they exclaimed,
"of raising our hands against him who was
carried in the arms of God's apostle. It would
be, in fact, to fight against God himself." So
strong were their feelings that thirty cavaliers
deserted to Hossein, resolved to share with him
the glories of martyrdom.
But Yezid' s generals shared not in these senti
ments. They affected to regard Hossein as an
enemy of Islam. They forced their soldiers for
ward with blows, and exclaimed, " War to those
who abandon the true religion, and separate
themselves from the council of the faithful ! "
Hossein replied, " It is you who have abandoned
the true religion ; it is you who have severed
yourselves from the assembly of the faithful.
Ah ! when your souls shall be separated from
your bodies, you will learn too late which party
has incurred the penalty of eternal condemna
tion." Notwithstanding their vast superiority,
the Caliph's forces hesitated to engage men de
termined on death ; they poured in their arrows

Chap. IV. HISTORY OF HOSSEIN. 69
from a distance, and soon dismounted the little
troop of Hossein's cavalry.
When the hour of noon arrived, Hossein
solicited a suspension of arms during the time
appointed for the meridian prayers. This boon
was conceded with difficulty, the generals of
Yezid asking, "how a wretch like him could
venture to address the Deity ? " and adding the
vilest reproaches, to which Hossein made no
reply. The Persian traditions relate a fabulous
circumstance, designed to exalt the character of
Hossein, though fiction itself cannot increase the
deep interest of his history. They tell us that
whilst he was upon his knees the King of the
Genii appeared to him, and offered, for the sake
of his father Ali, to disperse his enemies in a
moment. " No," replied the generous Hossein,
" what use is there in fighting any longer ? I
am but a guest of one breath in this transitory
world ; my relatives and companions are all
gone, and what will it profit me to remain be
hind ? I long for nothing now, save my mar
tyrdom ; therefore depart thou, and may the
Lord recompense and bless thee ! " The genius
was so deeply affected by the reply that his soul
exhibited human weakness, and he departed
weeping and lamenting.
When the hour of prayer was past, the

70 ARMENIA. Chap. IV.
combat was renewed. One of Hossein's sons,
and several of his nephews, lay dead around
him ; the rest of his followers were either killed
or grievously wounded. Hitherto he had escaped
unhurt, for every one dreaded to raise a hand
against the grandson of Mohammed ; at length
a soldier, more daring than the rest, gave him
a severe wound in the head. Faint with the
loss of blood, he staggered to the door of his
tent, and with a burst of parental affection,
which at such a moment must have been
mingled with unspeakable bitterness, took up
his infant son, and began to caress him. Whilst
the little child was lisping out an inquiry
as to the cause of his father's emotion, it was
struck dead by an arrow in Hossein's arms.
When the blood of the innocent, bubbling over
his bosom, disclosed this new calamity, Hossein
held up the body towards heaven, exclaiming,
" 0 Lord ! if thou refusest us thy succour, at
least spare those who have not yet sinned, and
turn thy wrath upon the heads of the guilty."
Parched by a burning thirst, Hossein made a
desperate effort to reach the banks of the Eu
phrates, but, when he stooped to drink, he was
struck by an arrow in the mouth, and at the
same moment one of his nephews, who came to
embrace him for the last time, had his hand cut

Chap. IV. MURDER OF HOSSEIN. 71
off by the blow of a sabre. Hossein, now the
sole survivor of his party, threw himself into
the midst of the enemy, and fell beneath a thou
sand weapons. The officers of Yezid barbarously
mangled the corpse of the unfortunate prince ;
they cut off his head, and sent it to the
Caliph. The escort who guarded it on its way to the
Court of Yezid, halting for the night in the city
of Mosul, placed the box which contained it in
a mosque ; one of the sentinels, in the middle of
the night hearing a noise within, looked through
a chink in the door, and saw a gigantic figure,
with a venerable white beard, take the head of
Hossein out of its box, kiss it with reverence,
and weep over it, a crowd of venerable per
sonages following his example, and weeping
bitterly at the same time. Fearing that some
of his partizans had gained admittance, and that
they would carry away the head which he was
guarding, he unlocked the door and entered the
mosque, upon which one of the figures he had
seen, approached, and, giving him a blow upon
the cheek, exclaimed, " The prophets have come to
pay obeisance to the head of the martyr : whither
dost thou venture with such disrespect ?" In
the morning he related what had happened to

72 ARMENIA. Chap. IV.
his commander, the impression of the hand and
fingers of the ancient prophet being still visible
on his cheek.
The head of Hossein, and that of his brother
Hassan, repose under a mosque of the highest
sanctity at Cairo : it is called the mosque of
Hassanen. Another mosque in the same city
covers with its dome the remains of Sitte, or
the lady Zeinab, their sister, who was famous
for her beauty : her shrine is now visited with
great devotion by the ladies and women of her
faith. The headless body of Hossein was buried
upon the spot where he fell, while above it
afterwards arose the present place of pilgrimage,
so much resorted to by the Shiah sect.
The Persian fanatics of Kerbela had long
declined paying the accustomed taxes to the
Turkish government. Their insolent behaviour
had been a constant source of anger and difficulty
to successive Pashas of Bagdad. At last the
present Pasha was determined to enforce the
law : after sending various letters to the town
requesting payment of taxes and arrears, which
were treated with ridicule and contempt, he
gave orders to a general called Aboullabout
Pasha, who appears to have been a Sooni of the
most orthodox kind, to march an army of several

Chap. IV. ATTACK ON KERBELA. 73
thousand men, to compel the people of Kerbela
to acknowledge the rule of the Sultan. Aboul-
labout Pasha arrived accordingly, and pitched
his camp in a grove of palms not far from the
walls of the city. He brought four guns with
him, and a number of topgis, or gunners, to
work these instruments of destruction, if the
Persians in the town did not choose to obey his
commands. These impertinent fanatics treated the
Turkish Pasha and his army with derision ; rode
out in the cool of the evening to look at the
encampment, called the Turks grandsons and
great-grandsons of dogs, whom they would soon
pack off to their kennels at Bagdad and Constan
tinople. It seems that, trusting in the sanctity of the
golden dome, they did not imagine that the
Turks would dare to advance to extremities, par
ticularly as several royal princesses and members
of the family of the Shah had taken up their
abode in the vicinity of the tomb of the Imaum.
However the four guns and the topgis advanced
to a position near the walls, and the Pasha sent a
civil note to the insurgents within, to say that he
would trouble them to pay his little bill ; at the
very notion of which the Persians were seized
with fits of laughter, they were so much amused
at the idea of paying away their money to

74 ARMENIA. Chap. IV.
the Turks. After several demands for their
surrender, the town was blockaded, and the
Persians made various sallies on the Turkish
lines, in which they were always repulsed, and,
all warnings being disregarded, the four guns
at last proceeded to business. The wall tumbled
down immediately, the Turks walked in, the
Persians ran away, making very little effectual
resistance, and fire and the sword, plunder
and outrage of all kinds, took place in every
quarter of the devoted city. When the Turkish
troops entered the town, Aboullabout Pasha,
who took it all in a religious point of view,
had his carpet spread upon a bastion close above
the breach, and having cursed Hassan, and
Hossein, Sitti Zeinab, and Ali, offered ten
shillings a piece for the heads of any of their
followers ; and then went quietly to prayers
for the rest of the morning, without making
any effort to stop the horrors and excesses
which occur when a city has been taken by
storm. The accounts of the shocking out
rages and barbarities committed by the brutal
soldiery are not fit to be repeated. When the
town was pillaged, and everything had been
seized that they could lay their hands upon,
those who had not been fortunate in lighting
upon any treasure, or anything worth taking

Chap. IV. MASSACRE IN KERBELA. 75
away, bethought themselves of the manner in
which profit and amusement might be combined,
by cutting off every one's head that they could
meet with, and taking it up to the pious old
Pasha, who continued praying on his carpet, on
the bastion. When Persian heads became diffi
cult to find, not being particular, a great many
Turks were shot and decapitated by their fellow-
soldiers, for the sake of their heads ; the
fraternal feeling of nationality and Sooniism not
being calculated to resist the offer of one ducat
per head. If this had been suffered to continue,
it is probable that the state of affairs would have
resembled that of the celebrated battle between
the two Kilkenny cats, who eat each other up
entirely, with the exception of a small piece of
fluff. When the massacre was stopped, 22,000
persons were reported to have been slain. This
was very much exaggerated no doubt, and it
does not appear that a very correct account could
be made out. A most curious and interesting
report was afterwards drawn up on this subject
by Colonel Farrant, who was deputed by the
British Government to proceed to Kerbela, for
the purpose of pacifying the contending parties
and inquiring into the truth and extent of this
terrible disaster.
This was the first subject which the congress
E 2

76 ARMENIA. Chap. IV.
assembled to discuss measures of amity and
mutual confidence between Turkey and Persia
had brought before them: one not precisely
calculated to ensure that calmness of debate
and general goodwill, which all wanted to es
tablish. In course of time matters calmed down ; things
were what is called explained. We were all
wonderfully civil to each other, and the Turkish
and Persian followers of their respective plenipo
tentiaries did not express their private opinions
of each other's merits, till they got home and
shut the door.
Gradually they became more used to one-an-
other's ways, and the Commissioners worked like
special constables to keep the peace — and very
hard work they had, and it is wholly and entirely
owing to their exertions that the Koordish tribes
upon the frontiers, and the wild spirits on both
sides who were ready to back them up, were
kept down for more than ten years ; during which
time commerce has been enlarged, the roads have
been safe, and the Christian and agricultural
population from Bussora to Mount Ararat have
enjoyed a tranquillity and prosperity unknown
in the memory of man.

Chap. V. KOORDISH CfflEFTALNS. 77

CHAPTER V.
The boundary question — Koordish chiefs — Torture of Artin, an
Armenian Christian — Improved state of society in Turkey —
Execution of a Koord — Power of fatalism — Gratitude of Artin's
family.
One of the most important of the affairs which
were to be settled at Erzeroom was the geogra
phical position of the boundaries between the
two empires, for along the whole line there ran
a broad belt of a kind of debateable land, upon
which every man felt it his duty to shoot at every
other man whom he did not get near enough
to run through with his long spear, or knock
upon the head with his mace, these ancient style
of weapons being still in use among the Koords.
For the purpose of gaining local information,
many of the chiefs and principal persons of the
wild districts in question were brought up to
Erzeroom to be examined before the Plenipo
tentiaries and Commissioners. Some of these
were most original individuals. The following
extract from a letter, written upon the spot,
will give a faint idea of two or three of these
singular chieftains.

78 ARMENIA. Chap. V.

Extract of a Letter.
"Erzeroom, August 11th, 1843.
" One day passes much like another at Erze
room, and though there seldom occurs anything
new to me, perhaps, as it would be all new to
you, you may like to hear how I pass my time,
so I will give you a sort of journal of the pro
ceedings of yesterday, that you may see how I
occupy myself in this outlandish place. First of
all, I got up in the morning, eat my breakfast,
and then walked about the terrace on the top of
the house. At eleven o'clock a messenger came
from Enveri Effendi, to ask us to go to his house
at one. So at one o'clock we went ; the Russian
Commissioner with his suite came also. At the
door of Enveri Effendi' s house I saw a fine mare,
with very peculiar housings. It was held by a
negro, and a Bedouin Arab was sitting on the
ground near it. The headstall was made of a
red silk garter, which went over its head, and
was attached to the bit by a piece of green leather
strap ; the saddle was a common Arab saddle,
but the housings, made of wadded red silk, ended
in two immense tassels, one on each side of the
horse's tail, and almost as large ; the shovel-
stirrups were beautifully embossed and inlaid

Chap. V. KOORDISH CHIEFTAINS. 79
with silver, and there was a heavy mace of the
same workmanship under the right flap of the
saddle. This curious horse belonged to Sheikh
Thamir, the chief of the Chaab tribe and ex-
sovereign of all the land at the mouths of the
Euphrates. All the time that I was examining
the horse and talking about its accoutrements,
the Turkish guard were presenting arms, and
they looked very much relieved when I turned
round, and went into the house.
" The staircase of this palace is like a chicken-
ladder, and the hall at the top, where the servants
wait, like a little barn or stable in England.
Here, as I was kicking off my goloshes, I was
seized by Enveri Effendi himself, who had come
up behind me. This was considered as an ex
cellent good joke by the Chaoushes, servants,
&c, who stood in a row to receive us ; so we
went into the selamlik (or reception room)
together, and there I was introduced to three of
the most picturesque people I have ever seen.
The first was Osman Pasha, late Governor of
Zohab ; the second, Sheikh Thamir, whose horse
I had been looking at outside ; the third was
yclept Abdul Kader Effendi, chief secretary to
the Government of Bussorah. These persons
were dressed in flowing robes of various colours ;
they had long beards, and enormous turbans of

80 ARMENIA. Chap. V.
Cashmere shawl. All three were remarkably
ugly, strange-looking men, and I cannot describe
to you the peculiar way in which their clothes
were put on, and the wild and almost magnificent
appearance they presented. There were, besides
these and ourselves, B  Pasha and four other
gentlemen, in the modern Turkish dress. The
three Commissioners and their two dragomans
sat on the divan under the window, all, except
myself, with their legs sticking out, like people
waiting for an operation in a hospital. Enveri
Effendi sat on a cushion on the floor, in the
right-hand corner, and the others were ranged
on the two sides of the room. As we were
fourteen people, on a sudden fourteen servants
rushed into the room with pipes ; then one
brought coffee on a tray, the brocade covering
of which was thrown over his left shoulder ; and
then came a man bringing to each of us a cup,
well frothed up, and in a zarf, or outer cup, of
a different kind, according to the rank of the
person to whom it was presented. Enveri
Effendi and the three Commissioners had cups
of enamelled gold, the rest of the Pashas, &c,
of silver. When this ceremony was concluded,
the door was shut, the servants disappeared, a
curtain was drawn across the door, and two
chaoushes, with muskets, put to guard it outside.

Chap. V. KOORDISH CHIEFTAINS. 81
Then Enveri Effendi lifted up his voice, and,
after swinging himself about, and grunting two
or three times, he told us that the gentlemen in
the turbans had brought up a number of old
firmans, teskeres, and other papers relating to
the lands between Zohab and the Persian Gulf;
that he had examined them, and that now he
begged the Commissioners to put any questions
they chose to the worthies before them respecting
the lands, &c.
" Then we all looked at each other for a little
time, then they all looked at me. Then I took
up my parable, and desired the dragoman to ask
Osman Pasha who he was. ' I am Osman
Pasha,' said he ; ' and I and my family have
been sovereigns (or hereditary governors rather)
of Zohab for seven generations.' Having asked
him a great many questions, and written down
his answers, which made him somewhat nervous,
I turned to Sheikh Thamir. ' What is your
fortunate name?' said I, upon which Sheikh
Thamir opened his eyes, then he opened his
mouth, then he looked at Abdel Kader, then he
shut his mouth again, and said nothing. So I
asked him again who he had the honour to be.
Upon this, Abdel Kader, who appeared to be his
mentor or adviser, came and sat down by him,
and said, 'He is Sheikh Thamir.' Sheikh
e3

82' ARMENIA. Chap. V.
Thamir upon this shouted out, at the top of
his voice, ' Yes ; I am Sheikh Thamir, the
son of Gashban, who was the son of Osman,
who was the son of ¦  -' 'Thank you,' I
said, ' I only wanted to know from your own
lips who you were, but am not particular as to
the names of all your respected ancestors.' How
ever, Sheikh Thamir was not to be stopped in
that way when he had once begun, so he shouted
out a long string of names, and when he got to
the end he said he was Sheikh of the Sheikhs of
the great tribe of Chaab, and commander of the
district of Ghoban, which his ancestors had held
before him for one or two hundred years — or
more, or less, as I pleased. In answer to other
questions, which Abdel Kader always accom
panied with his own notes and commentaries, he
said, ' I have no papers ; we do not understand
such things. What do I know? I am an old
man. I am forty-five years of age ; let me alone.'
In course of time I did let him alone, and a
difficult thing it was to draw out any informa
tion from this wild desert chief. Every now
and then somebody else put in a word. At about
four o'clock the meeting broke up. We returned
home and dined, and in the evening went out
riding. Passing some tents, which the Pasha
has set up at the other side of the town near a

Chap. V. KOORDISH CHrEFTALNS. 83
tank — the only place where there are any trees
near Erzeroom, and they are only about a dozen
poplars — I saw a number of people, so I went
up to the tents, and found Sabri Pasha, the com
mander of the troops, an Egyptian Pasha, who
is come to buy horses for Mahomed Ali, — he has
bought some hundreds ; Bekir Pasha, some
other military Pashas, Namik Effendi, &c, two
little sons of Sabri Pasha, dressed in a very odd
way, with petticoats of different coloured silks in
stripes ; he said it was the dress of the girls in
Albania, but I never saw anything like it in that
country. Here we stayed and chatted with the
Turks. The tents are superb ; the principal one
was 100 feet long, with an open colonnade round
it, and lined inside with silk ; rich Persian carpets
were spread on the ground. I have never seen so
beautiful a tent. When the moon rose, I went
away, a man carrying a meshaleh, a thing like
a beacon, on the top of a pole, with old cotton
dipped in pitch burning in it ; it is the best light
there is for out-of-doors, as it never blows out,
and gives much more light than any torches or
lanthorns. " When I got home I paid my respects to the
kid, who came out to meet me ; and to the little
cow, 18 inches high, who sat in the door and
would not get out of the way ; and having drank
tea I went to bed."

84 ARMENIA. Chap. V.
On another occasion certain men represented
to me that a Christian oda bashi, or chamber
lain of a khan or inn, had been unjustly seized
and tortured by the authorities, to make him
confess to a robbery that had taken place
in his khan, which in reality had been per
petrated by two Turkish soldiers ; but the
oda bashi being a .Christian, neither his evi
dence nor that of any other Christian could be
taken in opposition to that of a Mahomedan,
according to Turkish law. The case was
brought before me, and I took some interest
in it. I had no authority whatever to deal
with such questions as these, and it was only
by representations to the Pasha, that I was
enabled to obtain justice for the unlucky oda
bashi. Finding the case taken down at the time,
from the word of mouth of some of those who
moved in it, I thought it might be interesting
as a picture of manners in an out-of-the-way
country, and I subjoin it without making any
alterations in the language of this piece of
justiciary business.
Case of Artin, Oda Bashi, an Armenian.
" Erzeroom, August 2nd and 12th, 1843.
" A merchant, named Mehemed, brought his
merchandize to the Khan Ghenge Aga Khan,

Chap. V. AFFAIR OF ARTIN, ODA BASHI. 85
where he slept. Two soldiers slept near him.
In the morning his goods were gone ; he accused
the soldiers (who were the only people who had
been near him) of the robbery ; they denied it,
and were let off by the judge at the mekemme,
before whom they had been taken. A Turkish
woman, named Zeilha, saw the two soldiers bury
something, upon which she told the merchant
that his goods were buried at such a place by
the soldiers. He went there, and found half the
goods ; the soldiers, therefore, were again taken
up, when they confessed to the theft of half the
goods, but said that the oda bashi, an Armenian,
named Artin, had taken the other half. Artin
was accordingly taken before the tribunal of the
Kiaya ; the Pasha ordered him to be tortured, on
his declaring himself ignorant of the theft. A
tass (metal drinking-cup) of hot brass was put
upon his head ; afterwards a cord was tied round
his head, two sheep's knuckle-bones were placed
upon his temples, and the cord tightened till his
eyes nearly came out. As he would not confess,
his front teeth were then drawn one at a time ;
pieces of cane were run up under his toe-nails
and his finger-nails. Various tortures have been
inflicted on him in this way for the last twelve
days, and he is now hung up by the hands, in
the prison of the Seraskier, where he will be

86 ARMENIA. Chap. V.
kept and tormented till he confesses or dies.
This is the deposition of his wife Mariam, who
begs me to interpose to save her husband, who,
she declares, slept at home, and not in the khan,
on the night when the robbery took place."
According to the Turkish law, two witnesses
of unimpeachable character are sufficient to
convict any man of any crime, on their accusing
him before the cadi. Only in the case of
adultery four male witnesses are required. A
woman's evidence is never taken, nor is that
of a Christian or a foreigner held good in
any case against a Mahomedan. These two
soldiers, however, being convicted thieves, their
evidence was not valid according to the law,
and the oda bashi seems to have been taken up
and tortured by an entirely arbitrary act of the
Pasha. I went to the palace, and these are
the words of Kiamili Pasha, the Governor and
Viceroy of Erzeroom.
" You are mistaken, the man has not been
tortured ; I have proof that he was at the khan
that night ; he has been found guilty by the
Court (mekemme) on proper evidence, and sent
to me to receive the punishment due to his
offence. As I wished to recover the goods
stolen for the benefit of their owner, the mer-

Chap. V. AFFAIR OF ARTLN, ODA BASHI. 87
chant Mehemet, I threatened the oda bashi that
if he did not tell what he had done with his
share of the property, it was in my power to
inflict these tortures upon him.
" After this he desired to be allowed to speak
to the two soldiers who had possession of the
other half of the goods. I consented, and sent
him to the prison at Selim Pasha's palace, where
they were confined. As I would not trust to
the report of Selim Pasha's people, I sent a con
fidential man of my own, who was put in a place
where he overheard all that passed. The oda
bashi said to the soldiers, ' If you will say I am
innocent, I will share my portion of the stolen
goods with you, and you will gain by this, as
your share has been taken from you, and I
shall get off freely. Do this and nobody will
know.' " The oda bashi was brought back to his prison :
when I asked him what he had said to the
soldiers, he told me quite another story. Then
I spoke to him in his own words, whereat he
was astonished, but he kept silence. He is still
in prison, and I am thinking what to do with
him ; but he has not been tortured in any way,
and as you seem to take an interest in his case, I
will set him free, and give him to you to show
my friendship for you."

88 ARMENIA. Chap. V.
I replied, " I am glad to hear that the man has
not been tortured, for in England we consider
torture to be an act of unnecessary cruelty, but
your story alters the case. The man is certainly
guilty, and as I only asked for justice in this
case, and I wish in all things to see justice done,
I will not have the man, let him be punished
according to the law, only do not torture him.
"The other day you hung a Koord opposite my
windows ; he was a murderer, and you did right :
it is by acts like these that a country such as this
can be kept in order, and that protection is
assured to those who do well."
" I am sorry," said the Pasha, " that they hung
the Koord before your windows. I told them not
to hang him before the house of the Persian Pleni
potentiary, where there is a gibbet ; but to take
him to any place where the Koords resorted, and
as there are many coffee-houses near you, that is
the reason probably why they hung him there.
His story is a curious one : I have been looking
after him for the last three years ; he has robbed
and murdered many people, though he was so
young a man, but he had always escaped my
agents. At last, a few days ago, he stole a horse,
in a valley near here, from a man who was
travelling, and whom he beat about the head
and left for dead. He brought the/ahorse to

Chap. V. AFFAIR OF ARTIN, ODA BASHI. 89
Erzeroom and offered it for sale, when the owner,
who had recovered, saw him selling the horse,
and gave him up to the guard. He was brought
up for judgment before me, when I said to him,
Who are you ? After a silence, the man said,
' There is fate in this, it cannot be denied. I
am * * * * whom you have been searching
for these three years. My fate brought me to
Erzeroom, and now I am taken up for stealing
one poor horse. I felt when I took that horse
that I was fated to die for it. My time is come.
It is fate.' And he went to be hung without
any complaint."
I said he deserved it, and hoped others would
take warning by his death.
" I hope they will," the Pasha said, " but among
the Koords of this country there are so few who
do not deserve punishment, that if you see two
persons you may be sure that one has stolen
something. You cannot see two people to
gether here, but that at least one has been a
thief." " Well," I answered, " the British Commis
sioners are two people whom your Excellency
has often seen together, but I hope, in our case,
when we leave the Pashalic of Erzeroom, we
may be convicted of having stolen nothing but
your 'good ophyon ;" and so I took my leave.

90 ARMENIA. Chap. V.
In the evening, hearing that the wife of the
oda bashi was in my house, I said to Paolo
Cadelli, my servant, that my desire to liberate
the Armenian was changed, that he had not
been tortured, but he was a thief. " How,"
said Paolo, in a great state of excitement, " a
thief he may be, but tortured he certainly
was, for in the morning did I not go forth
into the bazaar, to get wrappers (pestimal) of
Persian silk ? I went to the Bezestein, and there
did I not see the chief of the criers of the Bit
Bazaar ? he is my friend. Did I not get from
him the embroidery, the cloth of gold which you
have, which is in your room ? And we went, did
we not go together to the court of the palace of
the Pasha ? It is opposite, is it not opposite to
the entrance of the Bezestein? Do not the
soldiers present arms there to you when you go
in ? Yes. There I went, and I saw the Arme
nian, a poor devil — quite a poor devil — sitting
down like a monkey, altogether quite stupid
with fear and martyrdom. They had martyred
him, they had drawn his teeth, his finger-ends
and toes were black, by reason of the canes they
had run into them ; his thighs had been torn by
pincers ; he was half dead. He said to the people,
' What can I do ? I am innocent ; kill me ; but
I cannot restore goods which I have not got.'

