This was the second time I had ridden at the head of Cossacks; I mention the fact merely to justify the assertion that there can be few more inspiriting positions. One feels the peculiar quality of the material behind one; it is in the air and makes the pulse beat. There is no champing of bits and impatient curvetting; nor do the riders sit up in their saddles and look smart. They may be seen in every posture, lolling about in their shabby drab uniforms, and holding their reins long. But they communicate the impression that each man is a born soldier, and that one might march with them from one end of Asia to another without troubling much about the commissariat or the length of the particular stage. They are just the troops with which to traverse these vast plains. The long-backed horses are hardened to every kind of privation, and so are their owners, for every Cossack owns his mount. Where would you march? Say the word, and we go now.
On this occasion the proceedings were quite of a gala order. We passed through the main streets of the modern town upon the plain; and all the Karslis were there assembled to hear the inspiriting music and to pass remarks upon the foreigner on the grey horse. We wound along the side of the river, at the foot of the precipice crowned by the citadel, where a window in the walls of that airy edifice marks the spot whence the Turks were wont to precipitate spies. We crossed to the left bank by the lower of the two bridges, and followed along the chaussée upon that side. It is now the principal avenue of communication with Alexandropol; but it is destined to be replaced by a road which will pass to the south of the town, leaving this chaussée with its secrets for purely military use. The further we proceeded the loftier loomed the walls of the chasm, especially that upon our left hand. It rises almost vertically from the margin of the road to the edge of the plateau, some five hundred feet above the stream.
The heights on the left bank are here called by the name of Mukhliss, and such is their elevation that the buildings upon them—the military hospital and the redoubts—may be seen from the plain on the south of Kars, showing up behind the insular ridge against which the ancient town is built. Opposite the old citadel they are known as Vali Pasha, and, further west, as Takhmas. On the right bank the mass of rock which falls abruptly to the river is styled Kars and Karadagh. We had arrived at a point whence the solitary house of the Governor could be clearly seen beyond the winding channel on that side. The choice was offered between two roads. The one we had been following pursued its course through the chasm; the other took advantage of some milder acclivities in the cliff to mount to the plateau above our heads. The forts upon the plateau are the interesting feature of modern Kars; the word was given to take the upper road. The Colonel and myself were still riding in front of the band, and could look back upon the long train of one of the finest of Cossack regiments defiling in half column up the incline. When we had reached a considerable elevation, all of a sudden a human figure springs into the road. It is a little gendarme, and he stands immovable in the centre of the road. The regiment is at once brought to a halt. The figure enquires whether there be a foreigner riding with them, and receives an affirmative reply. Then he points to an adjacent bifurcation of the road, one branch leading to the heights, and the other rejoining the chaussée at a point some distance down the stream. He directs us to take the latter way. The Colonel bites his lip, turns pale and obeys. We have come up all this distance, and now we are to go down. The ghost of General Fadéeff must be chuckling—if ghosts can chuckle—behind those windows in the speck of a house on the opposite bank!
It had been the plan of my kind host to cross the block of heights containing the forts, and thence to descend into the plain upon the north. A little Molokan village, called Blagodarnoe, is situated in the more level country on that side. A troop of his Cossacks was billeted within it, and it had been thought convenient to pay them a visit. The return journey would be made by way of the chaussée. There was now nothing for it but to proceed and to come home by the same route, since the little gendarme had given orders to this effect. We continued our passage through the chasm. I was impressed with the admirable communications which the Russians have established at great cost between the heights on either bank. Soon after regaining the main road we passed two opposite flights of steps, of which the one scaled the steep side of the plateau on the left, and the other that of the insular rock of Kars. Both were broad and perfectly maintained. The latter conducted from the water’s edge to the Karadagh fort, now called Fort Fadéeff, invisible on the further side of the ridge. And from the base of these steps a military road was carried slantwise towards the citadel. During the last siege the garrison suffered from the want of ready access to the outlying positions. This want has now been supplied. Troops can be moved with rapidity between the town and these positions as well as between the positions themselves.
