Steamers, however, suffer from unpunctuality in Turkey as well as elsewhere, and at the last moment we found that the boat would not start until next morning. Baron Munday heard of this, and gave a grand farewell dinner to me at the club that night, when about a dozen of us sat down to a regular banquet, and drank each other's healths in bumpers of champagne. In those old fighting days a farewell dinner to any one was a thing to wonder at; for it was always a shade of odds that a fever or a rifle-bullet would claim a good many of the guests before they could meet again, and the more risky the prospects of the future the more lively was the certain pleasure of the present. Late that night, or rather early next morning, they saw me down to the quay where the Messageries boat was lying, and I went on board, lugging with me a bag containing three hundred English sovereigns—perhaps the only coins on earth that will fetch their face value anywhere. With me there went Dr. Woods, an adventurous spark from the north of Ireland, who was deputed to act with me, Captain Morisot, and Mr. Harvey.
A fine old Frenchman commanded the little Messageries steamer, and by his manner and language he seemed a regular old aristocrat, who had not always been running a small "tramp" boat on the Black Sea. Although far from Paris, he had not forgotten the principles of gastronomy, and the cuisine on board that perambulating little tub was simply perfect. I had never lived so well in my life. We had a delightful passage up the Black Sea, calling in at the different ports on the north side, Sinope, Samsoun, and finally Trebizond, where we disembarked for the overland journey to Erzeroum.
Trebizond is a beautiful town built on a table-land at the top of high cliffs looking down over the Black Sea. There was a very good Greek hotel there, and we put up for the night in it. As soon as possible we called on Mr. Biliotti,[4] the English consul at Trebizond, and he gave us a message to push on to Erzeroum as quickly as possible, as Mukhtar Pasha was in urgent need of medical officers and stores.
With Mr. Biliotti we met Captain McCalmont, who was on the staff of Sir Arnold Kemball, the British military attaché in Asiatic Turkey. All the preliminaries for our journey had been settled by the indefatigable Mr. Biliotti; and as we had two dragomen, I left one of them, a man named Williams, behind us to bring on the heavy packages, the bandages, drugs, stimulants, and other medical stores, while we pushed forward with the other.
When we left Trebizond, our party consisted of Dr. Woods, Captain Morisot, Harvey, and myself. We started early in the morning for our long ride to Erzeroum through the wild and picturesque country which ethnologists and philologists have alike decided upon as the cradle of the human race, and where biblical legend, agreeing with the conclusions of science, has placed the primitive Garden of Eden. The road that we travelled was a splendid one, macadamized nearly all the way, and built in that solid and enduring form that men gave to their highways before the railways came to compete with them. It was this road that Xenophon travelled with his legions over two thousand years ago when they made their famous return march to Greece. Readers of that dead-and-gone Greek captain's diary will remember his explicit description of the journey, and his continually recurring remark that they came after a stage of so many "parasangs" to "a populous town, well watered, and situated on a river." Since Xenophon's day most of those populous towns have disappeared, and nothing is left but the beetling cliffs that frowned down upon the homeward marching Greeks, and the sea that ripples as fresh and blue to-day as when the hoplites and the bowmen saw it gleaming at last before them and ran forward with the glad, exulting cry, "Thalassa, Thalassa!"
The road is still divided into posts or stages, and we travelled from stage to stage with fresh post-horses. It was tiring work riding these rough and badly broken brutes, and Dr. Woods, who was an indifferent horseman, suffered very severely; but the excitement of the journey and the wildness of the scenery kept us up.
Our first day's journey was very picturesque, for the road wound along the side of a deep ravine for many miles, and then curled along the flanks of the hills that rose above us beautifully clad with hazel trees. We passed through a part of the district of Lazistan, and were much struck by the magnificent type of men that we saw there, tall, straight, muscular fellows, lithe and hardy as the mountain ash. Perhaps it is true that this country is the real cradle of the human race, and that from there the tide of migration flowed westward over Europe, sending one tributary stream down into Greece, and another down into Italy, and passing onwards in ever increasing volume, until it spread population, not only through Western Europe, but away, as industrious archæologists have whispered, conning their strange finds among the Incas of Peru and Mexico, to the great Western continent that lay beyond the fabled inland of Atlantis. At any rate those who hold to this theory might find support for it in the magnificent physique of the present population of this primeval country. At times, when a sick man is sent back to breathe the air of his native place after a lifetime spent in some distant city, he gathers new health and strength in some mysterious way. So tired humanity, sick and undersized in Western Europe, regains its pristine vigour and development among the mountains and ravines where it first saw the light.
Not only were these men of Lazistan very fine fellows themselves, but we saw that they possessed some magnificent dogs, powerfully built, shaggy coated animals, with enormous muscular strength. These dogs were greatly prized by their owners; and though I tried hard to secure one by purchase, I failed. They are used to guard the flocks of their masters, and many a fierce duel has been fought at night between a grey old wolf, impelled by hunger to attack the sheep, and the grim custodian of the flock. In the winter all the mountains in Lazistan are covered with snow for months, and the white covering of those lonely grassy slopes is often stained by the traces of these battles à outrance.
After completing our first day's journey, we came in the evening to a small village, where we put up at a filthy little khan, and made ourselves as comfortable as we could. We had brought plenty of food with us, and our principal discomfort was as usual occasioned by the fleas, which were as pertinacious as those which Thackeray has depicted as pulling the Kickleburys out of bed during their famous excursion up the Rhine.