Chap. V. AFFAIR OF ARTTN, ODA BASHL' 91
Ah ! he is a Christian. Is he not a Christian —
an Armenian ? — That is what these Turks do.
They have not tortured the soldiers who are
guilty. Certainly they have not, but this man
has been tortured because he is an Armenian.
They are Turks, my master (padrone) ; are they
not Turks ? They are all Turks ; that is what they
do ;" and with many ejaculations Paolo went
away to cool down his indignation in the open air.
I was surprised at this account. Yesterday,
August 5, * * * Pasha came to breakfast, and
I begged him to find out the truth. In the
afternoon I was at Enveri Effendi's house, * * *
Pasha was there, and he said the man had not
been tortured, that the account given me by
Kiamili Pasha was correct, that the man was
out of prison, but that the Pasha would seek for
him and send him to me.
I heard that, after I went to the Pasha, the
Pasha sent for the Kiaya, and finding the oda
bashi had been tortured, he found great fault
with him, and ordered the man to be released
the next day. He is sentenced, as he understands,
to pay the half of the value of the goods stolen.
While I was with the Pasha, the Tophenkyi
Bashi was enraged with this poor victim for
getting the assistance of the Franks, as he
thought that we were come to the Pasha on

92 ARMENIA. Chap. V.
his account, whereas our visit was on public
business in no way connected with this affair.
It appears that while we were sitting on
the divan in the Pasha's hall of audience, the
Tophenkyi Bashi was employed during the same
time in inflicting additional torments on the un
fortunate oda bashi ; he snapped his pistol at his
head, and informed him that the Pasha had given
orders that he was to be hanged in the course of
the day. The oda bashi, after we had rescued
him from his various tormentors, presented him
self before me. He was a good-looking man,
about thirty-five years of age, with a black
beard, and respectably dressed in blue, in the
style usually adopted by the Armenian Christ
ians. He said he had been tortured by the
order of the Kiaya Bey ; the bones were put to
his temples, some of his teeth drawn, his nails
pierced, his left thigh torn with pincers; he
was hung up by the arms by ropes, but the
hot cup was not placed upon his head. He
showed me the marks of the pincers and
other scars about his body — evident proofs of
the truth of his assertion. The two soldiers
who were convicted of having stolen the goods
(the oda bashi being entirely ignorant of the
whole transaction) were to be brought before
the Council on the following Monday. They

Chap. V. IMPROVED STATE OF SOCIETY. 93
are now in prison, and will be sentenced to pay
the other half of the value of the stolen goods.
This information the oda bashi received from
the merchant Mehemed, the owner of the lost
property. He has not heard any other parti
culars about the soldiers.
From the above account it appears that much
injustice may probably be carried on by the in
ferior officers of the Government which never
gets to the ears of the Pasha, small officials being
notoriously more tyrannical than greater men.
The Pasha himself appears to be a kind-hearted,
well-intentioned man in a general way ; but, in
cases where his own interest is not directly con
cerned, he does not look into the affairs of the
pashalic with sufficient keenness to prevent his
subordinate officers from practising various acts
of oppression and extortion, according to the
fashion of the good old times, when Turkey,
like the United States of America, was a land
of liberty, where every free and independent
citizen had the right to beat his own nigger ;
for, according to some doctors of the law,
pashas, vizirs, &c, might cut off a few heads
every day, for no given reason, but just for
amusement. The Sultan had the privilege of
destroying fourteen lives per day of his faithful
subjects, who might have committed no crime ;

94 ARMENIA. Chap. V.
after that number some reason was expected to
be shown for the further use of the sword and
bowstring on that day. Now the case is altered :
fewer crimes are committed in Turkey than in
London, and the Turkish pashas endeavour to
stop such practices as are considered discreditable
on the part of the inferior officers ; though they
have to contend with great difficulties in a
country where it is hardly possible to get at the
truth, and where the inferior officers have for
generations been accustomed to plunder those
below them, directly they are out of sight of the
higher authorities ; trusting to the want of com
munication, the slight knowledge of writing, and
the many obstacles in the way which prevent
the poor man's story getting to the ears of the
Pasha or the Sultan, who, in these days at least,
are anxious to remedy such abuses, and to dis
tribute justice with a tolerably impartial hand.
I had great satisfaction in hearing afterwards
that, owing to my exertions in this and other
cases— the good cause being taken up warmly
by Colonel Williams, after I was gone — all tor
ture was authoritatively abolished in the pasha-
lic of Erzeroom ; and I am in hopes that, except
in some snug little dungeon in the rocky castle
of a half-independent Koordish chief, this hor
rible custom is almost extinct.

Chap. V.

EXECUTION OF A KOORD.

95

The Koord above mentioned was hanged in so
original a manner that I must shortly describe
it, as it took place immediately under my win
dow. What we called at school a cai>gallows
was erected close to a bridge over the little
stream which ran down the horse-market, be
tween my house and the bottom of the hill of
the citadel. The culprit stood under this ; the
cross-beam was not two feet above his head ; a
kawass, having tied a rope to one end of the
beam, passed a slip-knot round the neck of the
Koord, a young and very handsome man, with
long black hair ; he then drew the rope over the
other end of the beam, and pulled away till the
poor man's feet were just off the ground, when
he tied the rope in a knot, leaving the dead

96 ARMENIA. Chap. V.
body hanging, supported by two ropes in the
form of the letter V. Hardly any one was
looking on, and in the afternoon the body was
taken down and buried.
I shall always consider this case as a remark
able instance of the power of fatalism over the
mind of an ignorant and superstitious man.
This Koord was entirely the cause of his own
execution : no one knew him by sight at Erze
room, and there was not the slightest necessity
for his declaring his name to the Pasha, and
confessing that he had committed murders and
outrages of all kinds among the villages of
Koordistaun. His punishment for stealing a
horse would not have been very severe, and,
but for his voluntary admission that he was a
notorious malefactor, for whom the police had
long been on the look out, he might have been
alive to this day to rob and murder, till some
body shot him, or he became too old for the
exertion. Fatalism, in other cases, has a power
ful influence over the true believers in the
armies of Islam. The soldier goes to battle with
the firm belief that, if his hour is not come, the
cannon of the enemy can have no power over
him ; and that if his hour is arrived, the angel
of death will call him, whether he may be seated
on his divan, or walking in full health in his

Chap. V. TURKS AND CHRISTIANS. 97
garden at home : just as readily does he bow
his head to fate in one place as in another. By
this institution of the Koran, the wonderful
genius of Mohamed has gained many a victory
by the hands of his trusting and believing fol
lowers for the caliphs and sultans of his creed.
Some of the reforms of Sultan Mahmoud, by
treating lightly many of the ancient prejudices
of the Osmanlis, have shaken the throne under
his feet. The progress of infidelity, which has
begun at Constantinople, is the greatest tem
poral danger to the power of the Turkish em
pire. The Turk implicitly believes the tenets of
his religion ; he keeps its precepts and obeys its
laws ; he is proud of his faith, and prays in
public when the hour of prayer arrives. How
different, alas ! is the manner in which the
divine laws of Christianity are kept ! The
Christian seems ashamed of his religion ; as for
obeying the doctrines of the Gospel, they have
no perceptible effect upon the mass of the people,
among whom drunkenness, dishonesty, and im
morality prevail almost unchecked, except by
the fear of punishment in this world ; while in
Turkey not one-tenth part of the crime exists
which is annually committed in Christendom.
A few days after this occurrence, as I was
sitting in the summer chamber at the top of the

98 ARMENIA. Chap. V.
house, I heard a most extraordinary shuffling
and screeching behind the curtain which hung
over the door ; the curtain shook about, and
numerous subdued voices and noises were
heard, which sounded like cocks and hens
suffering from strangulation. I shouted out
to know what in the world was going on ;
after a while the kawass drew aside the curtain,
and along the floor advanced a most strange and
incomprehensible procession of several women
and men, crawling on their hands and knees,
each with a cock or a hen in their hands, whose
fluttering, and screaming, and crowing now
broke forth in full chorus ; one or two got away,
and flew about the room, as its owner, making
use of her hands to walk with, was unable to
hold the terrified fowl. This procession ad
vanced to the divan, and, without saying a word,
the foremost woman seized hold of one of my
legs, which was inadvertently sticking out, and,
holding on to my ancle, kissed my foot, and burst
out into a string of exclamations in Armenian,
no one word of which made any impression on
my understanding. Being horribly alarmed, I
kicked as well as I could, and, having escaped
into the remotest corner of the divan, I begged
to know what all this portended; and on the
chickens being caught, and comparative silence

Chap. V. GRATITUDE OF ARTTN'S FAMILY. 99
obtained, I found that these were the family of
the poor oda bashi, who had brought the chickens
as a present, and came with tears to thank me
for saving their father, brother, or husband.
They were really pained, poor people, when I
would not accept the cocks and hens, for, though
of little value, it looked like receiving a bribe
for justice ; and, after a long explanation of my
strange notions, they walked off in smiles, upon
their hind legs, the cocks crowing triumphantly
on their way down stairs.

p2

100 ARMENIA. Chap. VI.

CHAPTEE VI.
The clock of Erzeroom — A Pasha's notions of horology — Patho
logy of clocks — The tower and dungeon — Ingenious mode of
torture — The modern prison.
In the citadel — a place which might, with
great ease, be rendered very strong, but which
now is deserted and disused, having, I believe,
been knocked to pieces in the Russian war —
there are still two or three curious ancient tombs
and some other incomprehensible old buildings.
The building containing the prison, which was
in constant use in the good old times, and the
tower, from whence the flag of Turkey is dis
played, possessed an old clock, which had been
out of order for many years before the Rus
sians carried it away, but which was the wonder
and admiration of all Koords, Armenians, and
strangers from the mountains, to whom time
was " no object," and who considered this old
clock with its dial and hands as some sort of
talisman beyond the comprehension of ordinary
folks. Erzeroom was indeed lifted up in the
estimation of those unsophisticated herdsmen

Chap. VI. CLOCK OF ERZEROOM. 1C1
and robbers, as the only place they ever heard
of where anything in the nature of a clock was
to be seen. It might happen that some few of
those who not only were possessed of such an out
landish article as a watch, but who were in some
measure initiated into the uses of that strange
production, would expatiate learnedly in the
coffee-houses on the wondrous properties of the
great talisman in the tower of the citadel, which,
in all probability, from its great size and exalted
position, was considered as the father of all the
little watches of the sheikhs and chiefs among
the tribes. As for the clock not going, that
signified but little. Talleyrand said that speech
was accorded to man for the purpose of en
abling him to conceal his sentiments. The
big clock had doubtless his reasons for holding
his tongue, and telling no lies ; I believe his
reputation was increased by his silence, as is the
case among many other distinguished characters
besides the clock of Erzeroom. Now it came to
pass, once upon a time, that the great Pasha or
viceroy of the wide realms of this great pashalic
chanced to be a philosopher ; he knew that
clocks, though they might have been made to
sell, besides this very primary quality, also
ought to go, but no artificer in the land of
Armenia was competent to accomplish this de-

102 ARMENIA. Chap. VI.
sirable end. Whenever a Frank traveller — not
that there ever were any travellers by profes
sion in those days — but whenever a Frank
doctor or hakim made his appearance in those
regions, he was always received with distin
guished civility by the Pasha, who, after the
preliminaries of coffee, Kef enis ayi — " may your
powers of enjoyment be in good order !" — always
ended with an expression of his desire that the
Frank would immediately set about the repairs
of the clock.
" Sir, your Excellency," said the poor man,
" I am a doctor ; I am not a watchmaker or a
mechanic. I don't understand clocks ; it is not
in my power to set the clock right ; it is not in
my line of business. I am very sorry, but, 0
Effendim, I fear I am unable to meet your
wishes in this point."
" Dog of a Frank," quoth the Pasha, " great
grandfather's uncle to all dogs, more particu
larly those of Frangistaun, is it not thy base
profession to meddle with the bowels of man
kind ? canst thou not expel ginns and evil
spirits and other things, which have taken up
their abode in the innermost recesses of the
bodies of true believers, which thine eye cannot
penetrate, while nevertheless thou turnest their
livers upside down and their souls inside out ;

Chap. VI. PATHOLOGY OF CLOCKS. 103
and all this by the accursed aid of thy wretched
Frankish incantations ; shooting thine arrows at
them, or rather sending down their throats
certain wicked and diabolical contrivances, which
are known by the barbarians of thy benighted
country by the name of pills. Dost thou pretend
to see all that is going on in the stomach of a
follower of the Prophet, and wilt thou tell me
with the same breath that thou canst not ad
minister to the disorganized constitution of a
clock ? Hath not a clock a pulse, when he is
alive and in good health? Go thou, feel his
pulse, and see whether it is fast or slow ; what
ever thou mayest want thou shalt have ; my
hakim bashi shall assist you, only cure the
clock. All Franks make clocks : I have it from
authority : do not pretend that thou canst not
set the clock going again, for surely thou canst
restore it to life, and make it strike, and do all
that it ought to do. Behold ! thou art a Frank.
Guards, take the Frank up into the tower, and
make him mend the clock ; and, if the unbe
lieving dog will not mend the clock, then put
him into the dungeon down below, till he con
fesses that he is ready to do as he is commanded
by the Pasha of the true believers."
In this way every audience concluded. The

104 ARMENIA. Chap. VI.
unlucky Frank, having been exalted to the top
of the tower and exhorted to repair the rickety
old clock, which had lost half its works, was
debased into the dungeon, there to remain till
further notice. Having often heard this story
of the good old times, I one day proceeded to
the citadel to see the tower where the clock had
been, and to examine the dungeon, where I
should have been sent if I had arrived at Er
zeroom fifty or sixty years ago. This dungeon
really was a dungeon : anything so terrible as
an abode for a human being I never saw before.
The pozzi at Venice were rather pleasant and
agreeable places of retirement, compared with
the abode of many a poor Frank, in whose edu
cation the art and craft of clockology had been
unfortunately omitted.
At the foot of that which had been the clock-
tower was a range of small low rooms, of which
two were particularly belonging to the prison :
the outer room of the two was larger than the
other ; this was appropriated to the guards, who
kept watch and ward, and who fed, or did not
feed, the wretched prisoners under their care.
The inner room was small and low, and had
one window, through which the light and air
had to struggle with the opposition of heavy

Chap. VI. THE DUNGEON. 105
crossed and re-crossed iron bars. The window
looked into the castle-yard, but the room was
so dark that I could hardly see my way.
" A horrible place for the poor prisoners,"
said I to my guides ; " little chance of their
escape from these thick walls and heavy bars,
and low strong roof; they must have been safe
enough here."
" 0 Effendim," said the kawasses, " this is
not the prison. Here is the prison, at your feet
down below."
" Where ? " said I.
" Look down," they replied, " on the middle
of the floor ; there is the entrance ; you cannot-
see the dungeon itself, for it is, perhaps, a little
dark." In the centre of the floor of this dismal cell
was a heavy wrought-iron grating, square,
made of great bars, about six inches apart,
seemingly of enormous weight, lying on the
ground, and fastened down with two or three
huge rusty padlocks on one side and some lum
bering old hinges on the other. This iron
grate was opened and raised up for my special
edification, and there appeared under it the mouth
of a narrow well cut in the rock, perhaps two
feet and a half in diameter, which sank down
into the darkness far below. " Now," said my
f3

106 ARMENIA. Chap. VI.
informants, " if you stand on this side, and look
steadily till your eye is accustomed to the gloom,
you will be able to distinguish something white a
good way down ; that is a square stone, like a
table, in the middle of the vault, upon which
the gaolers let down the provisions for the
prisoners, as they can see on that stone when
the things arrive at the bottom." This was the
old dungeon, the common prison not many years
ago ; but, I believe, since the reign of Hadji
Kiamili Pasha, few or none had been consigned
to this horrible abode. The shape of it below, I
understood, was that of the inside of a bottle ;
it was between twenty and thirty feet deep;
vermin, dirt and filth, and foul air, formed its
only furniture ; and into this awful hole many
and many an innocent man had been let down :
some to be brought up again to pay a ransom of
all that they possessed, some to linger there for
years, and some to die and rot unnoticed if no
food was provided for them by Government,
when their bones, if not their flesh, gave token
to the next inhabitants of what they were to
expect, unless their interest or their wealth was
greater than that of the poor wretch whose re
mains lay there before them.
An ingenious and horrible species of torture
was sometimes added to the discomforts of this

Chap. VI. MODERN PRISON. 107
dread abode : a large piece of raw flesh was
thrown down into the dungeon ; the vermin,
and the effluvia which it produced, added to
other miseries, made the existence of the wretched
prisoner almost intolerable.
The modern prison is bad enough : it consists
of a number of cells opening on to a small paved
court-yard. The prisoners, being just shoved
through the door, have to shift for themselves
inside, where a kind of Pandemonium exists ;
the stronger Koords bullying and tyrannising
over the weaker felons, who have neither fire nor
candle during the intense cold of a great part of
the year : so I was told ; but I was not there in
the winter, and hope these unhappy wretches
may be allowed a little tezek occasionally to
keep their dirty bodies and souls together.

108 ARMENLV. Chap. VII.

CHAPTER VII.
Spring in Erzeroom — Coffee-house diversions — Koordish Exploits
— Summer employment — Preparation of Tezek — Its varieties
and uses.
When the snows of winter have melted, and
the air becomes more temperate, the population
of Erzeroom begin to revive ; the women and
children, who, like the bears, lemmings, and
marmottes, have hybernated all the winter, now
peep with red eyes out of their subterranean
habitations ; those streets situated upon hills, as
most of them are, become torrents of melted
snow, which cut deep ravines through the frozen
mass which is piled up many feet on each side ;
narrow paths are gradually dug out from the
1 ow doors of the Armenian man-burrows towards
the central river of the street ; the winking
children creep out to blink their eyes at the sun,
and enjoy the fresh air ; fusty cows who have
been buried for eight months come slowly staring
out ; every now and then a more adventurous
infant is carried away by the stream, and its
body quickly devoured by the ravenous dogs at
the outskirts of the town ; wolves it is said,

Chap. VII. KOORDISH EXPLOITS. 109
though I never saw one, prowl about, and eat
the dog that eat the child, that came out to see
the weather so mild, in the street by the house
that (not) Jack built. Women now scream to
each other in shrill voices, as they pitch down
large wooden spadefuls of half-melted snow
upon the heads of those who are passing in the
street ; knots of Tartars, Circassians, and Lazes
and Koords, in iron-heeled boots and white
woollen trousers, tell lies to each other at the
doors of the coffee-houses, which are answered
with dignified exclamations of Wullah ! Billah !
nobody believing his neighbour's lie, but con
sidering straightway how he can invent a de
liberate falsehood to lay before the other liars
in his turn. Every now and then one of these
stories is true, when a cadaverous-looking
Koord, hung round with arms and leaning on
his lance, with the black ostrich-feathers at the
top, being a practical man with very little
imagination, coolly relates the history of the
sacking of a defenceless village, where murder
unresisted, rapine, sacrilege in the burning of
the mosque, and spearing the children who run
shrieking from the flames of their homes, bear
with it the impress of truth, with the conviction
on the part of any honest man (if there should
be one in the party), that, although the rest are

110 ARMENIA. Chap. VII.
liars, the only truthful narrator is a brute of that
atrocious kind, that the falsehoods of the rest are
trifles, like chaff before the wind, in comparison
with the real and true experiences of this infernal
child of hell. Such as this are the Koords ; their
only virtue is that they are not cowards ; but
although they subscribe to a nominal adherence to
the Mahomedan religion, the most liberal Imaum
would be ashamed to own them. The Yezedis,
who worship the devil, are angels in comparison.
Yet they are superstitious to a curious degree, as
the foregoing anecdote of the Koord, who was hung
through giving evidence about himself, testifies.
At the commencement of the summer the
whole city of Erzeroom is engaged, even to
desperation, in making tezek ; you hear, smell,
and see nothing else. How are you off for tezek ?
Tezek katch, chok tezek, tezek var bourda chok,
chok, evet, tezek Effendim, katch gooroosh : in
short no one cares for anything except tezek,
and he who has most tezek is the greatest man,
and he who has but little tezek he is nought — no
one cares for him, or indeed for anything else
except the one absorbing topic of tezek.
The cows, and bulls, and oxen, having re
appeared on upper earth, the Augean stable is
cleared out. Tezek, the only fuel of Erzeroom,
consists of the production into which the said

Chap. VII. PREPARATION OF TEZEK. Ill
oxen have converted their food for many months ;
it is trodden down hard, and is dug out by
zealous Armenians, and brought exultingly to
the tops of the houses ; it is mixed with a good
deal of the chopped straw, with which horses,
and oxen, and sheep are fed, while in the subter
ranean stables, more chopped straw is added,
mixed with water, and except the higher class of
grandees, such as the Pasha, the Commander-in-
Chief, and the author, all true men were em
ployed on the tops of their houses, treading the
chopped straw into the tezek with their naked
feet ; their full Turkish trousers being pulled up
and tied with a belt round their waists. With a
stick to lean upon, they are there all day, trotting
about, up to their knees in tezek, shouting to
each other ; Mohammed bringing some more
water to pour upon it; Hassan staggering up
the ladder with more tezek of the genuine un
adulterated kind from the recesses of the stable ;
Bekir with a great basket of chopped straw ; and
then all set to with a will, and tread steadily for
an hour or two, as sailors do round a capstan,
for the dear life ; and when they get very hot
they wipe their brow with a tezeky sleeve, and
their sleeve with a fold of a tezeky trouser, so
that they become altogether tezekious before
the sun sets upon their labours, and veils his

112 ARMENIA. Chap. VII.
nose, if not his eyes, under the clouds which
hang over the eternal snows in the dreaded
passes of the mountains of Hoshabounar. The
tezek being trodden into a stiff clayey state,
about six or seven inches thick, is left alone for
a day or two to dry ; amateurs, however,
scrambling up to the top of the house to see how
it is going on, to pick a bit off and look at it
cunningly and smell it, to find whether it has
the true flavour. There are Armenians who
are knowing in tezek, who understand the thing ;
and over a remarkably good batch a knot of the
fancy will sit on little stools, and smoke their
pipes, and discuss the question scientifically;
telling tales of former celebrated heaps, and of
Hadji such a one, who was famous in that line,
and of one Bokchi Bashi, who had an astonishing
talent in the preparation of inimitable tezek.
When it is all ready, it is dug out in square
blocks and carried down the ladders again care
fully in open baskets, and piled up in the inner
treasuries below, and stored for the fuel of the
future winter. It is better for being old ; when it
resembles peat turf. It gets somewhat dusty in
a year or so, and then rivals that sort of snuff
called Irish blackguard in its capacity for making
you sneeze, if you venture to move a clod of it
to put upon the fire ; it then burns clear and

Chap. VII. TEZEK. 113
clean, without flame, and is very hot ; but when
more fresh — though that is not the word — more
new, I may say — it produces a thick stifling
smoke, very odoriferous, and not generally ap
preciated by those who do not love tezek for
itself, or who are not at that time manoeuvring
to make you purchase an astounding bargain of
the precious fuel of their own particular manu
facture. Erzeroom is not alone in the production of
this article of merchandise. From thence
through the whole of Tartary as we call it, or
Turkistaun as they call it, this fuel is in
universal use as far as the Great Wall of China.
Great care is taken sometimes in the production
of it for various artistic purposes. In Thibet it
is called arghol, and in the very remarkable
travels of M. Hue, it is related that that which
comes from sheep and goats is more valuable for
the purpose of smelting iron and other metals,
as it gives a greater heat, and, instead of leaving
any ash, melts into a vitreous mass of a bluish
green colour. I never saw any of this myself,
though it may have been used at Erzeroom, for
this place was lately famous for the workman
ship in iron and steel by seven brothers, whose
productions are valuable under the name of
Yedi Kartasch, as Manton added a value to those

114 ARMENIA. Chap. VII.
guns to which his name was affixed. The tezek
of oxen and cows ranks next ; that of horses and
donkeys last, from the quantity of smoke pro
duced by it ; that of the oxen, with the slightest
possible flavour of donkey, was certainly most
fashionable at Erzeroom.

