path that ran between bramble hedges enclosing fruit gardens, rejoined the carriage road and crossed the Ma’den Chai, which is the local name for the main arm of the Tigris, by a bridge near Kalender Khân. We had now fairly entered into the mountains, and our road took us over high bare ridges and down again to the Ma’den Chai at the village of Arghana Ma’den, the mines of Arghana. On a shelf of the opposite hill-side the smoke drifted perpetually from the smelting furnaces of the richest copper mines in Turkey ([Fig. 210]). The metal, smelted on the site, is cast into disks, two of which go to a camel load, and sent across the hills to Diyârbekr and Cæsarea, Sivâs and Tokat. The valley of the Ma’dan Chai, where the village lies, is so narrow that it offers no camping-ground; we lodged, therefore, in a charming khân above the village by the water’s edge—but for the fact that it was innocent of furniture I could have fancied myself in an English country inn by the side of a rushing trout stream. The rain fell heavily in the night, and we rode for the greater part of the next day through an alternate drizzle and downpour, and were unable to determine which we enjoyed the most. The river cuts here through a deep rocky gorge, and the road climbs up by the side of the stream. The mists, clinging to the precipitous slopes, added to the sombre grandeur of a pass which opened at its upper end on to an exquisite little fertile plain, set like a jewel among the hills. Through its cornfields the infant Tigris, a rippling brook, wandered from willow clump to willow clump; we parted from it two hours from its source, and set our faces towards the hills which divide it from its mightier brother, the Euphrates. At their foot lies the Little Lake, Göljik, encircled by peaks, of which the northern slopes were white with snow patches ([Fig. 211]). It is slightly brackish, and its waters have no outlet. We turned aside from the carriage road and took a bridle path along the northern side of the lake, and up the hills beyond it. Before we reached the crest of the slopes we struck the road again and by it crossed the water parting, and saw below us the rich and smiling plain of Kharpût bounded by mountains, through which wound the silver streak of the Euphrates. We camped that night at the foot of the pass in the Armenian village of Keghvank, our tents being advantageously placed in a grove of mulberry-trees, loaded with ripe fruit.[209] Kharpût, or rather the lower town, Mezreh,[210] which is the seat of government of the vilayet of Ma’mûret el ’Azîz, lies three hours from Keghvank. The plain between is exceedingly fertile; it is scattered over with villages about half of which are inhabited by Armenians, who suffered cruelly in the massacres of 1895. At Kezerik, half-an-hour to the south-east of Mezreh, two finely-cut inscriptions, commemorating the expedition of Domitius Corbulo in A.D. 65, are built into the walls of a ruined church. They are well known, but I, coming from far beyond the limits of the Roman empire, turned aside with pious enthusiasm and read the high-sounding titles of Nero, as one who glories in their achievements of his own people: Nero Claudius Cæsar Augustus Germanicus Imperator Pontifex Maximus, the words rang out with greater splendour from those remote stones than from any lying within the walls of Rome.
