After over an hour’s ride in this confined valley, we reached the ruins of a fort, or small castle, and issued upon more open ground. The valley expands on the right bank of the river in an irregular series of hill and dale. We passed the rush-grown banks of a little lake, so blue and clear that it lay like a jewel on the waste. It is called Sülük, or lake of leeches; and Hasan Bey, our guide, told us that leeches abound. In a hollow on the further side of this lake we came upon the gardens of the Mussulman village of Margistan. Beyond this oasis, and beyond the open ground about us, we could see the valley contracting, the river flowing through a gorge, overhung by perpendicular cliffs; and we were shown our path climbing the side of the cliff and entering the jaws of the gorge.
We had crossed or skirted the volcanic circus, with the lake in the extinct crater, of which Dubois has furnished us with a learned account.[10] Before us lay the defile through the gigantic dam of volcanic mountain which has opened, as if by miracle, to the puny stream.
Soon we are winding along that path, about at mid-height of the cliffs, the river brawling far beneath us, a tortuous thread of foam. It is a remarkable scene, a freak of Nature on a large scale, of which none of us, at least, has seen the like. The volcanic layers have been split by vertical fissures, and huge masses of conglomerate rock tower high above us, almost separated from the mountain side. Their masonry of cemented blocks gives them the appearance of castles, the work of a more than human hand; they threaten to tumble headlong into the valley, a fate to which some have already succumbed. They remind me of the Devil’s city of Montpellier-le-Vieux, in the Cevennes country—a mere sprite’s village by their side. The dark colour of the rocks, the gloom of the passage, the height of the cliffs, soaring from the twilight in the hollow to jagged summits some 500 to 600 feet above the gulf, all contribute to enhance the impression of mystery and to suggest the presence of a prince of fiends.
Opposite us, on the left bank, the bold outline of the fish-backed ridge is crowned with the ruinous remains of masonry, barely distinguished from the rock. A long line of crumbling edifices marks the site of a considerable fortress; in the depths beneath, at the foot of the perpendicular mountain, a wall descends the last slope to the margin of the water and cuts off access to the valley from the river-bed. A few miserable huts are seen in the hollow: who could inhabit such a weird and lonely spot? Kurds, they say, as though they were no human beings—a lingering remnant of Turkish times. The ruins are the relics of Zeda Tmogvi, a stronghold famous in the history of these lands.[11]
Beyond this gorge the valley opens and resumes the more normal character of a torrent bordered by lofty hillsides. The further you proceed, the floor of the hollow is covered by richer verdure, while a grove of fruit trees spreads shade. Are they wild or were they planted? The extreme loneliness of the scene was scarcely broken by a sign of human life. We forded the Kur, and, after winding through these orchards of the river margin, doubled a projecting spur of the valley wall. We were at the foot of a perpendicular cliff which displayed irregular rows of gaping caves at a considerable height above the river-bed. These grottoes have been cut in the face of a layer of volcanic rock of extraordinary smoothness and of flesh-coloured hue. The layer does not extend to the summit of the cliff, which is composed of a conglomerate with greyish tints (Fig. [18]).
Fig. 18. Vardzia, the Troglodyte City.
It was Vardzia, a troglodyte city of a remote antiquity, which the Georgians and Armenians believe to have been founded in the twelfth century by the father of Queen Thamar, and to have been completed by that princess. They say it was a favourite residence of Thamar; you are shown the cave in which she resided during winter, the terrace where she spent the summer days, the chapel where her brilliant court assembled, even, it is affirmed, the tomb where her remains were placed. This last object had evidently escaped the knowledge of the resident priest, although Dubois has sought to establish its identity with a curious structure which he found in the little sacristy on the inner side of the church.[12] Vardzia is, in fact, the city of Thamar, just as every castle in Georgia is the castle of Thamar and every antiquity a relic of the great queen.
We picked our way among the boulders up the steep side of the cliff until it became a perpendicular wall. There commence the irregular horizontal rows of caves, stretching eastwards, where the escarpments are most abrupt. A narrow path ends at a polygonal structure of which the roof has fallen off. This edifice is either modern or has been extensively restored; it forms a gateway and seals the approach to the caves. The gate passed, you stand on a level footway, partly hollowed in the rock and partly supported by rude masonry, which takes advantage of the inequalities of the cliff-side. In the steepest places this footway is tunnelled through the rock, and it can, of course, be barricaded at any point. Thus it would appear that Vardzia is inaccessible to siege, at least by any of the usual means. But one remembers that Timur employed an ingenious contrivance to reduce the Georgians, when they fled to their caves. From the heights above he suspended wooden stages, from which his warriors leapt into the crowded grottoes or scattered fire among the panic-stricken foe. Vardzia itself is said to have been taken by this conqueror, by what methods I do not know.
We were met by an old archimandrite and his deacon, the only inhabitants of this long-deserted place (Fig. [19]). They are supported by the occasional contributions of pilgrims, who visit the church in great numbers at certain times. Both were sunk to an equal degree in abysmal ignorance, and the deacon was so shy in manner and movement, he seemed a half-tamed creature of the rocks. I asked them the meaning of the name Vardzia, which, according to Dubois, signifies, both in Georgian and Armenian, the fortress of the roses. They derived it from zia, which means uncle, and vard, I am here. They stoutly maintained this extraordinary derivation, in face of the doubt which we displayed.