Chap. VIII. EARTHQUAKE AT KHOI. 115

CHAPTER VIII.
The prophet of Khoi — Climate — Effects of great elevation above
the sea — The genus Homo — African gold-diggings — Sale of a
family — Site of Paradise — Tradition of Khosref Purveez —
Elowers — A flea-antidote — Origin of the tulip — A party at the
Cave of Eerhad, and its results — Translation from Hafiz.
The atmospheric peculiarities of this climate are
such, that the weather, as a general rule, may
be considered as on the way from bad to worse.
Earthquakes more or less severe are often felt.
A severe one occurred in the year 1843, and in
the same year the town of Khoi was almost
entirely destroyed by one of these awful con
vulsions of nature. A circumstance occurred on
that occasion which was very remarkable, if true.
A dervish or fakir of distinguished sanctity, felt
himself about to die, and, calling his friends and
disciples around the couch of skins on which he
lay, he prophesied that a terrible disaster was
about to fall upon the town of Khoi ; that the
lives of many would fall into the hands of
Monkir and Nakir on that day ; but that those
faithful believers who accompanied his body to

116 ARMENIA. Chap. VIII.
the tomb would be permitted to escape from the
sword of the avenging angel for his sake. The
old man died, and, being held in universal re
verence, the greater part of the inhabitants of
Khoi followed his corpse to the burial-ground,
which was situated at some distance from the
town. While absent on this pious errand, a
tremendous earthquake suddenly reduced the
city to ruin. So complete was the destruction
that hardly a house was left standing, and many
of those who had remained at home perished in
the fall of their habitations ; while those who
had accompanied the body of the dervish to the
grave were saved from the disaster, as he had
prophesied. This is a wonderful story ; I heard it at the
time, and was very much struck with the pecu
liar circumstances of the case. Its accuracy
would be difficult either to prove or to disprove,
but the history as I have narrated it was current
at the time when the earthquake happened.
Pillars of dust, like those of sand seen in the
deserts of Africa and Arabia, are supposed to be
the works of evil spirits, and often stalk like
giants across the plain. The deep narrow
valleys and ravines which slope down from the
elevated plateau of Erzeroom, are unhealthy and
pestilential in the extreme, while the inhabitants

Chap. VIH. CLIMATE. 117
of the upper country enjoy good health enough.
Here the corn returns about five-fold to the
labour of the sower : one being retained for seed,
four bushels is the extent of the profit of the
husbandman for one which he had sown. The
summer, though very short, is hot and parching,
the thermometer being usually about 84, though
it rises occasionally I think to nearly 90. The
cold in winter is commonly 16 degrees below
zero of Fahrenheit, and is often colder. The
mercury in my thermometer, which was not
calculated for such a climate, quietly retired
into the ball in the autumn, and never came out
again while I remained at Erzeroom. The great
height of the town above the sea was exemplified
in a practical manner to me on my first arrival.
I was in a state of constant wrath about the tea :
the tea was excellent, of the very first quality,
but the decoction thereof was always a failure.
In vain was the kettle placed upon the fire by
my side ; in vain did the semavar, the best of
tea-urns, boil and steam. Double, double, toil and
trouble ! the fire burnt and the caldron bubbled,
but the tea was vapid. As for the eggs, I don't
know how long it took to boil them till the
white was fixed. The reason of all this only
occurred to me one day when I put my finger
into some almost boiling water, which by no

118 ARMENIA. Chap. VIII.
means scalded me — for water boiled at 196° of
Fahrenheit as we were between 7000 and 8000
feet above the level of the sea ; and, consequently,
though boiling and steaming away, it was not
hot enough to produce the effects of water boil
ing at the heat of 212°, which is the temperature
at which it boils in London.
Nature has provided a kettle of her own, in a
hot spring at Elije, near which place I was
informed that there was a rock against which
iron stuck of its own accord — a rock of load
stone ; but I never had an opportunity of verify
ing this report.
The natural history of the highlands of Ar
menia is particularly interesting, and rich in
flowers hardly known to Europeans, and in the
prodigious quantities of birds which breed on
the plain of Erzeroom and in the valleys and
watercourses of the neighbourhood.
The quadrupeds are not numerous ; the cli
mate is too rigorous for those not provided with
thick furs to protect them from the tremendous
cold. The fish consist only of a sort of barbel, which
is found in the high waters of the Euphrates,
and of three kinds of trout, swarming in the
lesser streams and rivulets which flow down
from the snowy mountain-tops.

Chap. VIII. THE GENUS HOMO. 119
To commence with the highest order of mam
malia ; some extraordinary specimens of the
genus Homo are to be met with in many parts
of the East, generally in the character of Frank
doctors. Erzeroom was not wanting in produc
tions of this kind. The character of these adven
turers is in every instance precisely alike : they
are all sharp and so-called clever men, speaking
several languages correctly, with a smattering
of general knowledge, but understanding no
thing perfectly, and all wanting in the same
two qualities — -judgment and principle, the con
sequence of which want is, that not one in a
hundred succeeds in life, and, after passing
through a series of strange changes of fortune,
they usually die unlamented, as poor as when
they began their erratic career.
The adventures of one old gentleman, with
whom I was acquainted here, were so extraor
dinary and uncommon that a history of them
would fill a volume. After this man's death it
appeared that he was not himself, but somebody
else ; and his true name being the same as that of
a person I had met, many years before, at Wadi
Haifa, or at Assouan, high up the Nile, made me
suspect that these two persons were the same. One
half of this character certainly died in a khan at
Erzeroom ; but as I do not know whether the

120 ARMENIA. Chap. VIII.
other half is dead, or whether the two were
really one or not, I must forbear the strange
narration of their lives, for fear something might
meet the eyes of their friends or relations — if
they had any — who, perhaps, may be under the
pleasing delusion that their respected relative
was an honour to their name.
I must however relate a little anecdote of the
Egyptian half of my acquaintance. At Assouan,
below the cataracts, I saw an extraordinary
looking boat, built of bits of hard wood, like
iron-wood, each about two feet long, caulked or
cemented in the seams with reeds and. mud, pre
cisely in the manner in which the ancient boats
are represented in the hieroglyphics. This
strange vessel was of large size, and was navi
gated by a crew of blacks, of a tribe with which
I was not acquainted. The proprietor of the
ship was dressed in a much worn and old fashioned
Turkish dress ; his cabin was carpeted with lion-
skins ; his cushions were the skins of some small
deer, stuffed. He was very civil, and spoke in
the French language to me, while he gave his
orders to his servants in a dialect which bore
little resemblance to Arabic, but which belonged
to some distant region of the interior of Africa,
where he had been living many years. His
personal servants were the handsomest negroes

Chap. VIII. AFRICAN " DIGGINGS."' 121
I had ever seen : though they were dressed as
men, I found they were girls ; one, who was
beautiful, was his wife. He was an interesting
personage, and appeared on friendly terms with
his black attendants, who looked forward with
great glee to the wondrous sights which they
were to see at Cairo. After listening to some
curious stories of the manners and customs of
the black nations of the interior, unknown to
Europeans, he showed me three or four strongly-
made iron-bound chests, which, on being opened,
proved to be full of gold, to the amount of some
thousands of pounds ; some was in nuggets, but
most part of it was in the form of rings the size
of bracelets, and others the size of large heavy
finger-rings, all of pure gold. These rings were
passed as money, and were of the exact form of
those used for the same purpose by the ancient
Egyptians, and of the rings found in Celtic and
British tombs. Independent of their intrinsic
value, they were exceedingly curious ; and he
said gold might be procured in great quantities
in the mountains beyond Darfoor. Here then is an
opening for some future diggings, and an object
to promote discoveries in the centre of Africa.
My informant was an European, of the same
nation and the same name as the person whom
I met at Erzeroom, but I now doubt whether

122 ARMENIA. Chap. VIII.
the two were or were not the same. Some
time afterwards I made inquiries at Cairo about
this singular adventurer, when I heard that he
had sold his strange vessel, his wife, his servants,
and his crew, to their astonishment and dismay,
for they did not consider themselves as slaves,
and he had taken his departure for Europe with
his gold rings and the produce of the sale of his
confiding family.
It may not be generally known that Erzeroom
is supposed to be the site of the terrestrial para
dise. The reason of this supposition is deduced
from the fact of so many great and famous
rivers taking their rise in this exalted region.
About three hours from Erzeroom, passing the
ancient monastery of Kuzzul Vank, on the way
to Tortoom and Kars, a rocky top of a mountain
rises about 2000 feet above the plain, and conse
quently about 10,000 feet above the level of the
sea. Standing on one spot upon this mountain,
the traveller can see the sources, beneath his
feet, of the Euphrates, the Araxes, and the river
which falls into the Black Sea in the pestilential
neighbourhood of Batoum; one river falling
into the Persian Gulf, one into the Caspian, and
one into the Black Sea. The traditions of the
country relate that the flowers of paradise
bloomed in luxuriant splendour in this now

Chap. V1I1. KH0SREF PURVEEZ. 123
barren region till the days of Khosref Purveez.
This mighty Persian monarch, "the Great
King," was encamped upon the banks of the
Euphrates, on the plains of Erzeroom, when a
messenger arrived from the prophet Mohamed,
then an insignificant pretender, offering this
magnificent sovereign protection if he would
give up the religion of his fathers and embrace
the faith of Islam. Khosref Purveez, in derision,
threw the letter from the prophet into the
waters of the river, when Nature, in dismay,
withered all her trees and flowers, and the
bounteous stream, which formerly bestowed
wealth and abundance to the country on its
shores, shrank into its bed, and, refusing to fer
tilize the earth, cold and frost and barrenness
have been ever since the consequence of the
impiety of the Persian king : not only this, but
the days of his ancient empire were numbered ;
and in the days of Yesdijird, a few years after
this event, the blacksmith's apron, the victorious
standard of Persia, fell into the hands of the
Mahomedan general, at the great battle of Kud-
seah, where the sun of Persia set to rise no
more. Among the rocks, not far from Erzeroom,
is an artificial cavern, hewn out of the moun
tain-side by Ferhad, the successful rival of
g2

124 ARMENIA. Chap. VIII.
Khosref in the affections of the beautiful Shi-
reen. It was here — or others say at Beysittoon
— that Ferhad threw himself from the precipice
on hearing the false intelligence that Shireen
was dead ; and that famous beauty herself died
on seeing the remains of the mighty Khosref,
who had been murdered by his own son Schi-
roueh out of jealousy and love for her.
From the tops of the mountains surrounding
Erzeroom the snowy summit of Mount Ararat
can be seen — another monument in the history
of the cradle of the human race, and at its feet
the town of Nackchevan was built by Noah, on
his descent from the ark. This was the first
city built by man after the Flood, according to
Armenian, and I think also Mahomedan, tra
dition. Some slight remains of paradise are left, even
to our days, in the form of the most lovely
flowers, which I gathered on the very hill from
whence the three rivers take their departure to
their distant seas. Though one of them has a
Latin scientific name, no plant of it has ever
been in Europe, and by no manner of con
trivance could we succeed in carrying one away.
This most beautiful production was called in
Turkish, Yedi kartash kane (Seven brothers'
blood), in Latin, Ravanea, or Philipea coccinea,

Chap. VIII. FLOWERS. 125
a parasite on absinthe, or wormwood. This is the
most beautiful flower conceivable : it is in the
form of a lily, about nine to twelve inches long,
including the stalk ; the flower and stalk, and
all parts of it resembling crimson velvet; it
has no leaves ; it is found on the sides of the
mountains near Erzeroom, often in company
with the Morena Orientalis, a remarkable kind
of thistle, with flowers all up the stalk, looking
and smelling like the honeysuckle. Another
beautiful flower found here has not been de
scribed. It grows among rocks, and has a tough
carroty root, two feet or more in length ; the
leaves are long grassy filaments, forming a low
bush, like a tussock of coarse grass ; under the
leaves appear the flowers. Each plant has
twelve or twenty of them, like large white-heart
cherries on a stalk, — in the form of a bunch
of grapes, eight or ten inches long ; these
flowers are merely coloured bladders holding
the seed. An iris, of a most brilliant flaming yel
low, is found among the rocks, and it, as well as
all the more remarkable flowers of this country,
blooms in the spring soon after the melting of
the snow, that is to say about June.
Pire otou, a herb, which is sold here in
powder (Anthemis rosea, aut carnea), in
stantly kills fleas and other insects, and would

126 ARMENIA. Chap. VIII.
be invaluable to travellers in warm climates.
We possessed a certain little dog, called Fun-
dook (a nut), who held the important posi
tion of turnspit in our kitchen ; he was a wise
dog, with a look of dignity about him like a dog
in office, and one that had something on his
mind and knew more than he would say. He
turned out his elbows and turned in his toes,
and sat at the door in a solemn attitude when
not employed on the business of the nation. In
the pursuit of his vocation he became sadly
vexed with fleas, and his dignity suffered from
the necessity of scratching with his hind leg,
just like a common, vulgar dog. Commiserating
his condition, one of the grooms went to the
expense of five paras (one farthing sterling),
with which he purchased two good handfuls of
powdered leaves of Pire otou, the effect of which
was magical : in one minute every flea was
dead, and Fundook swaggered into the kitchen
quite a renovated dog.
It may not be generally known that the tulip
owes it origin to the blood of Ferhad, which
was sprinkled on the ground when he threw
himself from the rocks in despair, on hearing of
the death of his glorious Shireen. In this story
we see how one beautiful idea is copied and
admired by mankind in the most distant regions,

Chap. VIII. A PARTY AT THE CAVE OF FERHAD. 127
times, and circumstances, for this is the same
tradition as that of the Anemone, which in classic
lore arose from the blood of Adonis, while
Venus was weeping for his loss.
Upon a day we gave a party at the cave of
Ferhad ; this was a rare function ; parties were
not common at Erzeroom.
" When the Orient sun arose and shed his
golden beams o'er the snowy peaks of the
mountains of the East, Apollo on that day
must have reined in his steeds in wonder at the
unwonted stir that was taking place at Erzeroom,
as Aurora withdrew the purple veil of night
from the features of fair mother earth, refreshed
with the slumbers she had enjoyed under the
guardianship of Endymion. She of the rosy
fingers doubtless started up in beautiful surprise
at the bustle and the activity displayed beneath
her gaze. Phoebus, not resisting the pleasure of
curiosity, gazed down in all his glory on the
Armenian plain, where horses neighed and cattle
lowed, and hasty marmitons, laded ox-eyed oxen
with bright coppers from the kitchen shelves ;
wains were there laden with wide tubs of cooling
snow ; cooks in a perspiration swore deep oaths ;
the voice official of Fundook was heard yelping
and barking in the morning breeze, and under
Sol's first rays a caravan set forth in long dark

128 ARMENIA. Chap. VIII.
outline winding o'er the plain of Erzeroom." —
For the rest see Homer, unpublished edition,
cap. x.
All the rank and fashion of the place were
present ; the rank rode on horseback, the fashion
followed in a cart drawn by four oxen — this
would sound better if it were called an araba
— and therein was contained all the beauty of
the city of Erzeroom. The distance may have
been ten miles ; some of the party got there in
three-quarters of an hour, and others arrived in
an hour and three-quarters. Among the dis
tinguished guests were two philosophers, one of
whom, having lately arrived in these unknown
regions, was remarkable for the glorious colours
of his waistcoat. This effulgent garment having
been admired, the answer was returned in the
following mysterious sentence as I well re
member, in a language unknown, as far as my
knowledge is experienced, in any nation upon
earth. " Zest mon vamme, gui ma tonne ze
chilet." Our admiration of the chilet gave way
before the announcement that the carriage and
four was approaching the cave, and all sallied
forth to receive the lovely damsels that it bore.
Through many a quag, o'er many a rock, and
many a jolt had those oxen drawn the araba for
many a weary hour before they lay down in

Chap. VIII. CAREFUL PACKING. 129
front of our cave ; and now it was the happy
lot of those who got there first to hand out of
their carriage the admired beauties of Armenia.
The carriage stopped, and we were in readiness,
our feelings of politeness screwed up to the most
perfect tone, — When the pie was opened
The birds began to sing :
Wasn't that a dainty dish
To set before a king ?
But the birds did not come out — here was much
to be done before that desired object was con
cluded : first out came a cushion, then a feather
bed, and then a pretty girl, then another cushion,
then another lovely damsel, then three or four
more cushions, and another feather-bed, and
then the prettiest little girl of all jumped upon
the ground, half laughing and half smothered ;
for such dainty goods would have broken all to
bits on those rough roads, if they had not been
packed so carefully. The mother of the three
graces accompanied them, and the party being
assembled, the great business of hfe commenced
in earnest. Dolmas and kieufte and cabobs soon
graced the board ; not that there was any board,
but it sounds well. " Viands," that is chickens,
lamb stewed with quinces, and all manner of
good things, appeared and disappeared, to the
wonder of certain hungry Koords who happenedG 3

130 ARMENIA. Chap. VIII.
to be passing, and who would have been run
through with the spits, if not devoured by
Fundook, our brave ally, if they had made a
row. Corks from foreign bottles of champagne,
popped in brisk salute. Cooks and kawasses,
grooms, arabagis, eiwasses, and heiwans followed
the good example set them by their lords, and,
" fruges consumere nati, " did their best to
follow the end of their creation. Then and on
that occasion only, did many a lanthorn-jawed,
hooknosed Koord, imbibe the unknown potations
of Frangistaun. Then in glorious generosity
did the trusty marmiton dispense the bones of
slaughtered lamb, drumsticks of fowl, and crust
of pie, whereof repletion dire denied the
power to partake. By staggering chiboukgis
pipes were next produced, and fragrant coffee,
served on salvers bright ; and on soft Persian
carpets now reclined, the party enjoyed the
scene before them, passing an agreeable after
noon in each other's society ; accompanied I
thought with some little flirtations between
some of the company, which I suspect left
pleasing recollections on their minds, for though
I cannot boast that anything came of it that day,
yet not long afterwards two marriages were
declared between some of those who assisted at
the dinner in the cave of Ferhad ; and the most

Chap. VIII. TRANSLATION FROM HAFIZ. 131
anxious chaperon will acknowledge that that was
as much as could be expected under the circum
stances, seeing that there were but two un
married ladies of the company.
Afterwards I found among my papers the fol
lowing doleful ditty, purporting to be a transla
tion of Hafiz, on the fertile Persian subject of
Ferhad and Shireen ; and as the reader is not
obliged to read it unless he likes to do so, I subjoin
it in memory of the day that I for my part passed
so pleasantly with many agreeable companions
in this unfrequented spot. The accompaniment
to the air having been kindly undertaken by
Fundook, the minstrel thus begins : —
Hafiz, who passed his sunny hours
By the sweet stream of Mosellay,
Singing of vineyards and of flowers
To pass the fleeting time away,
Tells how the blood of Ferhad's wound
Had stained fair Nature's mantle green,
Sprinkling with ruddy spots the ground
Before the feet of fair Shireen.
The tulip from his blood arose
Beside her path in that sad hour,
Displaying how its leaves enclose
A goblet in each opening flower.
Then to the lips the goblet press,
Whose rim contains foraetfulness.

The vine, the glorious vine, arose,
Unscathed by crime, unchanged by woes,
Exulting in her charms,
Waving her tendrils in the breeze,
And clasping the rough rugged trees
In her encircling arms.

132 ARMENIA. Chap. VIII.
With clustering grapes upon her brow,
Still as she binds each willing bough
Their welcome aid she gains ;
On them she leans, but they confess
The power of her loveliness,
And glory in their chains.
Fill up the bright and sparkling bowl,
That cures the body, heals the soul.
No — be it not refused —
Hail to the vine ! whose purple juice
Was sent on earth for mortals' use,
But not to be abused.
Still to the lips the goblet press,
Whose rim contains forgetfulness.
Forgetfulness, alas ! 'tis this
That mortals hold the height of bliss
In this sad world of care ;
For Memory through life retains
A catalogue of griefs and pains,
But little else is there.
Then to the lips the goblet press,
Whose rim contains forgetfulness. — Hafiz,

Fundook.

Chap. IX. THE BEAR. 133

CHAPTER IX.
The bear — Ruins of a Genoese castle — Lynx — Lemming — Cara
guz — Gerboa — Wolves — Wild sheep — A hunting adventure
— Camels — Peculiar method of feeding — Degeneration of do
mestic animals.
Of four-footed beasts the most illustrious is
the bear, of which there are a good many in the
wooded sides of the mountains in the neigh
bourhood of Kars. Near the strange, unearthly
lake of Tortoom, I saw the fresh footprint of a
real Ursa Major — a thundering old bear he must
have been. He had only just departed, and the
mark of one of his paws was large enough to
hold more than both of mine. In another place
I came upon the ruins of one of the string of
Genoese castles, which, in former days, reared
up their lordly towers at distances of not more
than eight or ten hours apart the whole way from
Trebizond to Teflis. Their splendid ruins have
been my admiration on many an imposing rock,
frowning over an unknown valley. Even the
names of most of these are lost, while we only

134 ARMENIA. Chap. IX.
know of the history of their founders that once
upon a time there were such merchant princes.
In the bottom of a broken turret a bear had
taken lodgings, but he was not at home when I
called. Others, not far off on another hill, had
given a small party, and had been amusing
themselves by rolling about a piece of rock
about five feet in diameter, — a game of roulette,
on a large scale, which showed their wondrous
strength. The mud from their paws upon the
stone was wet when I came up to join the party,
but, perhaps luckily for me, they declined the
honour of my acquaintance, and the society had
broken up. Some sturdy peasants of Lazistaun,
hearing of my partiality for strange creatures,
brought me two young bears one day, who lived
in our house for some time, they were very
sensible, the she-bear keeping her brother in
remarkable order ; they became very tame.
They were, in some respects, different from the
European bear, and of a light cinnamon colour.
I sent them to England. They were great
favourites with the sailors on board ship, and
arrived safely at the Tower-Stairs, when some
white paint being left out for the beautification
of the vessel, the poor bears eat it all up, and
not only died of the unwholesome feast, but the
poison was so strong as to bring the fur off their

Chap. IX. LYNX — LEMMING — CARA GUZ. 135
skins, so that they could not be stuffed and im
mortalized in a glass case.
After the bear the next animal is the lynx,
the fur of whose belly is of the highest value in
Turkey, while that of the back is worth very
much less. These animals are not rare in Ar
menia, and Enveri Effendi prided himself on a
splendid robe of this valuable fur, which he paid
for by selling the skins of the backs of the
lynxes at Constantinople for more than he had
given for the precious under-fur at Erzeroom.
The lynx is famed for the quickness of his sight,
but Enveri Effendi had a sharper eye than he
in all affairs relating to his own benefit.
In the spring of the year, soon after the
women and children, the lemmings come out,
and sit upon their hind legs, and wipe their
eyes with their fore-paws, and seem to wonder
quietly at those who pass by, taking a header,
or somerset, down their holes if you stop sud
denly to look at these curious little beasts.
A soft, cozy, fat little quadruped, called cara
guz (black eyes), about the size of a young
guinea-pig, and much of the same shape — only
his colour is grey, and he has a most wonder
fully soft coat — comes out too about this time.
He is so fat that he cannot walk very fast, and
is easily taken, and in his captivity prefers

136 ARMENIA. Chap. IX.
almonds and raisins to any other bill of fare
which I was able to put before him. This little
fellow eats his breakfast, luncheon, dinner, and
supper slowly and respectably, without testifying
any alarm for mankind. I could not make out
his scientific name ; he is probably some kind of
little marmotte, and he falls readily into the
manners and habits of the society in which
Providence has placed him.
After cara guz, the gerboa comes out of his
hole, and hops about on his long tail and hind
legs ; a miniature kangaroo, in whose acquaint
ance I have rejoiced in the burning deserts of
Africa as well as in the frozen regions of the high
lands of Erzeroom. In this country the number
of quadrupeds is very limited ; the fox is occa
sionally seen, as well as the grey beaver (kon-
dooz), badgers, and wolves. At the melting of the
snow the wolves come even into the towns, and
devour the dogs with which every town is amply
supplied. There are awful stories of their carry
ing off the little, peeping, blear-eyed children,
who creep out of their holes in the beginning of
spring, and who are occasionally washed away in
the torrents of melted snow — the only washing
attended to hereabouts. Wolves are not very
unfrequently started out of the inside of one of
the numerous dead horses, whose overworked

Chap. IX. WILD SHEEP. 137
bodies have been frozen into the consistency of
flint during the winter, and which form savoury
banquets for the famished wolves when the snow
and ice recede, and display these dainty morsels
to their haggard eyes.
The wild sheep frequent the inaccessible rocks
of the lower mountains, where a scanty her
bage may be browsed beneath the line of per
petual snow. No two animals can be more
different, both in appearance and habits, than
the wild and tame sheep. The wild sheep
of Armenia (Ovis gemelii) is in size, shape,
and colour like the doe of the fallow-deer,
only it has two short horns bending back
wards, like those of a goat. The strength and
agility of this most nimble creature are aston
ishing ; they are more difficult of approach than
the chamois of the Alps. I have usually seen
them in pairs, but was never able to get a shot.
I brought three skins and several heads of this
rare animal to Europe, out of which one stuffed
specimen was made up in the British Museum ;
it is, I believe, the only one extant. The method
employed to hunt this sheep is to climb to the
highest summit of a mountain, and then cau
tiously approaching the edges of the cliffs, to
peep down with a telescope into the gorges and
ravines below, where, if you have luck, you

138 ARMENIA. Chap. IX.
may see the sheep capering about on the ledges
of the precipice, jumping, standing on a stone
on their hind legs to reach a little tuft of herb
age, and playing the most curious antics, for no
perceptible reason, unless it is that they find
their digestion improved by taking a consider
able deal of exercise. In these gymnastics the
hunter must participate to a great extent in fol
lowing the tracks of the jumpingest creatures
(excepting fleas) that he can ever have to deal
with. It requires much activity, and a good
head for looking over a height, to attempt to
come up with them, and many a sad accident
has occurred to the adventurous sportsman in
this pursuit. I myself have been in some awk
ward situations : once particularly, having let
myself down by the roots of a kind of juniper
on to the ledge of a tremendous precipice, I
found there was no way further down, and,
what was of more consequence, no way up
again, for the roots of the stunted tree were
above my reach. A hunter — a Laz, or a native
of Lazistaun — was with me, and when we had
done watching the two sheep scampering off
out of shot below, we looked at the place we
were on, and then in each other's faces in blank
dismay. We were in the same scrape as the
Emperor Maximilian got into in the Tyrol, near

