[10] Koch speaks of the surprise with which he saw rye being harvested in the country north of Erzerum at an altitude of at least 7500 feet (Reise im pontischen Gebirge, Weimar, 1846, p. 267). Telfer (Crimea and Transcaucasia, London, 1876, vol. i. p. 278) quotes from reports issued by the Tiflis Observatory which establish the following limits for the Southern Caucasus:—Barley, 8100 feet; corn, 7906 feet; wheat, 7400 feet; vine, 3500 feet. Radde estimates that on the northern slopes of Alagöz corn ripens at 8300 feet (Petermann’s Mitth., 1876, p. 147). [↑]
[11] Lukeria Vasilievna Kalmakoff was given to me as her full name. [↑]
[12] Count Tolstoy’s informant says: “To Christ, as to an historical personage, the Dukhobortsy do not ascribe much importance” (The Times, loc. cit.). He goes on to tell how, when the Quakers visited them in 1818 and heard their opinion about Jesus Christ (that he was a man), these pious people exclaimed, “Darkness!” I cannot reconcile this account with what I learnt at Gorelovka, except by the reflection that the Christian world itself holds many opinions upon this subject. [↑]
[13] As a sequel to these events, the Dukhobortsy have emigrated in large numbers from their seats beyond Caucasus. Once the flower of the peasantry in Russia, and afterwards the special pride of Russian Governors in their seats of exile, they have now lost their hardiest spirits in a fresh exodus. And it is the British Empire which receives them! Their choice was at first bestowed upon the island of Cyprus; but the warm climate was unpropitious, and they lost some 100 souls in about eight months. The bulk of the emigrants appear to have taken ship from Cyprus for Canada and British North America during the spring of 1899. [↑]
CHAPTER VIII
TO ALEXANDROPOL
To-night we are to sleep on the banks of the Arpa, by the waters which swell the flood of the Araxes and sweep the base of Ararat! This was the reflection which lightened the mood of sorrowful meditation that our visit to Gorelovka had inspired. Our grave hosts, for whom one felt a vivid sympathy, a warm affection, conducted us in their spacious waggons to the posting station of Efremovka, a few versts’ distance along our road. It is a Russian settlement with some ninety houses and a population of 860 souls, besides a collection of huge and formidable dogs. The station is a stage of 16 versts (10½ miles) from Bogdanovka, and of 21 versts (14 miles) from the succeeding post house of Shishtapa, which was our destination for the afternoon. At Efremovka we took leave of our companions, and, at the same time, of the solid villages of this Russian zone.
A country of elevated uplands, a natural carpet of springy turf, broken here and there by patches of cultivation which struggle upwards from the plainer levels to the hillsides. Grey lights descending from a grey heaven upon a surface swelling and falling like the sea. In the east the near reliefs of the mountains of the meridional border, their base checkered with plots of fallow and stubble, their summits veiled with cloud. At their foot the lake and marsh of Madatapa, with the Russian village of Troitskoy upon its shore. In the west the vague downs, rising to a distant horizon of loftier shapes, similar to themselves. Such were the opening phases of the scene through which we passed to the scarcely perceptible water-parting between the Araxes and the Kur. After less than an hour’s drive from Efremovka we could see the village of Korakhbur (Armenian Catholic) on the hillside, about a mile away on our left hand; on our right was an Armenian hamlet, which was named to us Jaila; both are situated in the southern watershed. The height of the parting between the basins, at the point where we crossed it, is placed by the Russian map at 6777 feet, a figure which, if it errs, is below the truth. And now for the first time were disclosed the gleaming peaks which we had seen from Abul—beyond a line of hummock hills the group of snowy teeth which break the horizontal outline of Alagöz.
Tazaken, a Turkish settlement; Khancharli, a large village of Armenian Catholics, were rapidly left behind. The landscape opened to a lofty range of swelling shapes and rounded outlines on the western margin of the plain. They were the mountains about Lake Chaldir; the declining sun was about to touch them from behind a shroud of mist. Sheets of light were thrown upon those distant opaline masses as upon the coast of a hazy sea.