[121] Ruines d’Ani, p. 137. [↑]
[123] Texier (op. cit. p. 112):—“La façade de cette église (the cathedral) construite avec une simplicité remarquable ... peut être regardée comme le type de l’architecture allemande du moyen âge. Il est facile d’expliquer comment, dans toute cette contrée, on retrouve le dôme à toit conique particulier à l’architecture arménienne. En effet, après la prise d’Ani par les Mussulmans, un grand nombre de citoyens abandonnaient la ville....” [↑]
CHAPTER XIX
KARS
While Ani, the deserted stronghold and capital on the banks of the Arpa, appeals to the patriotism of Armenians, her neighbour Kars, that fortress at once of ancient and modern repute, awakens a feeling of national pride in the bosom of the English visitor. Few, indeed, of my countrymen have been privileged to gaze upon a site and scene which is associated in their memory with a most brilliant achievement of British officers. Of the sieges which Kars has sustained during the course of the present century only one has been conducted with any skill and spirit on the part of the defence. On that occasion a garrison of about fifteen thousand Turks resisted, under the strategy of an English general, a force of from thirty to forty thousand Russians for a period of over five months. The exploits of Williams and his companions in 1855 are still familiar to the townspeople. It is they who first traced the design of the fortifications, such as we see them at the present day. The old school of Russian officers still view with alarm or suspicion the approach of an Englishman to the neighbourhood of their prize. Kars is rigorously excluded from the jurisdiction of our consuls, and our travellers have rarely penetrated within her walls. On the other hand, the new school are of quite a different temper, and give free rein to the hospitable and amiable qualities which are natural to their race. They received me with open arms, overwhelmed me with attentions, and took pains to let me feel that, side by side with the Russian laurels, one in honour of their British opponents had not been allowed to fade.
I have already endeavoured to describe the characteristics of the site of Kars as you approach the fortress from the east across the plain. The plan which I now offer will at once assist that description and supplement it with a view of the surrounding features. The volcanic mass which is pierced by the river where it projects into the level expanse is due to a local outbreak of basaltic lava, which is in orographical and, probably, in genetical connection with the volcanic water-parting between the Araxes and the Kur. The real boundary of these plains on the west and south-west is formed by the breaking away to the Pontic region of the uplands of the Soghanlu Dagh; and the low water-parting between the two great rivers extends from the northern extremity of the Soghanlu to the Kisir Dagh which confines Lake Chaldir on the west. Upon that line of intermediary elevation the principal points of eruption have been the Kabak Tepe or Kizilkaya (10,010 feet), and, further north, the Buga Tepe (8995 feet). Minor emissions of volcanic matter have issued from radial fissures, which may be traced back to these parent stems. In this manner we may connect the Ainalu Dagh, on the west of Kars, with Kabak Tepe; and, perhaps too, the local eruptions which have produced the rock of Kars with the system of the Ainalu.[1]
It is with a feeling of astonishment, which will not be diminished by better acquaintance, that the traveller surveys the site of the fortress. That impression will be derived not so much from the course of the river—although one would expect to see it flowing towards rather than from the south, the direction of the Araxes to which it is tributary—but rather from the phenomenon which attends its approach to the cliffs on the northern margin of the plain. It is seen for some distance following at the base of a low ridge which culminates further eastwards in the towering parapet behind the town. All of a sudden, when the obstacle becomes most pronounced, instead of indulging in an easy and not very lengthy bend and taking the rampart in flank, the wayward stream throws its waters at the face of the cliff and disappears in an almost invisible gorge. For a distance of about four miles, measured along its banks in the trough of the chasm, it cleaves the mass of gloomy rock; then issues into the plainer land on the north of the rampart, which it has isolated from the heights on the west. An insular mass of mountain, rendered impregnable on one side by the precipices which overhang the river, and easily defended on other sides—such a site must have been fortified from the earliest times, commanding as it does a wide area of fertile plains.