Chap. IX. A HUNTING ADVENTURE. 139
. . . . only there being no angels about in
the mountains of Lazistaun, we had no expecta
tion of being assisted by a spirited or a spiritual
goatherd, as he was. After a good deal of pan
tomime, which would have puzzled any bird who
might be wondering at our manoeuvres — for we
did not understand each other's language — we
took off our boots, all our outer clothes, and our
arms and rifles, and tied them in a bundle ; then
I planted myself firmly; with my face to the
wall of the cliff, sticking my rifle into a crevice
to give me more steadiness, and the hunter
climbed carefully up my back on to my shoulders
till he got hold of the roots of the tree ; the
tree shook, and plenty of stones and dirt fell
upon my head, while the hunter scrambled into
the trunk, and he was safe. He sat down awhile
to rest, and then hauled up the clothes and
guns with our shawls that we had taken off
from round our waists; a gentle qualm came
over me at this moment, for fear he should be
off with my to him very valuable spoils, and
leave me in peace upon the shelf. But he was
a true man, as a hunter generally is ; so, after
a variety of signs and gesticulations to each
other, as to how it was to be done, he lugged me
up, first by the shawls, and then by hand, until
I could reach the roots of the tree. Here there

140 ARMENIA. Chap. IX.
was only room for one, so he climbed higher, and,
after some wonderful positions, struggles, kicks,
and scrambling, I got back amongst the roots,
then up the trunk of the old gnarled juniper, or
whatever it was, and at last upon a slope, par
taking much of that character which, in the
States of the free and independent slave-dealers
over the water, is called slantindicular. Here
we both lay down. As for me, I was quite
faint with giddiness anvd hard kicking, with no
thing under me to kick at ; but soon we picked
up our effects, put on our boots, &c, scrambled,
slid, and climbed about again after some more
sheep ; but by reason of their having two pair
of legs each, and each pair better adapted to
present circumstances than our one pair each,
they always got away, and we came down the
mountain muttonless and hungry for that day,
not sorry to find a famous good supper in the
tent, in our encampment by the trout stream,
in the valley of Tortoom.
One more quadruped nearly concludes the
short catalogue of the mammalia of Erzeroom —
the Capricorn, many specimens of whose enor
mous horns are nailed up over the doors of
houses in the city ; but I never saw this last
animal at Erzeroom, alive or dead.
Innumerable camels accompany the caravans

Chap. IX. DEGENERATION OF ANIMALS. 141
from hence to Persia, looking very much out of
place in the deep snow. They are the Arabian
camel with one hump, and I had no notion that
my old acquaintance of Arabia could bear the
tremendous cold of Erzeroom. Great quantities
of corn and meal are brought here from the
more prolific countries of the neighbourhood.
This is the staple merchandise of the city, which
is the only place on the road between Persia
and Turkey where caravans can recruit their
thousands of jaded horses, and procure pro
visions for their journey. In this consists the
political importance of an otherwise worthless
and infertile spot. The number of camels,
horses, mules, and beasts of burthen assembled
sometimes at Erzeroom is immense, and they
have here a peculiar method of feeding the
camels by opening their mouths with the left
hand, and with the other shoving down the poor
beast's throat a ball of dough about the size of a
cricket ball.
One peculiarity of the domestic animals in
this fearful climate is, that they are dwarfed and
dwindled in size to an extraordinary degree. A
bull used to run about the lower regions of my
house, which was barely eighteen inches high ;
the sheep were so small that grown up mutton
looked like lamb. The same occurred with the

142 ARMENIA. Chap. IX,
fruit ; none at all grew at Erzeroom, but we had
from villages some miles off, on the edges of the
plain, plums the size of damsons, and apricots
the size of walnuts, and other fruits in pro
portion.

Chap. X. BIRDS. 143

CHAPTER X.
Birds — Great variety and vast numbers of birds — Flocks of geese
— Employment for the sportsman — The captive crane — Wild
and tame geese — Their pious and profane ancestors — List of
birds found at Erzeroom.
I now enter upon a subject, to which I fear I
have neither time nor power to do justice. The
number of various kinds of birds which breed on
the great plain of Erzeroom, is so prodigious
as to be almost incredible to those who have not
seen them, as I often have, covering the earth
for miles and miles so completely, that the
colour of the ground could not be seen ; par
ticularly at one period, when the whole country
had a rosy appearance, from the countless flocks
of a sort of red goose, which I take to be the
ruddy sheldrake — a splendid bird, though not
good to eat. It is about the size of a small
goose or a muscovy duck ; almost entirely
clothed in various shades of red. Troops of the
two varieties of the wild grey goose form
whitish spots in the animated landscape, their

144 ARMENIA. Chap. X.
wild cries and noises sounding in every direction.
So closely covered was the plain with this pro
digious multitude of every kind of wild fowl,
that I have galloped among them for some
distance, the birds getting up about one hundred
yards in a circle round my horse, and settling
again behind me with loud cries, while the air
rustled with the beating of innumerable wings
of those birds which had been disturbed by my
approach. The sportsman may imagine what
shooting there is at Erzeroom, for when one
genus has reared its young and flown away to far
and distant lands, another takes its place. Quails
are at one time almost as thick as flies; and
numerous varieties of small birds, among which
the horned lark and the red winged finch flew in
clouds. That beautiful variety, the rosy starling,
has been often shot, as well as the merops, and
so many other little fowls of varied plumage, that
I must refer the reader to the accompanying list,
for it would fill a book to give even a slight
description of them all. On the banks of the
river I used to shoot all sorts of waders, particu
larly spoonbills, and that most delicate of birds,
the egret or white heron, famous for its plumes.
I must own to being a bad shot, having been
more accustomed to the rifle, but these white
herons afforded me great practice ; as they flapped

Chap. X. SUCCESSFUL SPORT. 145
along I shot numbers of them, as well as many
and many a quaint fellow with long legs whom
I brought home merely to make out who he was,
and to write down his name. Later in the year
I risked my neck by riding as hard as I could
tear over the rocky or rather stony plains at the
foot of the mountains after the great bustard. I
have more than once knocked some of the
feathers out of these glorious huge birds, as they
ran at a terrible pace, half flying and scrambling
before my straining horse, but I never succeeded
in killing one, though I have constantly partaken
of those which had fallen before more patient
gunners, who stalk them as you would a deer,
and knock them over with a rifle or swan-shot
from behind a stone or bank.
I had more success with the great cinereous
crane, which runs much faster than a horse. I
shot one at full gallop with a rifle, in a place
overgrown with reeds. This was a mighty
triumph, for, though my game was about five
feet high, he was so very long in the legs and
neck, that the body offered but a small mark to
be brought down under such circumstances, and
the pace he was going at the time, and I after
him, was, as they say, " a caution." This is a
bird with whom it is requisite to be wary : if
he is down, and not killed outright, like the
H

146 ARMENIA. Chap. X.
heron and the stork he makes a dart with his
sharp long bill at the eyes of his enemy, and
its strength is such, that it might easily, I
should think, penetrate the brain ; at any rate
the eye would be picked out at once, and that
would suffice for that time.
A man brought in a crane, which he had
winged, and we turned him out in the yard
with the poultry, where he stalked up and down
with a proud indignant air. He soon became
pretty quiet, and eat his corn with the rest,
while he had a deep bucket of water for his own
use, into which he used to poke his head con
tinually. One day a stupid heavy servant went
into the yard, and, not knowing that the bucket
was placed there for the stork, he took it up to
carry it away, when the bird flew at him, and
pecked at his face, but, missing his eye, seized
him tightly by the nose, and there he held him
for a good while. The poor man halloed loud
enough, but those who came to his assistance
could not help him at first for laughing ; and
though he kept beating at the crane with the
bucket, which he held in his hand, his long
neck enabled him to keep so far off, that he
escaped all the frantic attempts of his prisoner
to reach him. The man's nose was swelled and
very sore for some time, and he never got over

Chap. X. THE CAPTIVE CRANE. 147
the ridicule which attached to him for his perilous
adventure with the crane. It was touching to
watch this crane : when the time for its emi
gration arrived, a flock of its magnificent com
panions every day used to fly high up in the
air, in a wheeling circle, above its head. This
circle of flying birds has a very striking effect.
The cranes above called to their friend to join
them for their distant journey to a happier cli
mate, and the poor helpless crane below, stretch
ing its long neck up towards the sky, answered
the appeal in a singularly mournful cry.
Various kinds of partridge exist, and the lesser
bustard, called in Turkish Mesmeldek, is an
excellent bird for the table. They have a curious
method of catching the mesmeldek in some of
the steppes in Southern Russia. At the com
mencement of winter, parties of horsemen gallop
out upon the plains, before sunrise, at which
hour the wings of these birds are frozen to their
sides, and, the hunters stretching out their horses
in a hne, the birds are driven by them into the
villages and secured, before the warmth of the
sun releases their wings and restores their powers
of flight. Great flocks of the lesser bustard have
been driven in this manner occasionally into
Odessa. Hawks and stately falcons hover over
h2

148 ARMENIA. Chap. X.
head, and prey upon their defenceless brethren
at their ease.
Storks build upon the chimneys ; and among
the sticks of which their huge nest is formed,
the sparrows make their nests, stealing, when
they can, any food which the old birds bring for
their young.
Here, as in all other parts of the world, this
impertinent race of little birds dispute possession
of the house with mice and other intruders ; but
at Erzeroom they are hardly put to it sometimes
for want of twigs to perch upon, and they sit
usually, instead, upon the iron bars ofthe windows
in the town. Here I have often watched them
chirping in the cold, as they sat by the dozen on
the bars of my window, dressing their feathers,
and jabbering to each other, like true Koordish
sparrows, about the corn that they stole from
my chickens yesterday, and how, with case-hard
ened consciences, they intend to steal as much
more as they can get to-day.
This is a subject on which I could dilate to
any length, but at present I must conclude with
the following list of the various tribes of birds
who, in thousands and millions, would reward
the toil of the sportsman and the naturalist on
the plains and mountains of the high lands of

Chap. X. PIOUS AND PROFANE GEESE. 149
Armenia ; merely adding to this brief notice of
the birds of this country the following veracious
anecdote, as perhaps hitherto naturalists may not
all of them be aware of the origin of the separa
tion of the wild and tame goose : —
In former days, two geese agreed to take a
long journey together : the evening before they
were to set out, one said to the other, " Mind you
are ready, my friend, for, Inshallah, I shall set
out to-morrow morning." "And so will I," replied
he, " whether it pleases God or not." The sun
rose the next day, and the pious goose, having
eat his breakfast and quenched his thirst in the
waters ot the stream, rose lightly on the wing,
and soared away to a distant land. The impious
bird also prepared to follow him, but, after hop
ping and fluttering for a long while, he found
himself totally unable to rise from the ground ;
and his evolutions having been observed by a
fowler who happened to be passing that way, he
was presently caught and reduced to servitude,
in which his race have ever since continued,
while the descendants of the religious goose still
enjoy that freedom in which they were originally
created.

LIST OF BIRDS.

150 ARMENIA. Chap. X.
LIST OF BIRDS FOUND AT ERZEROOM.
Raptobes (birds of prey).
Vultur fulvns  Fulvous vulture.
Aquila fulvus  Fulvous eagle.
Aquila  Eagle.
Accipiter fringillarius .... Sparrow-hawk.
Falco tinnunculus  Kestril.
„ osalon  Hobby.
„ subbuteo  Merlin.
„ rufipes  Orange-legged hobby.
„ peregrinus  Peregrine falcon.
„ peregrinus  Falcon.
Milvus ater  Common kite.
Buteo ater (?)  Common buzzard (?).
„ ater  Marsh buzzard.
Circus pallidus  White hen harrier.
„ rufus  Marsh hen harrier.
Noctua Indica  Small Indian owl.
Strix Indica  Another owl.
Insepores (ob Percheks).
Deutirostres.
Lanius excubitor  Great strike (or butcher-bird).
„ collurio  Red-backed strike.
Collurio minor  Small strike.
Musicapa grisola  Spotted flycatcher.
„ luctuosa  Pied flycatcher.
Turdus merula  Blackbird.
„ torquatus  Ring-ouzel.
„ pilaris  Fieldfare.
„ musicus  Song-thrush.
Petrocinela saxatilis .... Rock-thrush.
Cinclus aquaticus  Water-ouzel (or dipper).
Oriolus galbula  Golden oriole.
Motacilla alba  White wagtail.
„ flava  Yellow wagtail.
Saxicola rubicola  Stonechat.
„ rubetra  Whinchat.
,, £enanthe  Wheatear.
Sylvia troehilus  Willow wren.

Chap. X. LIST OF BIRDS. 151
Sylvia hippolais  Willow wren.
Salicaria phragmitis .... Sedge-warbler.
„ cetti (?)  Sedge- warbler (?).
Curruca cineria  Whitethroat.
„ atricapilla  Blackcap.
Phoenicura ruticilla .... Redstart.
„ tilkys  Black redstart.
„ succica  Bluebreast.
Erythaca rubecula  Redbreast.
Troglodytes eusopasus .... Wren.
Rudytes melanocephala . . . Wren.
Anthus arboreus  Tree-pipit.
,, pratensis  Pipit-lark.
„ rufescens  Pipit-pipit.
Fissirostres.
Hirundo riparia  Saced martin,
,, rustica  Swallow.
Cypselus murarius  Swift.
Caprimulgus Europasus . . . Goat-sucker.
Gonirostres.
Alanda arvensis  Skylark.
„ arborea  Woodlark.
„ calandra  Calandre
„ brachydactila .... Little lark.
„ penicillata  Horned lark.
„ rupestris  Rock lark.
„ rupestris (?).... (An Albino variety).
„ rupestris  Albino lark.
Parus major  Great titmouse.
„ coeruleus  Blue titmouse.
Emberiza citrinella  Yellowhammer.
„ hortulana .... Ortolan.
„ miliaria  Common bunting.
„ cia  Meadow bunting.
Fringilla coelebs  Chaffinch.
„ montefrengilla . . . Mountain-finch (or brambling).
„ nivalis (?) .... Snow-finch (?).
„ sanguinea  Bloody-finch.
Pyrgita domestica  House-sparrow.
,, petronea  Stone-sparrow.
Carduelis communis .... Goldfinch.
Pyrrhula communis (?)... (A variety of the bullfinch).

152 ARMENIA. Chap. X.
Linaria montuim  Mountain linnet (or twite).
„ cannabina  Greater redpole.
Coccothraustes chloris .... Greenfinch.
„ vulgaris . . . Hawfinch.
Loxia curvirostra  Crossbill.
Sturnus vulgaris  Common starling.
Pastor roseus  Rosy-pastor.
Corvus modedula  Jackdaw.
„ frugeleus  Rook.
,, comix  Hooded or Royston crow.
Pica candata  Magpie.
Garrulus melanocephalus . . . Black-headed jay.
Coracias garrula  Roller.
Tenuirostres.
Upupa epops  Hoopoe.
Merops apiaster  Bee-eater.
Alcedo ispida  Kingfisher.
Scansores (or Climbers).
Yuux torquilla  Wryneck.
Cuculus canorus  Cuckoo.
Cuculus (?)  Cuckoo.
Rasobes (gallinaceotts birds).
Otis tarda  Great bustard.
„ tetrax  Small bustard.
Pterocles arenarius  Sand-grouse.
Perdix saxatilis  Bed or Greek partridge.
„ cineria  Grey or English partridge.
Coternix vulgaris  Quail.
Columba amos  Stockdove.
„ turtur (?)  Turtle-dove (?).
Grallze (or Waders).
Charadrius morinelles .... Dotterel.

„ minor .
„ minor .
JEdienenuus crepitans
„ crepitans
Vanellus cristatus .
„ keptuschka
„ keptuschka
Grus cineria . . .

Small ring-plover.
Large ring-plover.
Stone-curlew.Stone-curlew.
Crested lapwing.
Crested lapwing.
Crested lapwing.
Grey crane.

Chap. X. LIST OF BIRDS. 153
Ardea alba  White heron.
„ cineria  Grey heron (two sorts veiy large).
„ cineria  Night heron.
„ cineria  Black heron.
„ cineria  Black and grey heron.
Botaurus stellaris  Bittern.
Nycticorax Europeeus .... Night heron.
Ciconia alba  White stork.
Platolea leucorodia  White spoonbill.
Scolopax rusticola  Woodcock.
„ major  Double snipe.
Gallinago media  Common snipe.
„ minima  Jack-snipe.
Ibis falcinellus  Marone ibis.
„ falcinellus (?)  Marone ibis.
Limosa melanolensa ....
Tringa subaiquata  Curlew tringa.
,, minuta  Small tringa.
„ variabilis  Changeable tringa.
,, pugnax  Ruff and reve.
,, pugnax  Ruff and tringa.
Totanus hypolencos .... Common sandpiper.
„ ochropus  Green sandpiper.
„ glotis  Green shankpiper.
„ calidris  Red shankpiper.
Himantopus melanopterus . . Stilts. -
Rallus cree  Corn-crake.
„ cree  Corn-rail.
„ cree  Corn-rail.
Zapomia pusilla  Corn-rail.
Fulica atra  Coot.
Gallinula chloropus .... Waterhen.
Glareola limbata  Pratin cole.
„ torquata  Austrian cole.
Palmepedes (web-footed birds).
Podiceps cristatus  Crested grebe.
,, rubricollis  Red-necked grebe.
„ auritus  Eared grebe.
Larus ridibundus  Laughing gull.
„ argentatus (?).... Herring gull (?).
Sterna hirundo  Common tern.
h3

154 ARMENIA. Chap. X.
Sterna leucoptera  Common tern.
„ nigra  Black tern.
Pelicanus onocrotalus .... Pelican.
Carbo cormoranus  Cormorant.
Anas boschas  Wild duck.
„ boschas  Wild duck.
Cygnus ferus  Wild swan.
Anser ferus  Grey-leg goose.
„ albifrous  White-fronted goose.
Fuligula rufina  Red-headed pochard.
„ rufina  Common pochard.
„ cristata  Tufted duck.
Querquedula cinerea .... Summer teal.
„ crecca .... Common teal.
Dafila caudacuta  Pintail duck.
Chaulelosmus strepera . . . Gadwall.
Rynchapsis clypeata .... Black-headed shoveller.
Tadorna rutila  Ruddy sheldrake.
„ vulpanser  Common sheldrake.
Mergus albellus  Smew.
For this list of birds I am indebted to the
kindness of my friend Mr. Calvert of Erzeroom,
to whom I take this opportunity of expressing
my best thanks for a communication so interest
ing to lovers of natural history.

RUINED TOWER IN THE CASTLE OP TORTOOM, BUILT BY THE GENOESE,
OR PERHAPS BY THE EINIGHTS TEMPLARS.

To face page 155.

Chap. XI. EXCURSIONS. 155

CHAPTEE XI.
Excursion to the Lake of Tortoom — Romantic bridge — Gloomy
effect of the lake — Singular boat — " Evaporation " of a pistol
— Kiamili Pasha — Extraordinary marksman — Alarming illness
of the author — An earthquake — Lives lost through intense
cold — The author recovers.
Between the days of arrival and departure of
the tatars, or couriers, to Constantinople, and
the struggles to keep the peace and explain the
simplest transaction with our colleagues, we
found time for various expeditions to the neigh
bouring countries on all sides. The most re
markable of these was that to the deep un
fathomable lake of Tortoom, about three days'
journey off. Our main object in going there
was to fish, and we encamped for that purpose
on the upper streams of the Batoum river and
other places. In the valley of the castle of
Tortoom the trout abounded, and were of that
unsophisticated nature that, fishing one hour in
the dawn and one hour before sunset with two
fly-rods, we caught every day enough to feed
our camp, and to send a horse-load (no small

156 ARMENIA. Chap. XI,
quantity) in the evening to our friends at Er
zeroom. This was one day's march, and the
horses travelling all night brought the fish,
though in the hot weather, in great perfection
to the city in the cool of the morning. We
were not aware, till it was too late, of the deadly
nature of the malaria in these rocky valleys,
where the precipice shot up clear and straight
to the height, sometimes we used to judge, of
above a thousand feet. On our way through
one of these romantic dells we all rode, bag and
baggage, over a bridge to be compared only to
the bridge of Al Serat, over which the souls of
the judged will have to pass from the Temple of
Jerusalem, over the Valley of Jehoshaphat, till
they reach the other world ; which bridge is as
narrow as the edge of the scimitar of Moham
med. The fright I was in is not to be described,
when I saw the first horseman, who was at the
time filling his pipe, walk his horse uncon
cernedly over this bridge, which was composed
of two pine-trees thrown over a torrent which
roared and tumbled thirty feet below. However,
being afraid to show I was afraid, I rode over
too, and certainly thought myself a bold fellow
when I got safe to the other side. To ride
safely over such a bridge a horse ought to be
brought up to practise on a tight-rope. I would

BOAT ON THE LAKE OP TOETOOM.

To face page 158

Chap. XI. SINGULAR BOAT. 157
not attempt to walk over such a place now-a-
days in England.
We passed a village in one lovely valley, in a
grove of peach-trees, where we found that every
soul, pr rather every body, was dead ; only one
man survived the fever which had killed the rest.
Of all the strange and gloomy scenes that I
have witnessed, none have left a deeper impres
sion on my mind than that of the black un
fathomable lake of Tortoom. Mountains of dark
rock fall sheer down in awful precipices right
into these deep still waters on each side. No
fish are to be found in this Dead Sea, though
perhaps they may retreat there in the winter
from the mountain-rills. If the lake was a
strange place, the boat which we discovered on
the shore was in character with the scene. It
was the only vessel on its waters, and its builder
probably never studied naval architecture in the
dockyards of the maritime pqwers. It was formed
out of the trunks of two trees : but as no descrip
tion would so well convey a notion of its form,
I refer the curious to the accompanying sketch.
The standing figure in it represents a valorous
kawass, who fired his pistol in the air for the
sake of the echo, and, on the smoke clearing off,
he found that the entire pistol had evaporated
too ; nothing visible remained in his hand ; it

158 ARMENIA. Chap. XI.
had burst all to pieces. But fortunately neither
he nor any of the party were hurt by the frag
ments, which fell into the waters of the dark
and silent lake.
October 1, 1843. — This day I was riding on
the road towards Bayazeed and Persia. Hear
ing some shots, I turned towards the hills lying
between the town of Erzeroom and the moun
tains, and there I saw two or three tents pitched,
and a number of officers, servants, and people
attending on Kiamili Pasha, who was shooting at
a mark with a pistol.
He is the most wonderful shot I ever heard of :
he always fired at a distance of about 250 paces,
or yards. Any one who will take the trouble to
step this distance in a field or park will see how
far it is to shoot with a rifle, and how entirely
out of all usual calculations in pistol practice. I
went into the Pasha's tent : he received me, as
usual, with great kindness, and, after pipes and
coffee, I begged him to go on with his shooting.
The way he set about it was this : he sat on one
of the low square rush-bottomed stools which are
always found in Turkish coffee-houses, but which
must have been brought from Constantinople
probably by the Pasha, as those kind of stools
are not usually met with in Erzeroom. He did
not rest his elbow on his knee, but pressed it

Chap. XI. EXTRAORDINARY SHOOTING. 159
steadily against his side, took a deliberate but
not very slow aim, and sent the ball through a
brown pottery vase filled with water, about
fifteen inches high, which stood on the other
side of a valley, on a level with the tent, and
full 250 yards off. I think the Pasha broke two
while I sat with him, and made a hole which let
the water out of another. His pistols were a
pair of very slightly rifled duelling-pistols, about
nine inches in the barrel, made by Egg, Great
Greorge Street, London. I was so much asto
nished at the Pasha's shooting, that I asked him
to give me one of the pieces of the vase, which
I took home with me, and talked to my friends
about it. I felt perfectly well when we went
to dinner, when suddenly it appeared to me that
what I was eating was burning hot, and had a
strange odd taste. I believe I got up and stag
gered across the room, but here my senses failed
me, and I remained insensible for twenty-seven
days. An attack of brain-fever had come upon
me like a blow, as sudden and overwhelming as
a flash of lightning.
On the 27th of October I awoke in the morn
ing, but, as I suppose, went to sleep for a while ;
in the afternoon I fairly came to my senses,
and saw my servant sitting on the scarlet-
cloth divan under the window looking at me.