The cliffs on either hand retain their elevation until you have reached the fourth military verst stone (over two and a half miles). Then they decline and become less rocky and steep. The formation on the right bank is continued into the distance in a low outline; that on the left already opens to plainer land at about the sixth stone (four miles). We now left the chaussée, and cantered over the plain, across which it was a pleasure to extend the iron-grey. He had all the makings of a very valuable horse.
Luncheon was served in one of the neat little houses of the Molokan village, and many a glass of white liqueur was consumed before the meal. On the way home there was a display of Cossack exercises, a succession of riders galloping past us in single file, and vaulting to the ground with one foot in the stirrup in full career. Or they placed their bodies parallel with the flanks of their horses, avoiding the arrows of their ancestors or the bullets of their contemporaries. Like Kurds and Circassians they raised wild shouts; but, unlike these, they never got out of hand. Last of all there was a race, conducted on strict principles, in which I cantered in, an easy winner, on the grey. The squadron then re-formed, and we retraced our steps through the chasm to the inspiriting music of the band. It soon ceased playing; and with the last strain, at first low, then gradually louder, a sad and mysterious chant broke from the ranks. It was carried like sobs into the recesses of the gorge, rising and falling like the sighing of the wind. What did they sing in that expression of bottomless misery? Their homes had been laid waste, their parents were no more, nor their horses any longer at tether or stall. Then the theme would change abruptly, and a note of triumph would be heard. Nowhere except in Hungary have I heard such moving music, giving utterance through the canons of Western harmony to the tempestuous motives of Eastern songs.
It remains to say a few words about the town of Kars, as you see it at the present day. It is a mere shadow of its former self. The old fortress city on the side of the insular rock is scarcely better than a heap of ruins. The suburb on the plain—Orta Kapi of Mussulman times—is rapidly pushing it out of existence. This suburb contains the residences of the high officials and officers, and can boast of a new Russian church, at its southern extremity, and of a number of single-storeyed but spacious and well-supplied shops. The church displays the masonry of the grey stone found at Kars; but the bulk of the buildings have their walls painted white, and their roofing of sheet metal, coloured pink or a soft green. The aspect of this modern quarter, jutting out from the hill into the plain opposite the answering horn of the Karadagh on the east, presents a striking contrast to the uniform grey of the old city, overlooking the bay of the plain. The stone of the walls and of the old Armenian church have weathered almost black. But the majority of the ancient houses have disappeared, and the walled area is for the most part covered with rubble and ruin, or with straggling hovels, resembling those of a village. The citadel was blown up by the Russians prior to their evacuation at the close of the Crimean War,[15] and has been rebuilt in a softer and yellow stone (Fig. [98]). It now forms a most admirable target for artillery, being the only patch of brighter colour on a ground of the sombrest hue. The population of city and suburbs is censused at not more than 4000, of course excluding the garrison. Of these 2500 are Armenians and only some 850 are Turks. The Russians, including Molokans, number 250, and the Greeks over 300 souls. It is true that the total might perhaps be doubled if there were included in it those families who are allowed to reside here on sufferance, prior to being settled elsewhere. Kars is constantly receiving refugees from the Turkish provinces, flying before the excesses of the Kurds.
Still the number of the inhabitants has grown smaller and smaller, if we even confine ourselves to the present century. Prior to the campaign of Paskevich, we are informed by a credible authority that Kars with its suburbs contained some 10,000 families, or from 50,000 to 60,000 souls.[16] After it was evacuated by the Russian army upon the close of that war, the bulk of the Armenian population deserted their homes and followed the Russian retreat.[17] The figure then drops to a pretty uniform estimate of 2000 houses or families, giving a result of some 10,000 to 12,000 souls, of whom the vast majority were Mussulmans.[18] It must now be further reduced by more than one-half. Perhaps the projected railway will increase the prosperity of Kars if the military regulations be relaxed. But it will be a long time before it can recover its former splendour, when the fortress city contained no less than 3000 houses, 47 mosques and 18 schools.[19]
Fig. 98. The Citadel of Kars.