Kharpût is set upon the summit of the hills beyond Mezreh. The castle, standing upon the highest crag, guards a shallow ravine wherein is stretched the greater part of the town, but the houses climb up on to the rocky headlands overhanging the plain and, from below, the mountain seems to be crowned with a series of fortresses ([Fig. 212]). The streets are so narrow that a cart can hardly pass along the cobbled ways; very silent and peaceful they seemed, the shops heaped with cherries, the cool breezes stirring the vine tendrils that wreathed together overhead. The castle, for all its frowning walls and bastions, is nothing but a heap of ruins within. I looked in vain for the dungeons in which Sukmân, the son of the Turkman officer Ortuḳ, founder of the Ortuḳid dynasties, imprisoned Baldwin of Edessa and Jocelyn of Courtney in the early years of the twelfth century. The Crusaders, gathering together their forces, seized the fortress in 1123 and held it until Balak, Ortuḳ’s grandson, recaptured it and threw the garrison over the battlemented rock into the plain below.[211] On an inner wall, not far from the gate, there are traces of an Arabic inscription, together with two stones carved in relief, the one bearing a lion and the other a ram, memorials, I make no doubt, of the Ortuḳid rule. The walls are of many periods of building. The masonry of one of the eastern towers is laid in alternate stripes of red and white stone. The eastern side of the hill drops steeply into a deep valley filled with houses which are terraced one above the other. Here there is a Jacobite church of ancient origin, its plan repeating the old scheme of the parochial church of the Ṭûr ’Abdîn. The priest assured me that it dated from the first century, and in proof of his assertion showed me a couple of curious oil paintings, a Crucifixion and a Virgin and Child, Byzantine in type, so far as I could make out through the dust of ages.[212]
My tents were pitched on the plain near Mezreh. There in the evening I received the Vâlî, a cheerful Cretan, and the Mu’âvin Vâlî,[213] and after they had departed, several other visitors. Their conversation left me groping my way through the intricate labyrinths of the Oriental mind, and even more bewildered than usual. Kharpût and Mezreh and the villages of the plain had felt yet more sharply than Diyârbekr and the Ṭûr ’Abdîn the wave of panic that had emanated from Cilicia. Three days after the first outbreak at Adana, the Kurdish peasants had trooped into the Christian villages and announced their intention to kill, while in Mezreh the Vâlî was besieged by demands that he should give the signal for massacre. To his credit be it recorded that he held out against these appeals, though the abject terror of the Armenians did much to increase the danger of the situation. When the news of ’Abdu’l Ḥamîd’s deposition reached the vilayet, the agitation went out like a candle in the wind; the Kurds returned peaceably to their houses, and the fears of the Christians were allayed. This was strange enough, but that which followed was stranger still. The district had suffered during the spring from lack of rain and the drought became at length so serious that the whole harvest was threatened. The leading mullah of Mezreh called upon the people to assemble in a neighbouring village, where there was a much-respected Mohammadan shrine, that they might raise a common supplication for rain. The population answered his call to a man; Christian and Moslem, who but five weeks before had with difficulty been restrained from leaping at each other’s throats, stood side by side and listened to the sermon which the mullah delivered to them. All, said he, were brothers, all were children of one God, all alike were in danger of perishing from the drought, and it behoved all to pray together for the beneficent rain which would save them from famine. His eloquence reduced the assembled audience to tears, and for three days their united orisons rose to heaven. And then the miracle came to pass. The rain fell abundantly, that same rain over which we had rejoiced in the Tigris gorge, without knowing that we owed it to the prayers of the Moslems and Christians of Kharpût, nor yet how many fevers it was assuaging, more fatal than the sun-fever in our veins; for it was admitted that this most fortunate coincidence would do more to bring about amity than the fall of many sultans.
I sat long into the night and gazed upon the shattered crags of Kharpût and the hollow plain, clothed in abundance of fruits, and sheltered by its ring of noble hills. What is it that leads to massacre? whence does that sudden frenzy spring, whither vanish? Like a tornado it bursts over the peaceful earth, blots out the daily life of town and village, destroys, uproots and slays—and passes. My thoughts were still busy with these unanswerable problems when we rode upon our way next morning. One of my muleteers was a Moslem, a ḥajjî, a Mecca pilgrim. I had known him for many years and he had served me well during months of hard travel. When the road was long he had not wearied; when the sun was hot he had not complained; when the wind blew cold he drew more closely about him the duffle coat which I had given him in Aleppo, and every evening after the tents were pitched and the horses picketed, I had seen him building up the fire under the big rice-pot and stirring the savoury mess on which my camp was to sup. To-day as I looked into his simple honest face, I wondered what unexpected ferocity lay behind its familiar wrinkles.
“Ḥâjj ’Amr,” I said, “in the day of slaughter, would you kill me?”
“My lady, no,” he replied, “not you. I have eaten your bread.”