160 ARMENIA. Chap. XI.
I felt something strange and still and gloomy in
the air, and was rather bewildered with the sen
sation. This was soon to be accounted for : the
servant, seeing that I was alive, came forward
towards the bed, while a low rumbling noise
made itself heard. This noise became louder :
flakes of plaster fell from the ceiling ; the room
trembled, and was filled with a fine dust, with
which I was nearly choked. My man exclaimed,
" The earth moves — are you not afraid ? " As
he spoke the noise which we had heard increased,
and an immense beam, made of the trunk, of a
whole tree, which was immediately above my
bed, split, with a report like a cannon. The earth
quake shook the house terribly ; it creaked and
trembled like a ship in a heavy gale of wind ;
the noise increased to a roar, not like thunder,
but howling and bellowing, with a low rumbhng
sound, while the air was as still as if nature was
^paralysed with dread ; every now and then a
tremendous crash gave notice of a falling house.
The one opposite our house, belonging to a poor
widow, was entirely destroyed ; and, in the
midst of a most fearful uproar, the two rooms,
one on each side of my bed-room, fell in ; while
the air was darkened altogether, as in an eclipse,
with clouds of dust. So great was the noise ofthe
earthquake all around, that neither my attendant

Chap. XI. AN EARTHQUAKE. 161
nor I distinguished the particular crash when the
two rooms adjoining us fell in. Some of the
minarets, and many of the houses of the city,
were demolished : parts of the ancient castellated
walls fell down. The top of one of the two
beautiful minarets of the old medresse, the glory
of Erzeroom, called usually Eki Chifteh, disap
peared. Those who were out, and able to witness
the devastation, and to hear the awful roaring
noise, said they had never seen or heard anything
more tremendous than the scene before their eyes.
It is difficult to express in words the strange,
awful sensation produced by the seeming im
possible contradiction of a dead stilness in the
midst of the crash of falling buildings, the sullen,
low bellowing, which perhaps sounded from be
neath the ground, and the tremendous uproar
that arose on all sides during the earthquake.
I have not met with an account of this strange
phenomenon in the descriptions of other earth
quakes, and do not know whether it is a usual
accompaniment to these terrible convulsions of
nature. The earthquake accomplished its mission : in
the midst of terror and destruction, it restored
one poor creature to life. I regained my senses
and my faculties on the 27th, as suddenly as I
had lost them on the 1st day of this month.

162 ARMENIA. Chap. XI.
Ood give me grace to make a good use of the
life which was restored to me under such awful
circumstances !
On that day the doctor, who had some diffi
culty in getting to my room through the ruins
of the ante-room, took the ice off my head, and
in a few days I recovered sufficient strength to
move my limbs, which I could not do at first.
As soon as it appeared that there was any
probability of my recovery, my kind friends
agreed that the best chance of regaining my
health lay in removing, as soon as I could
bear the journey, to a better climate. During
great part of the year, and naturally in the
winter, the cold was so severe that any one
standing still for even a very short time was
frozen to death. Dead frozen bodies were fre
quently brought into the city ; and it is common
in the summer, on the melting of the snow, to
find numerous corpses of men, and bodies of
horses, who had perished in the preceding win
ter. So usual an event is this, that there is a
custom, or law, in the mountains of Armenia,
that every summer the villagers go out to the
more dangerous passes and bury the dead whom
they are sure to find. They have a legal right
to their clothes, arms, and the accoutrements of
the horses, on condition of forwarding all bales

Chap. XI. LOSS OF LIFE THROUGH COLD. 163
of merchandize, letters, and parcels to the places
to which they are directed.
During the whole month of December the
Pasha had caused four mules to be exercised
every day with a takterawan, or litter, which
he provided for my conveyance to Trebizond.
Two mules, led by one man, carried the litter ;
the other two followed tamely, led by another
man, close behind, to be ready to take the
places of the others if they were tired or dis
abled. From morning to night the men and
the mules, and the takterawan, stumped along
through the snow, till they dared to face the
storm and the intense cold, and could climb up
and down the icy rocks like goats. As soon
as I was able I was sent out in the litter to
try how I could bear it, and to settle various
contrivances for keeping out the cold, and
enabling me to bear the motion of the mules.
One day Colonel Williams rode out on the
Persian road, to see whether it was passable for
Dr. Wolf, who was then staying at Erzeroom,
and who wished to continue his journey to Bok
hara, when he met a number of horses, each laden
with two frozen bodies of Persian travellers, one
tied on each side of the packhorse. An unfor
tunate Piedmontese doctor had been lost in a
snow-storm a short time before, and his body was

164 ARMENIA. Chap. XI.
found afterwards near a small monastery, three
or four miles from Erzeroom, where he had
wandered, bewildered with the falling snow;
and a whole party, with one or two ox-carts,
who left a village in the morning on their way
to another a short distance off, never arrived
there ; they were found huddled together, oxen,
horses, men, and women, in a snow-drift, dead,
and frozen hard and stiff, some weeks after
wards. The cold was so tremendous at this
time that the mountains were impassable, and
no one was able to move beyond a short distance
from the town.

Chap. XII. START FOR TREBIZOND. 165

CHAPTEB XII.
Start for Trebizond — Personal appearance of the author — Moun
tain-pass — Reception at Beyboort — Misfortunes of Mustapha —
Pass of Zigana Dagh — Arrival at Trebizond
On the 27th of December, all preparations
being completed, I started on my journey over
the mountains to Trebizond. Kiamili Pasha
had prepared an order to all and sundry, great
and small, upon the road, to give me every
assistance, and, with this and a powerful firman
from the Sultan, I had authority to do whatever
I pleased in that part of the world. About
twenty attendants accompanied me, besides a
certain levy from every village I passed, who
were to march to the next village every day to
clear the roads, move the snow, and pick us out
of it when we tumbled in, &c. These villagers
were all armed with the peculiar dagger of Cir-
cassia, called a cama, a most efficient tool as well
as weapon, and a short heavy rifle, generally
beautifully made, with which they hit objects
at very long distances, 400 yards not being con
sidered out of shot. My personal appearance

166 ARMENIA. Chap. XII.
must have been remarkable : I had a long beard,
and so thin a face that my nose was translucent,
if not transparent. I had a Persian cap upon
my head, and over other garments a toilette of
my own invention, which vested me with a dig
nity peculiar to myself: this was a large eider
down quilt, of bright green silk, in the middle
of which I had caused a hole to be made, through
which I put my head ; the two ends of the quilt
hung down before and behind, like a chasuble or
a poncho ; round it I tied a girdle : my general
appearance must have been rather striking to
the beholder, and was probably considered by the
natives on the road as the official costume of an
Elchi Bey. I was so weak that when I was
bundled into the takterawan I could not turn
round, and was nearly smothered in my own
feathers, till somebody turned me the right side
upwards, when I was able to bid adieu to all the
principal Europeans and others who had kindly
assembled to see me off. A number of people
accompanied me for some distance out of the
town ; and Colonel Williams came as far as
Elije, about three hours in the snow, which
ended my first day's march.
On the next day, December 28th, we got to
Meymansoor, a village at the foot of the first
mountain-pass, called Hoshapoonah, a terrible

Chap. XII. MOUNTAIN PASS. 167
place at all times, but frightful in the depth of
winter and under the circumstances I was in.
Only two or three days before it had been ren
dered practicable by driving a thousand horses
belonging to the caravans which were snowed
up at the foot of the pass up and down the road
to make a track. This road is what is called a
scala — that is, a series of holes, each about a foot
deep, sometimes two feet, about eighteen inches
in diameter, and the same in distance from one
another. From long practice the horses put
their feet very cleverly into these holes without
tripping over the intervening ridges of hardened
snow. Men on foot usually step on the ridges,
which is like walking on the rounds of a ladder
for a few hundred miles, the probabilities of not
breaking your leg if you slip into the hole before
or behind you being very slight. As in many
places this road was slantindicular, going up and
down at an angle of 45°, I was reclining in the
litter alternately on my head and on my heels —
mostly on my head going up hill. My mules
were held upon their feet by as many men as
could stand on each side where the road was
wide enough ; most of it was a ledge on a preci
pice, about eighteen inches wide, when the men
supported my equipage with ropes, a strong
body hopping and stumbling behind and before,

168 ARMENIA. Chap. XII.
at the rate of about one mile an hour. My glass
windows were smashed with the least possible
delay, but we repaired them the next day with
oiled paper. At the top of the pass we came
upon a party of Persians, who were ' going the
other way towards Erzeroom ; they were seated
in a row, on the ledge of the precipice, looking
despairingly at a number of their baggage-
horses which had tumbled over, and were wal
lowing in the snow many hundred feet below ;
they did not seem to be killed, as far as I could
see, as the snow had broken their fall ; the drift
covered the precipitous rock from the bottom to
within twenty or thirty feet of the top, and they
slid down this till they popped into a deep hole
in the snow, like a well, in the valley below. It did
not appear that there was any probability of their
getting up again. The poor Persians crammed
themselves into nooks and little hollows on the
ledge to make room for us to pass. I presume
their horses were frozen to death before we had
left them very long. This was an awful spot alto
gether ; we had started before light in the morn
ing, and arrived in a dreary mountain valley,
at a hovel called Zaza Khan, in the evening.
During one part of the day the danger to the
takterawan was so great that I was plucked out,
and a tall, good-natured man, called Beyragdar

Chap. Xll. RECEPTION AT BEYBOORT. 169
(the standard-bearer), carried me like a baby in
his arms, one or two others supporting him,
across a tremendous ledge. I was light enough
to carry, but was such a great bundle of fluff
that he could not see over me, and another man
helped him along, and showed him where to put
his feet. We were very fortunate in a fine
sunny day for our journey over this tremendous
mountain. On the last day of the year 1843
we arrived at the town of Beyboort : though
I had sent two horsemen on to say that I was
coming, no one came out of the town to meet me,
and on proceeding to the palace or house of the
Bey, the Governor of the place, I was refused
admittance, though he had received orders be
fore to pay me every attention. I at last was
taken in by the Cadi, in whose comfortable
house I was kindly entertained. The next day
we met a tatar, a Government- courier, on the
road from Trebizond ; I sent letters by him to
Erzeroom, complaining of my reception by the
Bey of Beyboort, and so rapidly were matters
conducted by my friend the Pasha, that the Bey
was turned out of his government, and another
Bey appointed to succeed him, before I and my
party arrived at Trebizond. This was sharp
practice, and doubtless had a good effect. The
chiefs of the other villages, and the one town

17Q ARMENIA. Chap. XII.
of Gumush Khanne, treated me always with
great kindness and civility. On the 2nd of
January, at a hovel called Khaderach Khan,
I met a rich Persian merchant coming from
Constantinople with his wife and family. He
had been eighteen days on the road from Trebi
zond, which is thirty-two hours of tatar-posting :
from hence, at this rate, he would be six months
on his journey to Teheran, to which place he was
bound. He was a remarkably gentleman-like
man, as most Persian gentlemen are ; he had a
great train of servants and attendants, well
dressed and well armed, each with a silver tass,
or drinking-cup, slung over his shoulder, and a
handsome cama dangling by a narrow straj}
from the front of his girdle, and his waist
squeezed till he could hardly shut his mouth,
in true Circassian style. He had numbers of
curious contrivances for comfort and conveni
ence : little fireplaces, hanging to the stirrup,
for hot coals, to light the caleoons, &c. His son,
a smart youth, spoke French, and we passed a
very pleasant hour together, though I had
turned him out of the best hole in the hovel,
into which Beyragdar laid me down softly in
the corner, and I was so much exhausted that
I knew nothing of the confusion I had made till
I had had a cup of blazing hot Russian tea, with

Chap. XII. MUSTAPHA'S MISFORTUNES. 171
a slice of lemon in it instead of cream, and had
taken the diversion of wondering at an odd sort
of partridge which one of my men had knocked
over with a stone, for which act I presented
him with the sum of 5\d. sterling.
At Kale Khan I had given leave to one Mus-
tapha, my kawass bashi, or captain of the ka
wasses, to go and see his family, who lived in a
village a short distance off the road ; he had not
seen them for a long time, and went on his way
rejoicing. At a place called Porda Bakchelari,
where I was resting on the 3rd, he made his
appearance again ; he was so altered in looks
that I did not know him at first ; so much so,
that I asked him who he was, and what he
wanted with me. His history, poor fellow ! was
as follows : —
When he arrived at his village he rode up to the
do.or of his own house, thinking to give a happy
surprise to his wife and children, whose names
he called out as he stopped his horse in the little
street. No one answered, when he called again,
and knocked loudly at the door several times.
At last an old woman put her head out of the
door of another house, and screamed to him to
know what he was making such a noise about.
" I want such a one," said he, naming his wife.
" What, Eyesha ? " said the old woman ;
i 2

172 ARMENIA. Chap. XII.
" who are you ? You must be a stranger to this
place not to know that she died of the fever and
was buried two weeks ago."
" And where is Hassan ? " said the poor ka
wass, asking for his eldest son.
" Oh, he died three months ago."
" And the two little ones ? " he asked.
" They were buried, I forget how long it is
since," said the old woman ; " the fever got into
that house ; the people are all dead. You had
better not go in, stranger, for it has been locked
up by the cadi, and the owner, Mustapha Aga,
lives a long way off at Erzeroom. Inshalla ! he
will come some day, and the cadi will deliver
the key to him."
Mustapha kawass never dismounted from his
horse in his native village ; he turned slowly
away, and rode back to the track of the mules
and horses of my followers till he caught us up
at Bakchelari Khan.
" Allahkerim !" (God is merciful ! ) said his
companions, when he had told us this sad his
tory. His family was swept from the face of the
earth ; there was not a servant left, not one old
well-remembered face to greet him in his visit
to the village where he had passed his childish
days. He had heard nothing of the fever or of
the infliction which had fallen upon his house,

Chap. XII. PASS OF ZIGANA DAGH. 173
and suddenly he found himself alone in the wide
world. We were all grieved for him, but what
could we do ? every one looked grave as we
plodded on again through the snow and ice, and
smoked the pipe of reflection in silence, on our
weary way.
On the 7th we got into a fix near a place
called Madem Khanlari, in the pass of Zigana
Dagh, a worse place than even Hoshabounar : we
had been all day scrambling about in rocky
ledges, and crossing torrents and snow-drifts,
each of which seemed impassable till we went at
it with a will : a number of villagers, with axes
and ropes, came with us, and worked valiantly
in clearing the ice off the narrow shelves of rock,
and leading the horses through the most difficult
places, where they could hardly stand ; some
times the horses were almost lifted by the
men. By the greatest care and exertion none
as yet fell over the precipices. My takter
awan was surrounded by a posse of zealous
active mountaineers, clinging to each other, and
putting the mules' feet into the holes which they
cut for them with their axes. At last we got to
a place where there was a sudden turn at the
narrow edge of a gorge or cleft of rock : the
length of the litter, with one mule before and
another behind, made it impossible to turn with-

174 ARMENIA. Chap. XII.
out going over. Somehow, by the help of a
number of men, the front mule was carried by
main force round the corner, till we were in
such a position that the hinder mule was being
dragged over the precipice by the poles of the
takterawan, to which it was harnessed. With
out a drawing it is difficult to describe the
position we had got into ; but it may be partly
understood by the fact that, out of whichever
side of the takterawan I looked, there was
nothing under me, for perhaps 200 feet, till
you arrived at a brawling torrent, which
kept itself alive by violent exercise, in jumping,
leaping, and tumbling over the rocks and cas
cades at the bottom of the ravine, so that it was
the only thing not frozen hard and still in the
dead landscape of thick ice and snow and shat
tered rock, and the clean smooth precipice towered
up from the little merry stream to hundreds of
feet above our heads, where an edge of snow
and a fringe of icicles shone in the bright sky
upon the topmost margin of the cliffs. Some of
the men now sat down, with their legs hanging
over the precipice ; they were supported by other
men, while, in their turn, they held the legs of
the mules, who were beginning to get frightened,
or perhaps choked, and gave utterance to curious
•exclamations. My friend Beyragdar made a

Chap. XII. ARRIVAL AT TREBIZOND. 175
bridge of his long body, by leaning over from
the inner angle of the road to the side of the
takterawan. As for me, beyond peeping like an
old rat out of a cage, I could not move, so I lay
still till I was pulled out by two men over Beyr-
agdar's back, handed like a bundle over the
foremost mule, and stuck upon a horse a little
farther on. The mules were, somehow or other,
saved and released from the shafts of the taktera
wan, which I never saw again ; they could get
it no further, and the rest of the journey I made
on horseback, supported by a man on each side
when the road was wide enough, by one when it
was too narrow for two, and, when there was
only room for the horse alone, Beyragdar carried
me in his arms till we got to the Strada Reale,
good two feet wide, when I was put upon a horse
again. In this way, by slow degrees, we scrambled on
our way, till, on the 10th of January, after
fifteen days' journey through the intense cold of
the mountains, I arrived, in better health and
strength than when I started, at the edge of the
table-land, from whence I saw the blue waters of
the sea, and at 11 o'clock a.m. I was seated in
my room in the quarantine station at Trebizond.

176 ARMENIA. Chap. XIII.

CHAPTER XIII.
Former history of Trebizond — ¦ Ravages of the Goths — Their siege
and capture of the city — Dynasties of Courtenai and the Comneni
— The " Emperor" David — Conquest of Trebizond by Mehe
met II.
Trebizond, so famous in the middle ages as
the residence of magicians, enchanters, and
redoubted heroes of chivalry, is better known
in the pages of romance than for any facts of
historical importance which occurred there
during many centuries. The only person who
might probably have been able to throw much
light upon the ancient history of this Byzantine
city was that veracious chronicler the Cid
Hamet Bengenelli, who, in his account of the
renowned and valorous Knight of the Rueful
Countenance, records of Don Quixote that " the
j)oor gentleman already imagined himself at
least crowned Emperor of Trebizond by the
valour of his arm ; and wrapped up in these
agreeable delusions, and hurried on by the
strange pleasure he took in romances of chivalry,
he prepared to execute what he so much de
sired."

Chap. XIII. HISTORICAL SKETCH OF TREBIZOND. 177
Two real events, however, occurred at Trebi
zond which I shall endeavour to describe, — the
only ones which stand out with any promi
nence in the records of the dukes, counts, and
governors who held this province in their lan
guid rule.
In the third century the Goths, a band of
desperate barbarians, who came originally from
Prussia, were established in a curious out-of-the-
way kingdom situated on the Cimmerian Bos
phorus, the inlet which gives access to the Sea
of Azoph from the Black Sea. Trebizond, the
capital of a Roman province, had been founded
in the days of Xenophon by a Grecian colony,
and now owed its wealth and splendour to the
munificence of the Emperor Hadrian, who had
constructed an artificial harbour for its shipping,
while the town was defended on the land side
by a double line of walls and towers, some part
of which probably exist at the present time
among the fortifications afterwards erected by
the Christian emperors and the Turks. In those
troublous times the country was in disorder, and
the wealthy patricians had sent their treasures
into the town for greater security, the garrison
having been reinforced by an additional body of
10,000 men. A numerous fleet of ships was in
the harbour, which, perhaps, were timidly seeking
i 3

178 ARMENIA. Chap. XIII.
refuge from the pirates of the Euxine within
the encircling quays of the harbour of Hadrian.
The riches of the inhabitants, the balmy climate,
and the soft manners of the Greeks had ener
vated the spirits of the commanders of the
troops ; the fashionable triflers were sunk in
luxury and ease ; feeling secure within the im
pregnable walls of the imperial fortress, they
gave themselves up to feelings of indolent dis
dain of foreign enemies ; and the brilliant
officers and scornful senators, in flowing robes,
passed their days in feasting and attending upon
the ladies, to the neglect of discipline and vigi
lance, trusting that the lofty walls and mighty
towers were sufficient bulwarks to keep off the
barbarians whom they despised.
About the year 260 of our era, the Goths,
who had made several roving expeditions on
the shores of Circassia, had plundered, with
various success, the temples and cities on the
coasts of the Black Sea. These indomitable
savages embarked on board a fleet of small flat-
bottomed boats, each containing only a few men,
who inhabited a sort of house with a shelving
roof, built of wood, in the centre of the boat.
An innumerable shoal of these floating houses
spread over the surface of the waves, trusting to
the winds for the course they should pursue,

Chap. XIII. THE GOTHS BEFORE TREBIZOND. 179
and to the ravage of the villages on shore for
food. This swarm of rapacious pirates arrived
in the course of one of their forays in the
neighbourhood of Trebizond; they landed in
numbers under the walls, from the summits of
which the fair damsels and silken warriors
looked down with pitying scorn on the uncouth
behaviour, badly-made garments, and coarse
appearance of the roving Goths, and, having
satisfied their curiosity and expressed their con
tempt for the horde of barbarians who had
arrived in the strange fleet of little boats, they
retired to the arcades surrounding the courts of
the palaces ; some went to the forum in the
centre of the town, to hear the news and laugh
at the uncouth appearance of the Goths. The
ladies and gentlemen, changing their morning
dresses for a lighter and richer evening costume,
assembled in the marble halls of many palaces,
charmed with the excitement of a new subject
for ridicule in the persons and dresses of the
Goths, and a new theme for conversation in
the refined assemblies of the polished nobles and
lovely damsels of the luxurious city of Trebizond.
I can imagine the conversation of a pleasant
little party assembled in the triclinium of the
prefect of the city. The gentlemen, in studied
attitudes, reclining, on the divans or couches

180 ARMENIA. Chap. XIII.
placed against the wall, behind the marble
tables; the ladies, in graceful robes, seated at
their feet ; while pages, with wreaths of flowers
round their heads, in short tunics of white silk,
brought up dishes of blackbirds stewed in wine ;
tarts sweetened with honey, which could be
eaten with impunity by natives, while strangers
lost their senses if they ventured on the dan
gerous condiment.
" Eudocia, dearest, did you go up those horrid
steps upon the wall, to look at those people out
side ? did you ever see such creatures ? "
" Ob, yes, Lais, I did. Poor barbarians ! why
do they tie their legs up with leather thongs in
that funny way ? and what skimpy tunics they
wear ; I think they must be made of sheepskin !
There was one of them — a great personage, no
doubt, in his own nasty little country — who had
made himself a toga of a blanket. Did not you
see him, Xenophon ? you were with us."
" Well — aw — why, yes, I think I did," says
Xenophon ; " but what heavy axes they carry !
what long, straight swords they wear ! They
say their hilts are gold ; I dare swear they are
brass. Our legionaries would make short work
of them."
" Well," says Lais, " I wish you would send
those ugly people away, for one cannot take a

Chap. XIII. AN IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. 181
drive in the Hippodrome since they have been
here these two days, and the new silver harness
for my white oxen is so pretty. But, Eudocia,
did you see the lady ? I hear she is a princess
— a princess, who travels in a punt ! Dear me,
a great lady she must be ! "
" I never heard of her," says Eudocia ; " do
tell me all about her. What is she like ? Is
she tall or short ; pretty or ugly ? or what ?
Let us have a description of your barbarian lady."
" Why," answers Lais, " she is awfully tall,
and she has light hair, plaited in two long tails
like ropes, and much of the same colour, which
hang down on each side of her face in front,
and reach to her knees. She is dressed in a
long and very full gown, with innumerable
plaits, coming high up round her throat. Her
gown is Confined round her waist by a girdle of
gold and jewels, and she has a golden fillet
round her head. This gown was light blue, and
was so long I could not see her feet ; but those
of the maidens with her were of such a size,
Eudocia, that four of our feet might walk about
in their shoes, which were of gold stuff, coming
up to the ankle, and worked with pearls — as
heavy as lead, I should imagine."
" But was the princess pretty.? " again in
quires Eudocia.

