Our party consisted of Denniston, Stoker, Morisot, myself, and Williams our trusty dragoman, while last, but not least, came the lady. We had hired twelve horses to carry ourselves and our baggage, contracting to pay the headman of the caravan four pounds per horse for the journey to Trebizond; and accordingly when we started we formed an important section of the whole caravan of about fifty horses which set out from Erzeroum. Besides the headman, who was a most forbidding-looking Persian, there were fifteen drivers who accompanied us; each, I think, dirtier, hungrier, and more truculent-looking than the other. We guessed when we started that the journey would not be exactly a pleasure excursion; but the reality far exceeded our anticipations, and the next time that any one asks me to make an overland journey with a widow, a still small voice within will whisper, "Beware! Remember Erzeroum and the Spanish doña."
Riding on a pack-saddle, which consists of two plates of hard wood joined by hinges at the apex where it fits over the horse's spine, is not the most agreeable way of taking horse exercise; and the doña, who was necessarily riding en cavalier, began to give tongue before she had gone a hundred yards. We made a cushion out of an old sack filled with hay, and our incubus heaved a sigh of relief when we placed it between her ill used anatomy and the bare boards which she bestrode. Then the procession went forward again, the horses stepping out in single file on the first stage of the long journey of one hundred and eighty miles that lay between us and the sea.
We left Erzeroum on March 31, intending to catch the Messageries steamer Simois, which was due to leave Trebizond on April 10, and fancying that by giving ourselves ample time we would have three or four days in Trebizond to recruit before going on board. However, we reckoned without our host, or on this occasion, to speak more accurately, without our guest—the lady. She spoke every continental language except English with equal facility, and her vocabulary in each was surprisingly extensive. Day and night for one consecutive fortnight her shrill falsetto voice poured forth a never failing stream of complaint and invective, abuse and lamentation in half a dozen languages. What she suffered no one knew except herself, although this was not her fault, to be sure, for she lost no opportunity of imparting the information, sometimes in Spanish, and when she had exhausted the resources of that noble language in the slang of half the capitals of Europe. We found too late that our doña had not been cast in the heroic mould. She had never learnt how beautiful it is to suffer—and be silent.
A few miles from Erzeroum we came to the village of Ilidja, which was occupied by the Russians; and there we halted for half an hour, and had a glass of wine with a party of jovial officers, who were keeping up their spirits as well as they could in the lonely, God-forsaken place. On a dunghill in the village we counted eleven dead Russians; so we guessed that the typhus was not confined to Erzeroum.
When we got to Purnekapan, we camped for the night in the town, intending to make an early start, so as to negotiate the Kopdagh Pass before the sun spoiled the road. An unexpected difficulty, however, presented itself, for our Persian headman refused to go on, declaring that it was necessary to rest his horses for a day. In vain did we cojole, threaten, or bully him. He had come under the spell of a fixed idea, and nothing that we could say seemed to have the slightest effect upon his diseased intelligence. But at last I found a way to move him. There was a Turkish regiment in the village, and I sought an interview with the colonel, who had heard something about our work, and was very well disposed towards us. Tapping the butt of his revolver significantly, he suggested to the Persian that it was high time to start, and the hint was accepted with alacrity. However, all this had taken time, and before we left the foot of the mountain and began the ascent it was eleven o'clock, and the sun's rays were ruining the track.
It was as exciting a bit of mountaineering as I have ever gone through, and we had to strain every nerve to climb the pass. In many places the track was only a couple of feet wide, a winding path cut round the side of the mountain, with a cliff on one side and a precipice on the other. As we mounted slowly and cautiously up the path, every nerve was at tension and every sense on the alert. Now and then, as the Persian drivers shouted and urged the frightened horses with voice and whip to face the slippery rising ground, one of the animals would slip, and for a second or two one's heart was in one's mouth. In spite of every effort we lost three pack-horses before we won the summit. A slip on the glassy surface, a couple of frightened plunges in the loose snow near the edge, and then the unfortunate creatures disappeared over the side, falling upon a lower spur four hundred feet beneath us. One of the horses that we lost in this way was loaded with my personal effects. The presents that I was taking back to my friends, some beautiful turquoises from the Tiflis mines, as well as the Russian furs, the Russian leather cigar-cases, and the other keepsakes that the warm-hearted officers in Erzeroum had given me, all vanished with that hapless pack-horse into some inaccessible ravine far below the Kopdagh peak. However, all the Persian drivers came through safely, and there were no missing faces in our party when we reached the summit, nine thousand feet above the level of the sea. The widow was still with us, numbed with the cold, exhausted with fatigue, and half shaken to death on her pack-saddle, but voluble as ever, and, like the person in the Greek play, "full of groans and not devoid of tears."
Just as we neared the summit I saw a Turkish woman climbing slowly and painfully up the track; but when we got to the shelter-house erected on the crest of the mountain, I lost sight of her. As we resumed our march, I noticed tracks in the snow in front of us, and drew the attention of Williams the dragoman to the impressions which had evidently been made by a woman. The dragoman disappeared for ten minutes on a tour of exploration, and when he returned he brought back a strange piece of intelligence. A Turkish baby had been born in a shed near the shelter-house while we were there, and the mother, whom we had seen climbing the pass, was already walking off with her newborn infant to her own village five miles away across the snow. Surely the cares of maternity lie lightly on those hardy Turkish mothers in the mountains of Asia Minor.
As may be guessed, we found a good deal of difficulty in replenishing our commissariat during this eventful journey. The Turkish troops had pretty well swept the board; and if the villagers had not hidden away some of their scanty stock from the foraging parties, we should have come off very badly. We managed to get eggs occasionally en route, and onions were also obtainable. I used to stuff my pockets with these delicacies and munch them raw. I found them very sustaining, and I have no doubt that my companions when they ventured near me could testify that my diet was strong. When we reached the village at the foot of the Kopdagh where we were to camp for the night, we were all ravenously hungry, and as I shot a keen glance round the village in search of supplies I espied a kid. It was a very nice-looking kid, and it frisked and gambolled most alluringly. I slipped off my pack-horse, and approached the kid in a friendly manner that disarmed suspicion. Then I grabbed it by the ear, drew my big clasp knife, and cut its throat on the spot. I skinned it and cleaned it with my own experienced hands, and Williams the dragoman made an excellent ragoût. I gave the owner of the kid a Turkish lira as compensation for his loss, which was truly our gain, for the kid was a succulent little creature, and tasted very much like venison.
We could not have travelled fast under the most favourable conditions, and hampered as we were by the Spanish widow our progress became very slow indeed. It was not an easy task, even for one accustomed to riding, to remain on the wooden pack-saddle when a rough horse was plunging about in the snow; but for the Spanish widow it was literally impossible—a fact which she demonstrated by falling off five times during the journey over the Kop. It always happened in the same way. The hind legs of her pack-horse would slip down in the loose snow up to the hocks, while the fore feet remained steady for just one second on a harder patch, so that the animal's back described an angle of forty-five degrees with the surface of the ground. During that one second the widow seized the opportunity of slipping off backwards over the horse's tail; and so quickly did she accomplish the feat that the watchful Williams, whom I specially told off, much to his disgust, to look after her, only arrived in time to pick her up. The sight of that middle-aged, sallow-faced Spanish person, in short skirts and blue goggles, sitting helplessly in the snow while Williams patiently collected her once more, would have made us laugh heartily were it not for the "damnable iteration" of the occurrence.