182 ARMENIA. Chap. XIII.
" Xenophon says she is, but I don't believe
him. She has strange-coloured eyes, I was told
— the colour of her gown, and is not pale and
smooth as marble, but with rosy cheeks and a
throat as white as snow ; but she looked very
stupid, and solemn, and proud. What she can
have to be proud of, poor creature ! I cannot
conceive ; she has not the black eyes and bright
smile of our girls."
" That is a curious wool the men wear on
their caps," saith Xenophon ; " it is curly, and
of a light bluish-grey colour. The barbarians
seem to think it is very fine. I have not seen
anything like it: it is made of the skin of a
peculiar breed of lambs, to be met with nowhere
out of their country."
" What in the world can they want so many
fagots for ? " asks another young lady*. " I am
sure the days are hot enough in the summer ;
perhaps they have no firewood in their, own
miserable regions ; they have been doing no
thing but cut bushes and make fagots of them
on the hill-side above the citadel ever since they
have been here."
" Ah," says Xenophon, " except the amuse
ment of burning a few villages, though that
could hardly repay them the trouble, for all the
goods worth carrying away have been brought

Chap. XIII. ASSAULT AND CAPTURE OF TREBIZOND. 183
within the walls. However, here comes the
little cupbearer with the Chian and Falernian
wine ; never mind these outer barbarians let us
go to supper."
So they went to supper, and, affecting classic
tastes, sang verses on heroic themes from
Homer, accompanied by music on the lyre and
the double pipe.
The Goths went to supper too outside, under
the trees, and eat great pieces of beef cut
from oxen roasted whole. The night was very
dark, but the guards and the citizens lit up their
rooms gaily within the city, which resounded
with laughter, songs, and merriment.
The night advanced, and so did the Goths ;
each man bore a fagot, which he threw into the
ditch below the wall. Thousands were piled
upon those below, others were thrown on them ;
the heap of fagots rose, the upper ones were
level with the battlements. Where were the
city guards ? Where were the legionaries and
the 10,000 auxiliary troops ? They were sleeping
off the fatigues of the evening feast ; they were
anywhere but where they should be — upon the
walls. Down from the towers and the bastions poured
a stream of fierce determined warriors ; they
closed the gates on that side, for fear the garrison

184 ARMENIA. Chap. XIII.
should get out ; but the alarm was spread ; the
legionaries, who were awakened by the cry, made
off through the opposite side of the fortifications
and escaped into the country. Those who were
not quick enough were stabbed in the back and
slain in heaps ; fire and the sword commenced
their fearful reign, blood ran in the streets, the
massacre was horrible. The most holy temples,
says the historian, the most splendid edifices,
were involved in a common destruction. The
booty that fell into the hands of the Goths was
immense. The wealth of the adjacent countries,
which had been deposited in Trebizond as a
secure place of refuge, was added to the spoil.
The number of captives was incredible ; those
who were left alive were gathered together by
the Goths. Lais and Eudocia became the hand
maids of the Gothic princess. Zenophon and
2000 able-bodied dandies were driven down to
the port by 200 Goths, who made them chain
each other to the oars of the galleys, on board of
which the enormous plunder of Trebizond was
embarked by the forced labour of the citizens,
one or two being cut in half with a sweep of the
long Gothic sword, to encourage the others if
they did not hurry in their work under the
burning rays of the sun. The Cimmerian
Bosphorus received the fleet of galleys laden

Chap. XIII. THE COURTENAI AND COMNENI. 185
with the treasures, and rowed by the slaves, of
the noble city of Trebizond, now smouldering in
a heap of smoking ruins.
Thus ended the first episode in the history of
Trebizond. For more than a thousand years the history
of Trebizond remains enveloped in the mists of
obscurity and insignificance ; various dukes,
princes, and counts, succeeded each other in a
long line of inglorious pride.
In the thirteenth century the chivalrous house
of Courtenai, by the assistance of the heroes of
the Crusades, mounted the throne of Constan
tinople, and the ancestors of the Earl of Devon
produced three emperors, who reigned in succes
sion over the Oriental portion of the Roman
empire. The ancient dynasty of the Comneni,
being expelled from the dominions over which
they had presided for centuries, fled for refuge
into various lands. Alexius, the son of Manuel
and grandson of Andronicus Comnenus, obtained
the government of the duchy of Trebizond,
which extended from the unfortunate Sinope
to the borders of Circassia. He seems to have
reigned in peace. The acts of his son, who
succeeded him, are as unknown as his name,
which has not even descended to posterity. The
grandson of Alexius was David Comnenus, who,

186 ARMENIA. Chap. XIII.
with an assurance and presumption which is
almost ludicrous, took upon himself the style and
title of Emperor of Trebizond. Puffed up with
vanity and self-conceit, this feeble prince en
joyed for a short period the imperial dignity
which he possessed only in name. The erection
of this quaint and ridiculous Christian empire
appears to have made a great sensation among
the knights and troubadours of the fifteenth
century. The geographical knowledge of those
days was confined to few, and the empire of
Trebizond, like that of Prester John, whose
extent and situation were equally apocryphal,
formed the theme of many a fabulous adventure
and many a romance, which served to beguile
the evening hours by the firesides of the castles
and convents of England and France. Fairies
and wizards, ogres and giants, peopled the realms
of fancy in this distant empire. Lovely princesses
were rescued from the thraldom of paynim cas
tellans, and followers of Mahound and Terma-
gaunt, by valiant Christian knights armed with
cross-hilted swords, and lutes, and talismans, the
gift of benignant fairies, whose existence was
only to be found in the imaginations of the
unknown but delightful authors of the romances
of chivalry, and the poems and ballads of the
trouveurs and troubadours.

Chap. XIII. THE " EMPEROR " DAVID COMNENUS. 187
The truths were not so agreeable as the fictions
of " the good old times." As it happens to be
in my power to do so, I present the reader with
a portrait of the mighty emperor, as he appeared
on the occasion which I am about to describe.
His dress consisted of a tight gown of scarlet
silk ; round his neck, down the front of his gown,
and round the bottom of it, were bands of gold
about four inches wide ; these were edged with
pearls, and ornamented with large rubies and
emeralds in rows down the centre of each band
of gold. On his arms', above the elbows, were
golden armlets, and round his wrists gold brace
lets, all set with coloured precious stones. His
girdle, of the same pattern, and about three
inches wide, had a hanging end about two feet
long, which the Byzantine emperors, for some
undiscovered reason, seem always to have carried
over the left arm. In his right hand he bore a
golden sceptre, about three feet long, with a
largish cross at the top set with enormous pearls.
On his head he wore a close golden crown, of
which the top, that part made of velvet in the
crown of England, was also of metal, like a
helmet. From this crown a fillet set with pearls
hung down on each side of his face to his beard,
which was of some length. Scarlet silk hose
and golden sandals completed the imperial

188 ARMENIA. Chap. XIII.
costume, except that he rejoiced in two round
ornaments of gold and jewels, each the size of a
plate, which were affixed to his robe on the out
side of the thigh.
The costume of the empress was very similar,
only her crown was open at the summit. She,
contrary to female custom, wore no girdle, while
over her shoulders hung a mantle of a dark
colour, embroidered all over with gold. The
emperor wore no mantle, although this garment
is usually considered as an essential part of the
royal costume. Such was the appearance of
David Comnenus, Emperor of Trebizond, when
he gave audience to the ambassadors from foreign
powers, seated on a golden throne at the summit
of a high flight of steep golden steps, surrounded
by his court and his officers (conspicuous among
whom appeared the lictors with silver axes, for,
as in the third century the Romans affected the
usages of the Greeks, in the fifteenth century the
Greeks followed the customs of the Cassars — so
prone is human nature to revere the ancient
ceremonies of bygone days), puffed up with
vanity at his own glorious position, and placed
in awful majesty upon his golden throne in the
chamber of audience, whose walls were painted
to look like porphyry, and the ceilings coloured
with figures on a gold ground in imitation of

Chap. XIII. SUMMONS FROM MEHEMET II. 189
mosaic, an ornament too expensive for the re
sources of the empire. The chamberlains and
heralds with a loud voice announce the arrival
of an envoy from the high and mighty lord the
Soldan Mehemet II. ; upon which the twelve
lictors round the throne lifted up their voices,
and cried out, " Semper bibat imperator :" the
letter v not being found in the Greek alphabet,
vivat was spelt with a beta, g ; and being pro
nounced as it was spelt, the sense of the exclama
tion was a good deal compromised.
The solemn envoy from the Soldan stalked
into the hall, followed by a grisly retinue clothed
from head to foot in armour, partly composed of
steel plates inlaid with sentences from the Koran
in gold letters, and partly completed with flexible
chain mail. Their helmets had conical summits,
almost like a low church-steeple, while instead
of plumes they displayed a rod of steel, from
which fluttered a small crimson flag from the
summits of their casques. The letter from the
Soldan, enclosed in a bag of brocade, was handed
to the important emperor, who on breaking the
seal read the following words : —
" Wilt thou secure thy treasures and thy life
by resigning thy kingdom, or wilt thou rather
forfeit thy kingdom, thy treasures, and thy life ?"
But a short time before, such was the terror

190 ARMENIA. Chap. XIII.
occasioned by the name of the redoubted Sultan
Mehemet II., who had just planted the victorious
crescent over the cross of St. Sophia, that Ismael
Beg, the Mahometan Prince of Sinope, who derived
an enormous revenue from the copper-mines in his
principality, immediately surrendered his domi
nions on a summons of a like import with the
above, although at that period Sinope was de
fended with strong fortifications, 400 cannons,
and 12,000 men.
David Comnenus descended from his golden
throne in the year 1461, and with his family
was sent, apparently as a prisoner, to a distant
castle, where, being accused of corresponding
with the King of Persia, he and his whole race
were massacred by the orders of his furious con
queror. With him ended the illustrious dynasty
of the Comneni, and the history of the inde
pendent state of Trebizond, which has since those
times remained a remote, and till lately an almost
unexplored province ofthe Turkish empire.

Chap. XIV. DIFFICULTIES OF TRAVELLING. 191

CHAPTER XIV.
Present Condition of Armenia.
Impassable character of the country — Dependence of Persia on the
Czar — Russian aggrandisement — Delays of the Western Powers —
Russian acquisitions from Turkey and Persia — Oppression of the
Russian government — The conscription — Armenian emigration —
The Armenian patriarch — Latent power of the Pope ¦ — Ano
malous aspect of religious questions.
The description of Armenia and the adjacent
districts in the foregoing pages will have sufficed
to give a general idea of the many difficulties to
be encountered by those whose business leads
them through this inhospitable region, where
they meet with impediments at every step, from
the lofty mountains traversed by roads accessible
only to mules and horses, the extreme cold of
the high passes and elevated plains, the impos
sibility of obtaining provisions, and the savage
character of the Koords and other wandering
tribes who roam over this wild country. If a
traveller, accompanied by a few followers, and
assisted by firmans from the Sultan, finds this
journey arduous in the extreme, how much more
so must it prove to the general in command of
an army, with many thousand men to provide

192 ARMENIA. Chap. XIV.
for, with artillery and heavy baggage to encum
ber his march, on roads inaccessible to carriages
or wheeled vehicles of any kind ! and if to these
is added an enemy on the alert to cut off sup
plies, to harass the long straggling line of march,
and to attack the passing army in narrow defiles
from behind rocks, and from the summits of pre
cipices, where they are safe from molestation, it
will be understood that the difficulties presenting
themselves to military operations in these regions
are almost insuperable. It is the inaccessible
nature of Circassia, even more than the bravery
of its inhabitants, which has enabled them to
resist the overwhelming power of Russia for
so many years. On the approach to Erze
room these difficulties increase. From Georgia,
Persia, and Trebizond, there is no other city
or entrepot where an army could rest to lay in
stores and collect supplies for a campaign, with
the exception of Erzeroom, which is the centre
or key to all these districts. If it was strongly
fortified, as it should be, or was at any rate in
the occupation of an active intelligent govern
ment, the power who possessed it would hold
the fate of that part of Asia in its hands.
No caravans could pass, no mercantile specu
lations could be carried on, and no large bodies
of troops could march, without its permission.

Chap. XIV. UNHEALTHY CLLMATE. 193*
They would in all probability perish from the
rigours of the climate if they were not assisted,
even without the necessity of attacking them by
force of arms. At this moment the greater part
of the artillery of the Turkish army is, I believe,
buried under the snow in one of the ravines be
tween Beyboort and Erzeroom, from whence it
has no chance of being rescued till next summer.
It was the impassable character of this country,
and the treacherous habits of the robber
tribes of Koordistan, which made the retreat of
Xenophon and the Ten Thousand through the
same regions the wonderful event which it has
been always considered. While this is the
nature of the elevated lands and mountains, the
valleys which surround the snowy regions are
absolutely pestiferous : in many of them no one
can sleep one night without danger of fever,
frequently ending in death. The port, or road
stead, of Batoum is so unhealthy as to be utterly
uninhabitable to strangers during all the hot
season of the year, I wish to draw attention to
these circumstances, in order to explain the'
almost impossibility of dispossessing any power
which had already obtained a firm footing in
this district ; and it is in order to fix herself
firmly in this important post that Russia is now
advancing in that direction, with a perfect know-

194 ARMENIA. Chap. XIV.)
ledge of the advantages to be derived from tluV
barren and unfruitful region ; while she has the
advantage of being able to send supphes to
her forces by the Caspian Sea ; for, once within
her grasp, Persia is no longer independent ; and,
fettered as she is by her Russian debt, and what
in private affairs would be called her heavy mort
gage on her only valuable provinces on the shores
of the Caspian — Geilaun and Mazenderaun— she
must sink into the state of a vassal kingdom, sub
ject to the commands of her superior lord the Czar.
The sum she owes to Russia is said to be about
two millions sterling ; far more than she could
ever raise at a short notice, while she would
receive no assistance in war from any of the
neighbouring Sooni tribes, whose religious feel
ings are so much opposed to the Sheahs ; there
fore, unless supported by Great Britain, Persia
is now almost at the mercy of Russia. Russia is
altogether a military power, and, as in the dark
ages, the Czar and his nobles affect to despise
the mercantile class, and, instead of doing what
they can to promote industry and commerce, by
opening communications, making roads and har
bours, establishing steamers on rivers, and giving
facility to the interchange of various commo
dities, the productions of distant quarters of her
own enormous empire, she throws every ob-

Chap. XIV. RUSSIAN AGGRANDISEMENT. 195"
stacle in the way of her internal trade, and by
heavy import duties, exactions of many oppres
sive kinds, and the universal plunder and cheat
ing carried on by all the government officials in
the lower grades of employment, she has para
lysed both her foreign and domestic resources.
The Czar prefers to buy his own aggrandisement
with the blood of his confiding subjects, to the
more honourable and less cruel course of enrich
ing his empire by the extension of his commercial
relations abroad, and the development of the
peaceful arts, industry, science, and general im
provement of the nations subjected to his rule.
If it was not for this utter disregard of com
merce, and the undivided attention of the Russian
government to everything connected with mili
tary glory, the navigation of the great rivers
would have poured many more roubles into the
treasury of St. Petersburgh than will be gained
by any territorial accessions previous to the
taking of Constantinople. Even under present
circumstances, it is wonderful that a canal has
not been made from Tzaritzin, 'on the Yolga, to
the nearest point upon the Don, a distance of not
more than thirty miles ; for by this means the
silk of the northern provinces of Persia would
be brought with the greatest facility into the
Black Sea. In a mercantile point of view,
K 2

196 ARMENIA. Chap. XIV-
Russia would gain more by the construction of
that canal than by the conquest of Armenia, for
it would enable her to develop the great re
sources of Geilaun and Mazenderaun, virtually
belonging to her at this moment. The trade
which in former times enriched the famous cities
of Bokhara and Samarkand would be carried by
caravans through Khiva, either now, or soon to
be, the head-quarters of a Russian governor ;
from thence they would, with any encourage
ment, pass on their rich bales of merchandize to
the Russian posts of Karagan, or Krasnovodsk,
on the eastern shores of the Caspian, or to Aste-
rabad on the south, and at these ports, now un
known to European navigators, ships might be
laden which would discharge their cargoes at
Liverpool, St. Petersburgh, or New York.
I have said above that Russia has but little to
gain by her territorial conquests in Asiatic
Turkey until she takes Constantinople. I say
this because, if things are permitted by the West
ern Powers to continue as they have done for
some years, the Czar will most certainly be
enthroned in the capital of the Byzantine em
perors, principally by the assistance of England
and France. It is a question only of time : for
that the Patriarch of Constantinople will give
his blessing to the Christian emperor under the

•Chap. XIV. RUSSIAN AGGRANDISEMENT. 197
dome of St. Sophia sooner or later, and before
many years have passed, I have hardly any
doubt; and when once fairly seated on that
throne, the Powers of Europe will not shake him
in his seat. The acquisition of the Crimea, with
the strong naval arsenal of Sevastopol, gave the
Czar the command of the Black Sea. The won
derful business of Navarino, where the English
and French admirals fought his battle for him,
and crippled his enemy and their own ancient
ally for many a year, was the next important
step. The third seems to be taking place at this
moment, if indeed sufficient advantages have not
been gained already to suffice for the present
emergency. It matters little whether Russia
does or does not retain the provinces of Wal
lachia and Moldavia, which she has several times
occupied before ; she has almost drained the
treasury of her enemy, now straining every
nerve to avert the impending evil. Turkey will
hardly be able to support the expenses of the
war for any length of time from her own re
sources. Even if a diplomatic peace is concluded,
it will in fact amount only to a truce, during
which the Czar will have time to strengthen his
position, and prepare his forces for another and
a more vigorous assault on the first convenient
opportunity which occurs, from any dissension

198 ARMENIA. Chap. XIV.
which may arise between the leading powers of
the West ; and the Sultan, having received no
thing from his ancient allies but fair words, will
be less able to defend himself than he is at
present. The greatest of blessings in this world is
peace, and everything should be done to avoid
the breaking out of war, with all the horrors
and sufferings which are brought upon mankind
by that dreadful scourge. I think it was the
Duke of Wellington who said that, next to a
defeat, the most awful of all calamities was a
victory. Every endeavour should be made to
secure the happiness of peace. To those, how
ever, who have no further means of information
than what they read in newspapers, it would
seem that, while we might have put out the
candle, we have waited till the chimney is on
fire, if not the house itself, and then who can
tell how far and wide the conflagration may
extend ?
If England and France had shown a deter
mined front, and informed the Czar that, being
" bound by treaty to preserve the integrity of the
Turkish empire, they should consider the passage
of the Pruth by one Russian armed man as a
violation of that treaty and a declaration of war,
and that they should act accordingly without

.Chap. XIV. DELAYS OFTHE WESTERN POWERS. 199
delay, in all probability no war would have
commenced, no blood would have been shed, no
ruinous expenses would have been incurred.
War having commenced, heavy and exhausting
sums of money have been drawn from the trea
sury of the Sultan. When the iGe set in upon
the Baltic, what was to prevent the allied fleet
from taking possession of the stores of corn, and
occupying or destroying the city of Odessa ?
Sevastopol, impregnable by sea, is not — or was
not two years ago — and, I believe, at this day is
not — defensible on the land side. The bay of
Streleskaia offers a convenient landing-place
about three "miles in the rear of the fortifications
of the arsenal, where a Turkish army might be
brought in two days from Constantinople to try
its fortunes with the Russian force ; or, if that
was not judged expedient, Sevastopol could have
been blockaded till some advantageous terms
were gained for our ally. Failing this, a French
army, convoyed and assisted by their own and
our fleets, would have settled the question with
out doubt, and may do so still ; but unless an
indemnity for the expenses of the war is exacted
from Russia for her most unjust and unjustifi
able aggression, very little advantage will be
gained for Turkey, a great step will have been
accomplished by the Czar, and the possession of

200 ARMENIA. Chap. XIV,
the Crimea almost insures him the possession of
Constantinople some day, perhaps at no very
distant period. The restoration of the Crimea
to the Turkish empire would, I imagine, be the
only means of checking the advance of Russia in
that direction. This, accompanied by a forced
treaty, releasing Persia from her usurious debt,
would restrain the encroachments of the Czar
within certain bounds for some years to come.
The present aspect of affairs in the East becomes
more alarming every day. If negotiations are
protracted till the ice of the Baltic melts in
the spring or early summer, things will assume
a much more grave appearance, and it will de
pend on many circumstances over which we have
no control where the conflagration then may
spread and where the war will end.
It is impossible to look back upon the history
of Russia for the last 150 years without admira
tion and astonishment at the enormous strides
which have been made by the giants of the north
since that period. When Peter the Great ac
ceded to the throne of Muscovy, there was no
maritime outlet to his empire excepting in the
icy shores of the Northern Ocean. The ground
on which the metropolis of St, Petersburgh now
stands was not in the possession of Russia till
the year 1721 ; since the year 1774 Russia has

Chap. XIV. RUSSIAN ACQUISITIONS. 201
acquired, quite in the memory of man, a terri
tory from Turkey equal in extent to the whole
empire of Austria, and much larger than the
present possessions of the Turks in Europe.
The following table of the progress of the
Russian arms in the East will show at a glance
how rapidly and steadily she has extended her
power, her grasping hand, and her outstretched
arm in that direction ; and it cannot be expected
that, when she has rested and strengthened her
self, and consolidated her resources in her newly
acquired territories, she will be prevented by
any slight obstacle from further aggrandize
ment. Russian Acquisitions from Turkey.
Country to the north of the Crimea .... 1774
The Crimea  1783
Country round Odessa  1792
Country between the Sea of Azof and the
Caspian, at the same period as the Crimea . 1783
Besarabia  1812
Russian Acquisitions from Persia.
Mingrelia, on the Black Sea  1802
Immeritia the same year  1802
Akalzik  1829
Georgia  1814
Ganja  1803
Karabaugh  1805
Erivan, Mount Ararat, and Etchmiazin . . 1828
Sheki  1805
Shirvan  1806
Talish, on the Caspian  1812
Few of these conquered or deluded nations
K 3

202 ARMENIA. Chap. XIV.
have been able to bear the intolerable oppression
of the Russian Government, arising from the
insolence of the petty employes, and more parti
cularly the dreadful scourge of the conscription,
by the aid of which, at any moment, children
are remorselessly torn for ever from their
parents, whose sole support they were ; families
are on a sudden divided ; one half sent off no one
knows whither, never to meet again ; none of
these unhappy slaves knowing whether it will
be their lot to become soldiers or sailors, but, in
either case, they are driven off, like beasts, in
flocks, by cruel, savage tyrants, who steal, as a
matter of course, the money provided by the
superior Government for the food of the de
spairing conscripts, while they — brutal and
drunken though they may be — are distinguished
for their love of home, and the affection and
respect they bear for their parents.
The Nogai Tatars abandoned the Christian
religion, and took refuge in the territories of
the Khan of the Crimea, becoming Mahometans
in hopes of obtaining the protection of the
milder rule of Turkey.
In 1771 a still more extraordinary event took
place. The Kalmuks, a people who had emi
grated from the frontiers of China, unable to
endure the insults and oppressions of the Rus-

Chap. XIV. ARMENIAN EMIGRATION. £03
sian tyranny, made up their minds to return to
the dominions of the Celestial Empire, from
whence their ancestors had originally come.
They fought their way through all the hostile
tribes intervening between them, and their
whole nation arrived safely under the wing of
the Emperor of China, who afforded them pro
tection, and gave them great tracts of land for
the pasture of their flocks and herds. The am
bassador of the Empress Catherine, who had
been despatched to desire the surrender of the
fugitive tribe, and — as at this day in Turkey —
to demand a " renewal of treaties " between the
two countries, received the following answer
from the Court of Pekin : " Let your mistress
learn to keep old treaties, and then it will be
time to apply for new ones : " an answer which
might have been given in our day to Prince
Menschikoff, who was lucky in meeting with a
milder reception at Constantinople than his
predecessor received from the stout old man
darin at Pekin.
In the year 1829, Kars, Bayazeed, Yan, Moush,
Erzeroom, and Beyboort (which is coming very
near) were occupied by the Russians, who eva
cuated that portion of the Turkish empire on the
conclusion of the treaty of Adrianople. Trusting
to the protestations of a Christian Emperor, sixty-

304 ARMENIA, Chap. XIV.
nine thousand Christian Armenian families were
beguiled into the folly of leaving the Mahometan
dominions, and sitting in peace under the pater
nal protection of the Czar. Over their ruined
houses I have ridden, and surveyed with sorrow
their ancient churches in the valleys of Armenia,
desecrated and injured, as far as their solid con
struction permitted, by the sacrilegious hands of
the Russian soldiers, who tried to destroy those
temples of their own religion which the Turks
had spared, and under whose rule many of the
more recent had been rebuilt on their old founda
tions. The greater part of these Armenians
perished from want and starvation ; the few who
survived this sharp lesson have since been endea
vouring, by every means in their power, to
return to the lesser evils of the frying-pan of
Turkey, from whence they had leapt into the
fire of despotic Russia.
By the treaty of Turkomanchai, 1828, the
Czar became possessed of Persian Armenia, of
which the capital is Erivan. In this district are
contained the two great objects of Armenian
veneration, Etchmiazin and Mount Ararat. This
noble snowy mountain takes the place, in the
estimation of the Armenians, that Mount Sinai
and Mount Zion do among the followers of other
Christian sects. The foolish legends which dis-

Chap. XIV. THE ARMENIAN PATRIARCH. 205
grace the purity of true religion usually relate
to the object of local tradition which may be met
with in the neighbourhood of the monastery ;
consequently an attack of indigestion in an
Armenian monk generally produces a vision of
some nonsensical revelation about Noah's Ark,
which is still supposed to remain, hidden to mor
tal eye, under the clouds and snows of Mount
Ararat. Etchmiazin is an ancient fortified monastery,
within whose walls resides the Patriarch of the
Armenian Church, the spiritual head of that
body, and who is looked up to indeed as the
temporal chief of that scattered nation whose
industrious children are settled in India, Con
stantinople, and in many other parts of the
world, so that those who live and thrive abroad
are much more numerous and more wealthy than
those who reside in Armenia itself, The pos
session, therefore, of the person and residence of
the Patriarch is a fact of no small importance in
the history of Russian advancement. To under
take a pilgrimage to Etchmiazin is a meritorious
act among the professors of the Armenian faith ;
and the influence exercised over the Patriarch is
diffused, through the obedient medium of bishops,
priests, and deacons, through all parts of Turkey,
and many of the cities of India, to an extent

206 ARMENIA. Chap. XIV.
which would surprise those who never have
troubled themselves with the affairs of the Ar
menian jeweller or silversmith in an eastern
bazaar, for they are almost invariably dealers in
jewels and the precious metals ; or serafs, bank
ers, among the native population ; a position
which renders their influence of no small conse
quence in every city where they reside. By
these means, among others, the political interest
of the Czar is nourished and extended on the
Persian Gulf, at Bombay, Bushire, Madras, and
many another place ; — in the same manner as
the sway and power of the Roman Pontiff is
upheld, and that by no weak and trembling
hand, in Ireland, England, London, and the
House of Commons. And yet we pretend that
there is no such power as the See of Rome ;
we ignore the existence of the Pope, and sneer
at the prince of a petty Italian state supported
by French bayonets, who is in that rotten and
decaying state that we or our children are to see
his end.
But my belief is, that the power of Rome is
by no means in a falling state ; nor would it be
so even if the rule of some band of miscreants
usurped for a little while the misgovernment of
the Eternal City. The power of the Pope is
now, at this moment, one of the greatest upon

Chap. XIV. LATENT POWER OF THE POPE. 207
the earth ; and as irreligion and dissent increase,
so will the most wonderfully clever institution of
the temporal power of the Roman Church in
crease. Its minute and marvellous organisation,
the perfect understanding and subordination of
the inferior to the superior officer, its fixed and
certain purpose, give the Pope the command
over such an united and well-disciplined army
of trained and fearless soldiers as never could be
brought together by Cassar, or Napoleon, or our
own old Duke. The peace of Europe in this
direction arises not from the slightest want of
power or means on the part of the See of Rome,
but from the jealousy of the body in whose
hands the election of the Supreme Pontiff lies.
For many years they have elected a good old
monk, who has passed his whole life in a state
of supreme ignorance of the world in general,
and the whole art of government in particular.
In his hands the mighty power at his command
remains inert — a slumbering volcano. But
should the ivory chair of St. Peter ever sustain
the weight of a young and energetic man of
genius, with some years of life before him, no
one would laugh at the tottering state of Rome.
As for the petty principality of a state in Italy,
I have been told, in the Pope's own ante-room,
that it is a burthen to him. His extended sway

208 ARMENIA. Chap. XIV.
does not depend on the doubtful loyalty of half-
a-dozen regiments of Italians, or on the more
honest obedience of two or three thousand Swiss
guards, but on the hearts and hands of many
millions, who look up to him as their spiritual
superior at all times, and their temporal superior,
whom they are bound to obey in opposition to
all other sovereigns, when anything occurs " ad
majorem Dei gloriam," and for the advancement
of the Church of Rome.
A power such as this, which in our trafficking
and money-making country is thought little of,
— a power such as this lies dormant in the hands
of the Grand Lama of Thibet, whose followers
form almost half of all mankind, — in those of the
Patriarch of Constantinople, — and to an inferior
degree in those of the Patriarch of Etchmiazin,
They are all paralyzed and quiescent from the
same cause — namely, that the chiefs of these
mighty institutions are old ignorant men, whose
minds have not the energy, or their hands the
power, to work the tremendous engine com
mitted to their care. That the Czar is perfectly
aware of the uses to be made of the religious
feelings of the inhabitants of other governments
to further his own ends, we see from the nume
rous magnificent presents ostentatiously for
warded by him to churches in Greece and

Chap. XIV. POWER OF THE CZAR. 209
Turkey, where the monks and priests by these
means are gained over to his interests. From
his generous hand, extended to the borders of
the Adriatic, about 5000?. are annually dropped
into the poor-box of that truculent specimen of
the Church-militant, the Yladica of Montenegro.
But the Czar is not an aged monk, he is not
wanting in energy or strength, and he will not
fail to pull the strings which hang loosely in
the hands of the Armenian Patriarch. If he
pulls them evenly and well, he will advance
his interests far and wide, even in the domi
nions of other princes, who may hardly be
aware of the influence exercised in their states
from a source so distant and unobtrusive. The
danger in his case is, that he may use too great
violence, and break the strings from too severe a
tension, raising the storm against himself which
he intended to direct against others. However
this may be, the power of which he holds the
reins is one which may be used for the advance
ment of the greatest or the most ignoble ends.
For the most sublime and glorious actions, the
most heroic and the most infernal deeds that
have ever been accomplished by mankind, have
been occasioned by the awakening of religious
zeal, or by the fanaticism of religious hatred,

210 ARMENIA. Chap. XIV.
from the earliest days, when the pen of history
was first dipped in blood.
Nothing can be more anomalous than the pre
sent aspect of religious questions. The Christian
Emperor of Russia is at this moment exciting
the minds of his subjects to make war upon the
infidel ; and his armies march under the impres
sion that they undertake a new crusade. Yet
this crusade is carried on in direct contradiction
to truth, justice, honour, and every principle of
the Christian religion, whose pure and sacred
precepts are violated at every turn. On the
other hand, the Mahometan, or infidel, as he is
called, displays, under the most difficult and
insulting circumstances, the highest Christian
virtues of integrity, moderation, and strict ad
herence to his word in treaties granted by him
self or his predecessors ; at the same time, the
armies of the upright Sultan are commanded by
a Christian renegade who has abjured his faith,
and yet he fights against the Christian power in
a righteous cause.
The terrible revolution which is the cause of
such awful scenes of bloodshed and atrocities in
China is carried on under the name of our mer
ciful and just Saviour, whose mild religion these
rebels against their sovereign affect to follow.

Chap. XIV. ASPECT OF RELIGIOUS QUESTIONS. 211
The savage atrocities of the Holy Inquisition,
the cruel massacres by the Spaniards in America,
were perpetrated by men who made a cloak of
the benevolent precepts of the Gospel for the
perpetration of the most brutal crimes.
Those times we thought were past, but human
nature is the same ; and where the light of true
Christianity has penetrated, we find a period of
wonderful intelligence and appreciation of the
truths of the doctrines of our Lord in some
places — in others, where a nominal Christianity
alone prevails, actions are committed by men in
the highest stations which would disgrace the
records of the dark ages.

212 ARMENIA. Chap. XV.

CHAPTEE XV.
Ecclesiastical history ¦ — Supposed letter of Abgarus, King of
Edessa, to our Saviour, and the answer — Promulgation and
establishment of Christianity — Labours of Mesrob Maschdots —
Separation of the Armenian Church from that of Constantinople
— Hierarchy and religious establishments — Superstition of the
lower classes — Sacerdotal vestments — The holy books — Eomish
branch of the Church — Labours of Mechitar — His establishment
near Venice — Diffusion of the Scriptures.
The ruins of Ani to this day attest the magni
ficence and antiquity of former dynasties which
long since reigned and passed away in the high
lands of Armenia. In the time of Cyrus, accord
ing to Moses of Chorene, the historian of that
country in the sixteenth century, Greek statues
of Jupiter, Artemis (Diana), Minerva, Hephses-
tion, and Yenus, were brought to Ani and placed
in the citadel of that town. Here the treasures
and the sepulchres of the ancient kings were
preserved in a fortress deemed by them impreg
nable. I will not pause to disentangle the
records of Armenia before the time of our
Saviour, for even during the life of our Lord
the annals of Armenia become remarkably inter
esting as connected with his holy faith, and the
rise and progress of Christianity in the countries

Chap. XV. LEGEND OF ABGARUS. 213
immediately adjoining the sacred soil of Palestine,
Abgarus, King of Edessa and sovereign of great
part of Armenia with the adjoining countries, is
said by Eusebius, Bishop of Cassarea, the early
historian of the Church, who flourished in the
fourth century, to have written a letter to our
Saviour, requesting him to repair to his court
and to cure him of a disease under which he
laboured. The following is a translation of the
letter which Abgarus is said to have written to
our Lord : —
" Abgarus, King of Edessa, to Jesus the good
Saviour, who appeareth at Jerusalem, greeting.
" I have been informed concerning thee and
thy cures, which are performed without the use
of medicines or of herbs.
" For it is reported that thou dost cause the
blind to see, the lame to walk, that thou dost
cleanse the lepers, and dost cast out unclean
spirits and devils, and dost restore to health
those who have been long diseased, and also that
thou dost raise the dead.
" All which when I heard I was persuaded of
one of these two things :
" Either that thou art God himself descended
from heaven ;
" Or that thou art the son of God.
" On this account, therefore, I have written

2 14 ARMENIA. Chap. XV,
unto thee, earnestly desiring that thou wouldst
trouble thyself to take a journey hither, and
that thou wilt also cure me of the disease under
which I suffer.
" For I hear that the Jews hold thee in derision,
and intend to do thee harm.
" My city is indeed small, but it is sufficient
to contain us both."
In the history of Moses of Chorene this letter
begins with the words " Abgar the son of
Archam," but the substance of it is the same as
the above, which is taken from the pages of
Eusebius, who lived a century earlier than Moses
of Chorene. This author ascribes the answer
to St. Thomas the Apostle, who was deputed to
write an answer to the above in these words : —
" Happy art thou, 0 Abgarus, forasmuch as
thou hast believed in me whom thou hast not
seen. " For it is written concerning me, that those
who have seen me have not believed on me,
that those who have not seen me might believe
and live.
" As to that part of thine epistle which relates
to my visiting thee, I must inform thee that I
must fulfil the ends of my mission in this land,
and after that be received up again unto Him
that sent me ; but after my ascension I will send

Chap. XV. THE APOSTLES IN ARMENIA. 215
one of my disciples, who will cure thy disease,
and give life unto thee and all that are with
thee." These two letters are generally considered to
be forgeries, although they are mentioned by
some of the earliest historians of the Church.
Some years ago I was informed, while at
Alexandria, that a papyrus had been discovered
in upper Egypt, in an ancient tomb ; it was
enclosed in a coarse earthenware vase, and it
contained the letter from Abgarus to our Saviour,
written either in Coptic or uncial Greek cha
racters. The answer of St. Thomas was said
not to be with it. I was told that the manu
script afterwards came into the possession of the
King of Holland, but I have no means at present
of ascertaining the. truth of the. story, or the
antiquity of the papyrus of which it forms the
subject. The seeds of the Christian faith were sown in
Armenia by the Apostles St. Bartholomew and
St. Thomas. According to Tertullian (adv.
Judaeos, c. 7), a Christian Church flourished there
in the second century. St. Blaise and other
bishops suffered martyrdom in different parts of
Armenia during the persecution of Diocletian,
about the year 310.
To St. Gregory, the Illuminator, is due the

216 ARMENIA. Chap. XV.
honour of having established Christianity in
this region, and he is known by the title of the
Apostle of Armenia. Towards the middle of
the third century, having been himself a convert
from Paganism, he first preached the doctrines
of our Lord among the mountains of his native
land. He had received his education at Cassarea
in Cappadocia, where he was baptized. The
zeal with which he was animated gave irresist
ible force to his words, and the people flocked
to him in great multitudes, and were baptized
by his hands. The King Tiridates, a violent
persecutor of the Christians, touched by the piety
and virtues of St. Gregory, embraced the Chris
tian faith, and, with his queen and his sister,
received the sacrament of baptism in the 16th
year of his reign, a.d. 274, and became the first
Christian King of Armenia. St. Gregory was
consecrated bishop by St. Leontius, Bishop of
Caesarea, in Cappadocia, and continued his
labours in propagating the faith all over
Armenia, Georgia, and the nations living on
the borders of the Caspian Sea. From this cir
cumstance it became the custom for the Primate
of Armenia to receive his consecration from the
Archbishop of Cassarea, which continued to be
the practice for several centuries. St. Gregory
died in the year 336, in a cave to which he had

Chap. XV. MESROB MASCHDOTS. 217
retired, desiring to end his days as an anchorite,
according to a custom much observed in the
fourth century.
In those disturbed and unsettled times the
religion of our Saviour alternately rose and
prospered, or was oppressed by the persecutions
of various governors under the Emperors of
Rome. Numerous heresies distracted the minds
of the priesthood, and confused the doctrines of
the Armenian Church. About the year 390
rose the most celebrated man in the history of
this country ; his name was Mesrob Maschdots.
This personage was born in the town of Hatsegatz-
Avan, in the province of Daron : he had been
secretary to the Patriarch Narses, and to the
Prince Yarastad, who was dethroned by the
Romans in the year 382. In the year 390, in
conjunction with the Armenian Patriarch Sahag,
he occupied himself in the extinction of the
idolatry which still prevailed, and was the first
person who arranged the forms of the Armenian
liturgy. Before his time the Armenian lan
guage had no written character ; the inhabitants
of the eastern districts used the Persian alphabet,
while those of the west wrote in the Syriac
character. Mesrob either restored the ancient
Armenian letters according to the historian
Moses of Chorene, who gives a long miraculous

218 . ARMENIA. Chap. XV.
account of the event, or he invented an entirely
new alphabet — a solitary instance, I believe, of
such an undertaking having been accomplished
by one man. The present Armenian letters
were adopted by the commands of Bahrain
Schahpoor over the whole of that country in the
year 406. The first complete version of the
Bible was now arranged and promulgated by
Mesrob, and written on parchment in his new
characters ; numerous copies of it were distri
buted to the churches and monasteries of Arme
nia, and the important circumstance of their
being now able to read the holy Scriptures in
their own language tended to preserve their
faith, and to unite them as a nation during the
continual troubles and adversities which they
have suffered ever since. This great benefactor
to his country died in the year 441.
The Armenian hierarchy had till now been a
branch of the Greek Church, but, unable to read
their liturgy, troubled with diversities of opinion,
and oppressed first by one neighbouring tyrant
and then by another, this helpless nation finally
settled down into the heresy of Eutyches, and
under the guidance of their patriarch separated
themselves from the Church of Constantinople.
They believe that the body of our Saviour was
created, or else existed without creation, a

Chap. XV. THE CHURCH AND HIERARCHY. 219"
divine and incorruptible substance, not subject
to the infirmities of the flesh. This schism took
place about the year 535.
The Armenian era commences in the year
552, from which epoch their manuscripts and
calendar are dated. The custom continues to
the present day. By the council of Tibena in
554 they were confirmed in their persistence
in the Eutychian heresy. The council of
Trullo, 692, and the council of Jerusalem,
1143, condemned the errors of the Armenians.
In the fourteenth century Pope John XXII.
sent a Dominican friar called Bartholomew
the Little into that distant region with seve
ral colleagues to preach the doctrines of the
Church of Rome. Bartholomew was consecrated
bishop (of Nakchevan ?), and since that time
the archbishop of that province has, with all
his dependencies, continued a member of the
Roman Church. The thunders of the Lateran
have often since been directed against the per
severance of these distant heretics, but they have
been of no avail.
The Patriarch of Armenia resides at Etch
miazin. He is styled Catholicos, and holds
under his sway forty-seven archbishops, of whom
• the greater part are titular, having no jurisdic
tion or dignity beyond their titles; many of
L 2

220 ARMENIA. Chap. XV.
these reside in the monastery, and form a sort of
court around their spiritual lord the Patriarch.
They seem to hold the same position as the
Monsignores of the Court of Rome. Above the
titular and actual archbishops are three Patri
archs, whose seats are at Jerusalem, Constan
tinople, and Diarbekir. The number of bishops
and episcopal sees is very considerable, but I
have not been able to enumerate them. The
monasteries are also very numerous, and are
scattered all over the mountains of Armenia, the
islands of Lake Yan, and other places in Persia,
Georgia, and Turkey.
The ancient monasteries of their own land
are of a peculiar construction, remarkable for
the diminutive proportions of the churches and
the small size of the monastic buildings, as well
as their massive strength and the great squared
stones of which they are built. They are little
fortresses, and seem always to have been very
poor, though some are larger and more wealthy
comparatively than the generality. They have
been erected to resist the incursions of the
Saracens, Knights Templars, Koords, Turks,
and Persians, who, from time to time, overran
this abject principality. Their massive strength
alone has saved them from being pulled
down and utterly destroyed ; the time ne-

Chap. XV. MONASTERIES AND MSS. 221
cessary for such an operation could not be
spared during the inroad of a chappow or
plundering expedition. Nothing worth stealing
remains in the various monasteries which I have
visited. A few dirty and imperfect church-
books, some faded vestments and poor furniture
for the altar, and the cells of three or four pea
sant-monks were all the wealth that they dis
played. Yery few appear to have contained a
library — none that I have seen. Their manu
scripts were written in former days at Edessa,
Etchmiazin (which is a more extensive fabric),
Teflis, Oromia, Tabriz, and other cities, and not
usually in these outposts among the mountains.
The little monastery of Kuzzul Yank possesses
one ancient manuscript of the Holy Scriptures,
written in the year, as far as I remember, 422,
which, if it refers to the Armenian era, would
be 974 ; it is written in uncial letters, on vellum,
in a small thick quarto form.
Ignorance and superstition contend for the
mastery among the lower classes of Armenia,
whose religion shows that tendency to sink
into a kind of idolatry which is common
among other branches of the Church of Christ
in warmer climates. The following anecdote
will explain my meaning in advancing such
a charge. One of my servants had a bad

222 ARMENIA. Chap. XV.
toothache ; he was a Roman Catholic of Smyrna ;
he made a vow to present an offering to the
shrine of St. George at Smyrna if his tooth
ache was cured by the mediation of that
saint, but the pain still continued. A friend
of his at Erzeroom advised him to vow a
silver mouth to St. George of Erzeroom ; " for,"
he said, " St. George of Smyrna is a Roman
saint, and of course he can have no authority
here ; but our St. George is an Armenian, and
he will hear your prayer." The advice was
taken : a silver mouth was vowed to St. George
of Erzeroom, and the toothache ceased immedi
ately ; the servant firmly believing that he had
been cured by this saint, who, he considered,
was another person, and not the same as St.
George of Smyrna, and that his picture here was
more powerful in working miracles than the
others. In the same manner, the pictures or
images of Our' Lady of Loretto, Guadaloupe, or
del Pilar are believed to be endowed with pecu
liar powers, and are, in fact, worshipped for
their own merits, and not for what they re
present. A curious episode in the history of Armenia
took place in the time of Shah Abbas the Great,
who established a colony of the natives of that
province at Julfa, a village near Isfahaun.

Chap. XV. THE PRIESTS' VESTMENTS. 223
He gave them many privileges and immunities,
which a remnant of their descendants enjoy still.
The forms and ceremonies of their worship re
semble those of the Greek Church, from which
they are derived. Their vestments are the same,
or nearly so : and here I will remark that the
sacred vestures of the Christian Church are the
same, with very insignificant modifications, among
every denomination of Christians in the world ;
that they have always been the same, and never
were otherwise in any country, from the re
motest times when we have any written accounts
of them, or any mosaics, sculptures, or pictures
to explain their forms. They are no more a
Popish invention, or have anything more to do
with the Roman Church, than any other usage
which is common to all denominations of Chris
tians. They are, and always have been, of
general and universal — that is, of catholic
— use ; they have never been used for many
centuries for ornament or dress by the laity,
having been considered as set apart to be
used only by priests in the church during
the celebration of the worship of Almighty
God. These ancient vestures have been worn
by the bishops, priests, and deacons of that in
common with the hierarchy of every other
Church. In England they have fallen into

224 ARMENIA. Chap. XV.
disuse by neglect ; King Charles I. presented
some vestments to the cathedral of Durham
long after the Reformation, and they continued
in use there almost in the memory of man.
The parish priests of the Armenian religion
are, I believe, permitted, if not obliged, to marry,
as is the case in the Greek and Russian Churches ;
but they cannot, so long as their wife survives, be
promoted to any of the higher orders of the hier
archy. Bishops, archbishops, and patriarchs are
elected out of the monastic bodies who take the
vows of celibacy ; their fasts are long and rigor
ous, their food simple, and their style of life
severe ; their time is almost entirely taken up
with the services of religion, and, as a general
rule, their ignorance is extreme.
In their doctrine of the Holy Trinity, they be
lieve that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father
alone ; that Christ descended into hell, from
whence he reprieved the souls of sinners till the
day of judgment ; that the souls of the righteous
will not be admitted to the beatific vision till
after the resurrection, notwithstanding which
they invoke them in their prayers. They make
use of pictures in their churches, but not of
images ; they use confession to the priests, and
administer the Eucharist in both kinds.
In baptism they plunge the child three times

Chap. XV. THE H0LY BOOKS.

225

in water, apply the chrism with consecrated oil
prepared only by the Patriarch. They also touch
the child's lips with the Eucharist, which consists
of unleavened bread sopped in wine.
The Holy Scriptures contain more books than
those of the Western Churches. In the Old Tes
tament, after the Book of Genesis, occurs The
Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Sons of
Jacob ; then The History of Joseph and of his wife
Asenath ; The Book of Jesus.the Son of Sirach.
After these the order of the scriptural books suc
ceeds as with us. In the New Testament, after
St. Paul's Second Epistle to the Corinthians, we
find the Epistle of the Corinthians to St. Paul,
which is followed by St. Paul's Third Epistle to
the Corinthians. The remainder of the New
Testament is the same as ours.
The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, and
the Book of Jesus the Son of Sirach, are well
known ; but I am not aware that the Book of
Asenath has been printed in any European lan
guage. This curious book was translated into
Italian, from an ancient Armenian manuscript
of the Bible in my possession, by an Armenian
friend, and translated from the Italian into
English by myself: this I presume to be the
only copy of the Book of Asenath in the English
language. It is a work of considerable length,-
L 3

226 ARMENIA. Chap. XV.
and is interesting, not only from the place it
holds in the estimation of a numerous body of
Christians, but also from the picture it presents
of the manners and customs of Egypt, at some
remote period when it was written. Several
passages in it indicate that it must have been
composed when what may be called the classic
style of life was still in use. Whether it was
included among the number of the sacred books
collected by Mesrob I do not know : in that
case it would date as far back as the fourth cen
tury after Christ, a period prolific in apocryphal
books, several of which were forged about that
time to support the authority of the various here-
siarchs who promulgated their opinions in many
countries of the East, and who, being unable to
produce texts from the accepted books of the
Sacred Scriptures which would prove the truth
of their doctrines, invented others more suitable
to their own purposes, and written more in
accordance with their views.
The Epistle from the Corinthians to St. Paul,
and the answer from the great apostle, is of a
higher class, and bears much resemblance to his
other Epistles. It has been published among
Lord Byron's works. He took a few lessons in
Armenian from Father Pasquale Aucher, a monk
of the monastery of St. Lazarus, at Yenice, a

Chap. XV. ARMENIAN CATHOLICS. 227
man of extraordinary learning, who speaks most
of the European languages, as well as Turkish,
Armenian, and other Oriental tongues. He
translated these Epistles into English, with the
assistance of Lord Byron.
The Roman Catholic branch of the Armenian
Church has done much more for literature and
civilization than the original body. Few Ca
tholics are found in Armenia itself, excepting at
Erzeroom and other cities, where a remnant
remain ; while at Constantinople a great num
ber of the higher and wealthier Armenians give
their adherence to that creed. Their minds are
more enlarged, they are less Oriental in their
ideas, being usually considered as half Franks
by their more Eastern brethren. Their churches
bear a great resemblance to those of other Ca
tholics, but they retain their own language in
their ritual, with many of the forms and cere
monies of the Oriental Church. The Armenian
Patriarch, with his long beard, and crown
instead of a mitre, is one of the picturesque
figures to whom attention is drawn in the cere
monies of the Holy Week at Rome, where there
is a college for the education of priests of their
nation. They have another college at Constan
tinople, and several handsome churches ; but the
most important estabhshment of this branch of

228 ARMENIA. Chap. XV.
their religion is that of the convent or monastery
on the island of St. Lazarus, near Yenice.
This society, as they themselves call it, was
founded by Mechitar, an Armenian, who was
born at Sebaste, in Lesser Armenia, in 1676.
He received holy orders from the Bishop Ana
nias, superior of the convent of the Holy Cross,
near Sebaste. He afterwards studied in the con
vent of Passen, near Erzeroom, and at another
on the island on Lake Yan. His wish was to
remain in the great monastery of Etchmiazin, to
which place he travelled, but, finding no oppor
tunities of study at the seat of the Patriarch, he
proceeded to Constantinople, where he afterwards
founded a small society, of a monastic kind, at
Pera, in the year 1700.
In the year 1708 he established a church and
monastic society at Modon in the Morea, then
under the government of Yenice ; but the Turks
having taken that place, his companions were
made prisoners and sold for slaves. He with
some others escaped to Yenice, where he received
a grant in the year 1717, from the Signory, of a
small deserted island in the Lagunes, originally the
property ofthe Benedictine order, who established
an hospital for lepers there in 1180. In this
island he set up a printing-press about the year
1730, for the production of Armenian religious

Chap. XV. MONASTERY OP" ST.' LAZARO. 229
books ; and he had the satisfaction of seeing his
convent increase in comfort, wealth, and respec
tability before his death, which took place on
the 27th of April, 1749.
So high was the character of this establishment
for usefulness and good conduct, that in 1810,
when other monastic establishments were sup
pressed at Yenice, the abbot of St. Lazaro re
ceived a peculiar decree, granting him and his
community all the privileges of their former in
dependence. So high also has been the character
of this society since that time, that it has been
usual for the Pope to confer upon each new abbot
the title and dignity of Archbishop, although he
has no province or bishops under him. The ser
vice they have rendered to their countrymen is
very great : they have at present five printing-
presses, from whence every year proceed numerous
volumes of rehgious and historical character, as
well as school-books, and a newspaper in the
Armenian language. These are mostly sold at
Constantinople, and among the scattered societies
of their nation. The funds produced from this
source enable them to establish a considerable
school or college at Yenice, and to send hterary
missionaries, as they may be called, to collect
manuscripts and historical notices among the
barren mountains of Armenia. Of these they
make good use, compihng, from imperfect and

230 ARMENIA. Chap. XV.
mutilated fragments, authentic histories of their
country; printing the almost hitherto lost and
unknown works of ancient Armenian authors,
and distributing copies of the Holy Scriptures
among their brethren in the wasted and be
nighted land of their fathers.
They printed the Armenian Bible in the year
1805 ; and, entirely by their energy, the small
spark which alone glimmered in the darkness of
Armenian ignorance in the East has gradually in
creased its light into a feeble ray, which now, seen
faintly through the mist, draws every now and
then the attention of some one endowed by nature
with more intelligence than the rest, and incites
him to inquire into those truths the rumours of
whose existence had only reached him hitherto.
Slowly enough, but we trust surely, the good
work prospers : when curiosity and interest are
awakened, the mind turns naturally to the sources
from which information may be gained. The
Holy Gospels, the New Testament, and in some
places the whole Bible, may now be procured at
a comparatively trifling expense ; the leaven,
once introduced, sooner or later will leaven the
whole mass ; truth and common sense will dis
sipate the clouds which ignorance and super
stition have gathered over the face of the land,
and the light of true religion will arise to set no
more.

Chap. XVI. DIVISIONS OF THE COUNTRY. 231

CHAPTER XVI.
Modern division of Armenia — Population — Manners and cus
toms of the Christians — Superiority of the Mahometans.
The country which was called Armenia in
ancient times is now divided into two portions ;
the smaller of the two belongs to Persia, but the
larger part is contained in the Turkish province
or pashalic of Erzeroom. It does not possess any
communication with the sea, and is a wild and
mountainous district. Although not of any high
importance for mercantile productions, it has con
tinually been an object of jealousy to the neigh
bouring empires of Persia and Byzantium — or,
in our time, Persia and Turkey — from the high
road between those empires necessarily passing
through it ; the power of cutting off supplies,
and permitting the passage of caravans laden
with the rich productions of other lands, being
vested in the hands of the military governor of
Erzeroom. The number of inhabitants of this
pashahc is estimated at 1,000,000 ; there were
probably more in earher times. The principal

232 ARMENIA. Chap. XVI-
cities are — Erzeroom, the capital, containing about
30,000 souls. The population of Kars is con
sidered to be about 20,000, Yan 20,000, Moosh
and Beyboort about 8000 each ; the Turkish
governor of the pashalic has generally an armed
force of 25,000 regular soldiers ; but it would be
easy for him, with sufficient funds, to raise a
more considerable force of irregular cavalry, and
infantry armed with rifles, the use of which
weapon is well understood by the hardy moun
taineers and hunters, whose manners in some
respects resemble those of the Tyrolese. The
greater half of the population are Mahometan
Turks, or Osmanlis, followers of Osman ; the
word Turk is never used in this country, and is
more generally applied to the Turkomans and
some of the tribes on the Persian border, who
are of Calmuc or Tartar origin, and a completely
different sort of people from those whom we call
Turks. The Christian population consists of a
small number of Greeks, Nestorians, and Roman
Catholics, the greater part being descendants of
the ancient possessors of the soil, and professing
the Christianity of the Armenian Church, which
I have attempted to describe above. Their
manners and customs are the same as those of
the Turks, whom they copy in dress and in their
general way of living ; so much is this the case,

Chap. XVI. THE CHRISTIANS. 233
that it is frequently difficult to distinguish the
Turkish from the Armenian family, both in
Armenia and at Constantinople ; only the Ar
menian is the inferior in all respects ; he would
be called in China a second-chop Turk ; he is
more quick and restless in his motions, and
wants the dignity and straightforward bearing
of the Osmanli. More than 100,000 Armenians
are settled at Constantinople ; these are not so
ignorant, and are, even in appearance, different
from those of their original country, who are a
heavy and loutish race, while the citizens are
thin, sharp, active in money-making arts, and
remarkable for their acuteness in mercantile
transactions. Each Turkish village elects its
cadi, a sort of mayor ; an Armenian Christian
village elects its elder, who is called the Ak
Sakal, or White Beard ; he is the responsible
person in all transactions with Government, and
sometimes holds an arduous post.
The women live in a harem, like the Turkish
women, separate from the men. The mistress of
the house superintends the kitchen, the making of
preserves, and salting winter stores ; they wear
the yashmak, or Turkish veil, at Constantinople,
where the Armenian ladies are celebrated for
their beauty and their fine eyes and black arched
eyebrows. In Armenia, the women, when they

234 ARMENIA. Chap. XVI.
go out, wrap themselves up in a large piece of
bunting, the same kind of stuff that is used in
Europe for flags ; being of wool, it takes a fine
colour in dyeing. The ample wrappers of the
women are sometimes of a bright scarlet, some
times a brilliant white or blue. The effect of
this veil is much more pleasing than those of
Constantinople or Egypt. The Armenians are
not bad cooks : some of their dishes are excel
lent ; one of mutton stewed with quinces leaves
a very favourable impression on the recollec
tions of the hungry traveller. The country
people live underground in the peculiar houses
which I have described ; they are an agricul
tural peasantry, tilling the ground, and not
possessing large herds of sheep or cattle, like
the Turkomans, Koords, or Arabs ; they are a
heavy-looking race, but are hardy and active,
and inured from youth to exercise and endur
ance, but even in these respects they are excelled
by the Mahometan mountaineers.
The superiority of the Mahometan over the
Christian cannot fail to strike the mind of an in
telligent person who has lived among these races,
as the fact is evident throughout the Turkish em
pire. This arises partly from the oppression which
the Turkish rulers in the provinces have exercised
for centuries over their Christian subjects : this

Chap. XVI. MAHOMETAN SUPERIORITY. 235
is probably the chief reason ; but the Turk obeys
the dictates of his religion, the Christian does
not ; the Turk does not drink, the Christian
gets drunk; the Turk is honest, the Turkish
peasant is a pattern of quiet, good-humoured
honesty ; the Christian is a liar and a cheat ;
his religion is so overgrown with the rank weeds
of superstition that it no longer serves to guide
his mind in the right way. It would be a work
of great difficulty to disentangle the pure faith
preached by the Apostles from the mass of
absurdities and strange notions with which
Christianity is encumbered, in the belief of the
villagers in out-of-the-way places, among the
various sects of Christians in the dominions of
the Sultan. This seems to have been the case
for many centuries, and it has produced its effect
in lowering the standard of morality and in
juring the general character of those nations
who are subjects of Turkey and not of the Ma
hometan religion. For, of two evils, it is better
to follow the doctrines of a false religion than to
neglect the precepts of the true faith.

236 ARMENIA. Chap. XVII.

CHAPTER XVII.
Armenian manuscripts — Manuscripts at Etchmiazin — Comparative
value of manuscripts — Uncial writing — Monastic libraries — Col
lections in Europe — The St. Lazaro library.
Armenian manuscripts are of extreme rarity,
not only in Europe, but in Armenia itself, at
Constantinople, or any other place. The un
settled state in which that distracted province
has from time immemorial been sunk has pre
vented the development of the peaceful arts, and
few of the monastic establishments of that country
had wealth, or leisure, or convenience to copy
and illuminate their books. The few fine manu
scripts which I have met with seem to have
been written for some of the Armenian princes,
and were the works of scribes supported by ex
alted personages, who wrote under the shadow
of their protection in the metropolitan cities, or
in the patriarchal monastery of Etchmiazin. I
was prevented by illness when in the neighbour
hood from visiting Etchmiazin, but there are
preserved (or rather neglected) there, I have been

Chap. XVII. MANUSCRIPTS. 237
given to understand, more than 2000 ancient
manuscripts. These are completely unknown,
unless within these few years they have been
examined by any Russian antiquarian ; no other
traveller has been there who was competent to
overlook a dusty library, so as to give any idea,
not of what there is, but even what it may be
likely to contain. This, as my bibliographical
friends are well aware, is a peculiar art or
mystery depending more on a general knowledge
of the first aspect of an old book than a capacity
to appreciate its contents. A book written on
vellum implies a certain antiquity immediately
recognisable by the initiated. If it does not
appear to be ancient, it is then more than pro
bable that it contains the works of some author
of more than ordinary consideration, to have
made it worth while to go to the expense and
labour of a careful scribe and a material difficult
in those days to procure. An illuminated manu
script on vellum, if not a prayer-book, secures
additional attention ; independent of its value
as a work of art, it must be of some conse
quence to have made it worth illuminating. A
large manuscript as a general rule is worth more
than a httle one, for the same evident reason
that its contents were considered at the time
when it was written to have been of some im-

238 ARMENIA. Chap. XVII.
portance, and deserving of more labour, time,
and care, than if it was just written out cheaply
by a common scribe. Uncial writing — that is, a
book written in capital letters — is much more
ancient than one written in a cursive hand, and
the most ancient volumes were generally large
square quartos. It is curious that this should
be the case in almost all nations and languages
surrounding the Mediterranean, though their
customs may be so different in other respects.
Manuscripts on paper again are sometimes of
remarkable interest from their containing the
works of authors then considered trivial and
inferior, but now of much more value than the
more ponderous tomes of the middle ages.
The majority of the volumes in an ancient mo
nastic library are worn-out, imperfect church-
books, which have been cast aside from time to
time, and committed to the care of the mice and
spiders, who alone .frequent the shelves or the
floor of that dusty lumber-room. It is un
common to find a manuscript in more than one
volume, unless it may be the works of St. Chry
sostom, or another of the Fathers of the Church.
In this case the volumes are hardly ever found
together, and a complete set, of three or four
volumes, is beyond hoping for ; carelessness and
neglect having been for centuries the librarians

Chap. XVII. MANUSCRIPTS. 239
of the monastery. These and other circum
stances combine to make a cursory examination
of one of these original hoards of bygone litera
ture a task for which the learned student of
some abstruse science, or dead or dying language,
is totally incompetent. The translator of an
almost forgotten tongue, the laborious compiler
of unpublished history, requires that the musty
chronicles, the splendid illuminated volumes
bound in gold and velvet', the crabbed ill-written
works of antique lore, should be laid upon the
table before him, so that, in the undisturbed
silence of his study, surrounded with lexicons
and modern books of reference, he may bit by
bit extract the pith, and winnow off the chaff,
from the venerable manuscripts of distant lands
and other times. The bibliographical traveller,
who is to provide these precious relics for his
careful use, who is to drag them from their dark
recesses where they have been lying undisturbed
500 or 1000 years, has an entirely different task
to fulfil. The professor would require months
to look over each book one by one, to brush
away the cobwebs, to ascertain by difficult and
uncertain passages what the subject of those
manuscripts might be which had lost many pages
at the beginning and end, and to satisfy himself
at last that it was worthless — a conclusion to

240

ARMENIA. Chap. XVII.

which another would arrive at the first glance.
This power of immediately appreciating thevalue
of ancient manuscripts in the manner above men
tioned will be understood by those who are aware
that such is the usual jealousy of the ignorant
monks for that which they can neither use nor
understand themselves, that it hardly ever hap
pens that a stranger is permitted to take more
than a general survey of the wormeaten and dusty
mass which lies in heaps upon the floor, or is
piled in the corners of the room which they call
their library, but which they probably have never
entered on any other occasion.
Such as I have described are the libraries at
Etchmiazin, the monastery on Lake Yan, those
near Urumia, and the few places where more
than the church-books are still remaining.
In England the Bodleian Library contains
about twenty volumes of Armenian manuscripts ;
the British Museum not so many I believe : the
Royal Library at Paris has about 200, which were
collected by the emissaries of Louis XIY. Some
of these are of considerable antiquity and beauty.
In private collections very few are to be found. In
my library there are about a dozen, of which two
are the most splendid that I have met with in
the East, or in any country. I possess also a
number of loose leaves of the highest antiquity,

Chap. XVII. MANUSCRIPTS.

241

which are so far curious that they display the
progress of the art of writing almost since the
days of Mesrob to the present time. But with
the exception of the unknown treasures of Etch
miazin, the convent of St. Lazaro at Yenice not
only preserves, but makes good use of, the finest
collection of Armenian manuscripts extant. Their
number is about 1200, of which 100 are on vel
lum ; the rest are written partly on ancient paper
made from cotton, and partly on paper such as
we use at present. Three volumes on Charta
Bombycina are among the most ancient that I
have met with that are written on that material :
one contains commentaries on the Psalms and
the Epistles, by Ephraim Syrius and St. Chry
sostom, written in the year of the Armenian era
448, Anno Domini 999 ; — the second is a small
book of prayer, containing the date of a.d. 1178 ;
— the third is the romance of Alexander the
Great : this curious volume is illustrated with
numerous drawings richly gilt and coloured ; it
was written in the 13th century.
They have three copies of the Gospels, and one
Ritual written in uncial letters (one of these
ancient copies of the Gospels is illuminated with
several large miniatures in a style resembling
Greek art) ; as well as several others of inferior
interest.

242 ARMENIA. Chap. XVII.
The library also possesses six or seven richly
illuminated copies of the Scriptures, some splen
did books of prayer, and a great number of other
Armenian manuscripts containing records of the
history or the works of authors who were natives
of that country, from which have been printed
many volumes whose pages illustrate manners
and events which were completely forgotten be
fore the monks of St. Lazaro rescued them from
oblivion.

Chap. XVIII. FORMER SOVEREIGNS.

243

CHAPTER XVIII.
General history of Armenia — Former sovereigns — Tiridates I.
receives his crown from Nero — Conquest of the country by the
Persians, and by the Arabs — List of modern kings — Misfortunes
of Leo V. ; his death at Paris.
The general history of Armenia contains but
little that is interesting. It presents the picture
of a line of sovereigns who have seldom been
able to support their own authority, and who
have constantly abdicated, embraced monastic
vows, or been driven from the throne by rebel
lions of their subjects and invasions of neigh
bouring conquerors more talented and more
powerful than themselves. Many of the Ar
menian kings seem to have lived almost on the
charity of other states ; the lines of their dynas
ties have been so often interrupted, and the
changes from kings to governors, dukes, and
counts have been so frequent, that their history
is most intricate ; and, from the boundaries of
the so-called kingdom of Armenia having never
been the same for many years together, it is
M 2

244 ARMENIA. Chap. XVIII.
difficult to understand from the scattered notices
which history has transmitted to us who should
be considered as the head of the state, or which
of the many vassal princes, under the great em
pires of the East, has the better claim to the
title of sovereign of this ancient kingdom.
At the time of our Saviour, Abgarus, King of
Edessa, seems to have exercised sovereignty
over great part of Armenia, on the southern
and western sides. Tiridates I. is the first
person styling himself King of Armenia after
this period. He conquered the country from
Rhadamistus, by the assistance of his brother
Yologeses, King of Parthia. The Romans, how
ever, who did not approve of the erection of an
independent kingdom in those regions, sent an
army against Tiridates, commanded by Corbulo,
who forced Tiridates to abdicate, on condition of
his proceeding to Rome, to receive his crown
from the hands of the Emperor Nero. He was
received with the highest honours by the Roman
emperor, who advanced as far as Naples to meet
him. Tiridates won his good graces by the art
ful manner in which he flattered Nero on his
skill in driving a chariot. They became great
friends : the Armenian king received large sums
of money from the emperor, with which he
returned to his own country, and repaired his

Chap. XVIII. MODERN KINGS.

245

dismantled fortresses. He changed the name of
his capital from Artaxarte to Neronia, in com
pliment to his imperial protector, and died in the
year 75 a.d., after a reign of eleven years.
To him succeeded several princes who were
vassals to the Roman empire, but whose actions do
not seem to offer anything of interest. Tiridates
II. had received his education at Rome, and,
assisted by the emperor, he was placed upon the
throne of Armenia, by the general consent of the
nobles of his country, in 259. He, as I have
mentioned in the ecclesiastical sketch of this his
tory, embraced Christianity, and died in the year
314. Other unimportant princes succeeded,
among whom John Nustaron governed Armenia,
under the Emperor Maurice. The Persians con
quered the country in the reign of the Emperor
Phocas, but it was soon retaken by Heraclius.
Pasagnates revolted against the Emperor Con*
stantine II., who defeated him, and placed Saba-
rius, a Persian, on the throne, who also rebelled,
and was beat in the year 658. Justinian II. con
cluded a treaty with the Caliph Abdolmalek, by
which the two sovereigns divided between them
the revenues of Armenia, Iberia, and Cyprus ; and
the same emperor, Justinian II., placed Sablas on
the Armenian throne. This prince, being esta
blished in this mountainous kingdom, organised
M 3

246

ARMENIA. Chap. XVIII.

an army, and, having attempted to extricate his
country from the power of the Caliph, was de
feated by him in 687, and the Arabs became
masters of Armenia. The Emperor Constantine
Copronymus retook this province, and established
Paidus as viceroy. Paulus was conquered by
the forces of the Caliph, but he afterwards re
established himself upon the throne.
After his reign Armenia was governed by se
veral dukes and counts, some of whom ruled over
a larger, and some over a smaller, portion of the
country. During this period constant battles and
disturbances took place between the adherents of
the caliphs and the Christian emperors in this
distracted province. The Patriarch of Constan
tinople made every endeavour to break down the
religious subjection of the Armenians to their
heretical Patriarch. But the history of the nu
merous princes who succeeded each other after
periods of short and doubtful power on the throne
of parts only of Armenia, is so complicated and
so doubtful, that I shall not attempt to speak of
them, and proceed to the time of the first gene
rally acknowledged king of modern times. The
name of this monarch was —
. Philaretes Branchance. After resisting the
forces of the Emperor Michael Ducas, he sub
mitted to his successor Nicephorus Botoniates,

Chap. XVIII. MODERN KLNGS.

247

by whom he was supported through the rest of
his reign. He flourished about the year 1080.
Constantine was succeeded by his brother
Taphroc, or Taphnuz. Under these two sove
reigns appear numerous petty princes, who were
feudatories to the King.
Leo, who was long a prisoner under the Turks,
lived in 1131.
Theodorus, or Thoros, after a stormy reign,
died in 1170.
Thomas, son of the sister of Thoros.
Milo, brother of Thoros. Under this reign
the power of the Knights Templars was for
midable. They had acquired large possessions
in Armenia ; and their numerous preceptories
were in fact fortified castles, from which they
defied the power of their suzerain. Milo waged
war with the Templars, and succeeded in banish
ing many of their followers from his dominions.
He died in 1180.
Rupinus was made prisoner by Bohemond,
Prince of Antioch. He died in 1189.
Leo I., or Livon, concluded a treaty, by which
he freed Armenia from the tribute which it had
paid to the Prince of Antioch, instead of which
he voluntarily paid homage to the Pope Celes-
tinus III. ¦ He lived in perpetual war with the
formidable body of Knights Templars, with
various success, and died in 1219.

248 ARMENIA. Chap. XVIII.
Isabel, daughter of Leo. In the reign of this
princess the kingdom of Armenia became tri
butary to the Turkish Sultans of Iconium.
Alton, or Otho, sent ambassadors to St. Louis,
King of France, in the island of Cyprus. He made
a visit to Mangou, Khan of Tartary, whom he con
verted to Christianity, and in alliance with whom,
assisted by his brother Houlagou Khan, he made
war against the Mahometans, and, having de
stroyed the castles of the Assassins, penetrated
into the dominions of the Sultan of Aleppo,
their further progress being stopped by the death
of Mangou Khan, which occasioned the return
of Houlagou to his own country. The Saracens
or Mahometans on this change of affairs in their
turn overran Armenia, where they committed
dreadful cruelties ; and Aiton, having abdicated
the crown in 1270, retired into a monastery,
under the name of Macarius, where he died in
the year 1272.
Leo, the son of Aiton, mounted the throne of
his father in 1270, and was in constant war with
Bondochar, Sultan of Egypt, who massacred
20,000 persons in Armenia. He was excom
municated for outrages committed upon the
Patriarch of Antioch. After a reign of trouble
and disaster he died in 1288.
Aiton or Otho II, the son of Leo, with many

Chap. XVIII. MODERN KLNGS. 249
of his nation, embraced the Roman faith, and
demanded the assistance of Pope Boniface VIII.
against the infidels who menaced his power.
No effective assistance having been afforded him,
he abdicated the throne, took the habit of a
Capuchin friar, and, under the name of Brother
John, died in the year 1294.
Thoros, or Theodorus, despairing of success
against the incursions of the neighbouring na
tions, also became a Capuchin friar. He died
in 1296.
Sembat, or Penibald, the brother of Aiton and
Thoros, usurped the throne in the absence of his
brothers ; he was dethroned by another brother,
Constantine, and died in 1298.
Constantine sent his remaining brothers to
Constantinople, with a recommendation to the
Emperor to take care of them. The year of his
death is uncertain.
Leo III. was murdered in the year 1307.
Chir Ossim, with the assistance of Pope John
XXII., made an advantageous truce or treaty
with the Kings of Sicily and Cyprus, with whom
he was at war. This was accomplished through
the mediation of the Genoese, who at this time
appear to have been the principal traders in
Constantinople, Persia, and Armenia. He died
in 1320.

250 ARMENIA. Chap. XVIII.
Leo IV. lived in continual war with the
Saracens. This King sent ambassadors to Phi
lippe de Yalois, King of France, to beg assist
ance against the incursions of the Saracens. He
married first Constancia, daughter of Frederic
King of Sicily ; and secondly the daughter of
the Prince of Tarentum, niece to Robert King
of Naples. Having provoked the jealousy of
his countrymen by promoting numerous French
men to high offices of government, he was
assassinated in the year 1344.
After his death Guy de Lusignan was elected
King of Armenia. He died in 1344.
Constans, or Constantius, apparently his son,
succeeded Guy de Lusignan, and was killed by
the Saracens in 1351. He had despatched am
bassadors to implore assistance against the infi
dels to the Courts of the Pope, the King of
England, and the King of France.
Constantine, the next king, appears to have
lived in continual troubles with his own subjects,
as well as in constant alarm at the increasing
inroads of the neighbouring powers on both
sides. The annals of his stormy reign are al
most silent, and it is not known when he died.
To such a state of misery and confusion was the
kingdom of Armenia now reduced, that the
existence of another king, who was probably his

Chap. XVIII. MISFORTUNES OF LEO V. 251
successor, is only known by the witness of a rare
coin, which bears as legend drago . rex . armen.
agapi. In the year 1368 the nobles of Ar
menia elected Peter L, King of Cyprus, king ;
but he was at Rome at that period, and never
took possession of his precarious honour.
The records of the Armenian sovereigns are
now drawing to a close. About this period,
Leo V., of the family of Lusignan, was seated on
his trembling throne. He was famous only for
his misfortunes. Menaced on every side, his
provinces and castles one by one fell before the
victorious inroads of the Turks : the Genoese
alone, who in pursuit of trade had fortified many
strong places in Armenia, held out gallantly
against the common foe, and the Mahometan
invaders were unable to gain possession of the
town of Curco, or Corycus, in Cilicia, which
was defended by the soldiers of the intrepid
merchants. After a constant series of disasters
and defeats, the unhappy king escaped with his
life to the island of Cyprus, from whence he
passed to Italy, and afterwards to Castile, where
he implored in vain for assistance from those
Christian princes to reinstate him in the kingdom
of his ancestors, which had fallen into the power
of the infidel, and which from that period to the
present day has continued to form one of the

252

ARMENIA. Chap. XVIII.

great pashalics, or provinces, of the Turkish
empire. From Castile he took refuge in France,
where he was received with distinguished
favour and hospitality by King Charles V., who
assigned for his residence the hotel of St. Ouen,
near St. Denis. About- the year 1378 Leo
passed over to England, in the hopes of effecting
peace between King Richard II. and the King
of France, with whom he was then at war, and
inducing the two sovereigns to embark in a
crusade against the Turks for the recovery of
the Holy Land, and for his own restoration to
his kingdom. His overtures, like all his other
acts, were unsuccessful ; but from Richard King
of England he received magnificent presents
and a pension of 20,000 marcs, which munificence
was imitated by the King of France in an annual
allowance of 6000 livres.
Leo, King of Armenia, was of small stature,
but of intelligent expression and well-formed
features : he lived in great magnificence, being
richer from the presents of the Christian mo-
narchs than he had been in his own beleaguered
kingdom. The last of his royal line, he died,
leaving no successor, at Paris, in the year 1393.
His body was carried to the tomb clothed in
royal robes of white, according to the custom of
Armenia, with an open crown upon his head

Chap. XVIII. DEATH OF LEO V. 253
and a golden sceptre in his hand. He lay in
state upon an open bier hung with white, and
surrounded by the officers of his household
clothed all of them in white robes. He was
buried by the high altar of the church of the
Celestines, where his effigy was to be seen upon
a black marble tomb under an archway in the
wall, and on the tomb was written —
€y qiit le tr«J noble et treS erttlfent ^rtnte, Upon tie
JUttfignan, quint mot Eattn tfu moijaulme fc'^rmenu, qui
vnvBtt Tame a Sieu a |)arfe le rjrir. jour tte Jiobembie, Tan
tie ©rate mectjmtt.

THE END.

By the same Author.
Lately Published, Fourth Edition, with numerous Illustrations,
Post 8vo., 15s.
VISITS TO THE MONASTERIES OF THE LEVANT.
BY THE HON. ROBERT CURZON, JUN.

" This work is a most welcome addition to the stock of ' Travels in the
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in his rambles in the East in quest of ancient manuscripts, the author has
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