Armenia, Travels and Studies (Volume 1 of 2) / The Russian Provinces

by H. F. B. Lynch

It was the morning of the 17th of September, a period of the year when the heats have moderated; when the early air, even in the plain of the Araxes, has acquired a suggestion of crispness, and the sun still overpowers the first symptoms of winter chills.[1] The tedious arrangements of Eastern travel occupied the forenoon; and it had been arranged that we should dine with our host, the Lieutenant, before making the final start. Six little hacks, impressed in the district and sadly wanting in flesh, were loaded with our effects; our party was mounted on Cossack horses, which, by the extreme courtesy of the Russian authorities, had been placed at our disposal for a week. We took leave of our new friend under a strong sentiment of gratitude and esteem; but a new and pleasurable surprise was awaiting us, as we passed down the neat square. All the Cossacks at that time quartered in Aralykh—the greater number were absent on the slopes of the mountain, serving the usual patrols—had been drawn up in marching order, awaiting the arrival of their Colonel, who had contrived to keep the secret by expressing his willingness to accompany us a few versts of the way. My cousin and I were riding with the Colonel, and the purpose of these elaborate arrangements was explained to us with a sly smile; the troop with their Colonel were to escort us on our first day’s journey, and to bivouac at Sardar Bulakh. The order was given to march in half column. It was perhaps the first time that an English officer had ridden at the head of these famous troops. We crossed the last runnel on the southern edge of the plantation and entered the silent waste.

For awhile we slowly rode through the camelthorn, the deep sand sinking beneath our horses’ feet. It was nearly one o’clock, and the expanse around us streamed in the full glare of noon. A spell seems to rest upon the landscape of the mountain, sealing all the springs of life. Only, among the evergreen shrubs about us, a scattered group of camels cropped the spinous foliage, little lizards darted, a flock of sand-grouse took wing. Our course lay slantwise across the base of Ararat, towards the hill of Takjaltu, a table-topped mass, overgrown with yellow herbage, which rises in advance of the saddle between the mountains, and lies just below you as you overlook the landscape from the valley of Sardar Bulakh. Gullies of chalk and ground strewn with stones succeed the even surface of the belt of sand, and in turn give way to the covering of burnt grass which clothes the deep slope of the great sweeping base, and encircles the fabric with a continuous stretch of ochre, extending up the higher seams. Mile after mile we rode at easy paces over the parched turf and the cracking soil. When we had accomplished a space of about 10 miles, and attained a height of nearly 6000 feet, the land broke about us into miniature ravines, deep gullies, strewn with stones and boulders, searing the slope about the line of the limit where the base may be said to determine and the higher seams begin. Winding down the sides of these rocky hollows, one might turn in the saddle at a bend of the track, and observe the long line of horsemen defiling into the ravine (Fig. [31]). I noticed that by far the greater number among them—if, indeed, one might not say all—were men in the opening years of manhood—lithe, well-knit figures, and fair complexions, set round with fair hair. At a nearer view the feature which most impressed me was the smallness of their eyes. They wear the long, skirted coat of Circassia, a thin and worn khaki; the faded pink on the cloth of their shoulder-straps relieves the dull drab. Their little caps of Circassian pattern fit closely round their heads. Their horses are clumsy, long-backed creatures, wanting in all the characteristics of quality; and, as each man maintains his own animal, few among them are shod. Yet I am assured that the breed is workmanlike and enduring, and I have known it to yield most satisfactory progeny when crossed with English racing blood. As we rounded the heap of grass-grown soil which is known as Takjaltu, we were joined by a second detachment of Cossacks, coming from Akhury. Together we climbed up the troughs of the ridges which sweep fanwise down the mountain side, and emerged on the floor of the upland valley which leads between the greater and the lesser Ararat, and crosses the back of the Ararat fabric in a direction from south-west to north-east. We were here at an elevation of 7500 feet above the sea, or nearly 5000 feet above the plain. Both the stony troughs and ridges, up which we had just marched, as well as the comparatively level ground upon which we now stood, were covered with a scorched but abundant vegetation, which had served the Kurds during earlier summer as pasture for their flocks, and still sheltered numerous coveys of plump partridges, in which this part of the mountain abounds.

Fig. 31. Our Cavalcade on Ararat.

At the mouth of this valley, on the gently sloping platform which its even surface presents, we marked out the spaces of our bivouac, the pickets for the horses, and the fires. Our men were acquainted with every cranny; we had halted near the site of their summer encampment, from which they had only recently descended to their winter quarters in the plain. As we dismounted we were met by a graceful figure, clad in a Circassian coat of brown material let in across the breast with pink silk—a young man of most engaging appearance and manners, presented to us as the chief of the Kurds on Ararat who own allegiance to the Tsar. In the high refinement of his features, in the bronzed complexion and soft brown eyes, the Kurd made a striking contrast to the Cossacks—a contrast by no means to the advantage of the Cis-Caucasian race. The young chief is also worthy to be remembered in respect of the remarkable name which he bears. His Kurdish title of Shamden Agha has been developed and embroidered into the sonorous appellation of Hasan Bey Shamshadinoff, under which he is officially known.

From the edge of the platform upon which we were standing the ground falls away with some abruptness down to the base below, and lends to the valley its characteristic appearance of an elevated stage and natural viewing-place, overtowered by the summit regions of the dome and the pyramid, and commanding all the landscape of the plain. On the south-west, as it rises towards the pass between the two mountains—a pass of 8800 feet, leading into Turkish and into Persian territory, to Bayazid or Maku—the extent of even ground which composes this platform cannot much exceed a quarter of a mile. It is choked by the rocky causeways which, sweeping down the side of Great Ararat, tumble headlong to the bottom of the fork, and, taking the inclination of the ever-widening valley, descend on the north-western skirt of the platform in long, oblique curves of branching troughs and ridges, falling fanwise over the base. The width of the platform, at the mouth of the valley, may be about three-quarters of a mile. It is here that the Kurds of the surrounding region gather, as the shades of night approach, to water their flocks at the lonely pool which is known as the sirdar’s well. On the summit of the lesser Ararat there is a little lake, formed of melted snows; the water permeates the mountain, and feeds the sirdar’s pool. Close by, at the foot of the lesser mountain, is the famous covert of birch—low bushes, the only stretch of wood upon the fabric, which is entirely devoid of trees. The wood was soon crackling upon our fires, and the water hissing in the pots; but the wretched pack-horses, upon which our tents had been loaded, were lagging several hours behind. We ourselves had reached camp at six o’clock; it was after nine before our baggage arrived. As we stretched upon the slope, the keen air of the summit region swept the valley and chilled us to the skin; the temperature sank to below freezing, and we had nothing but the things in which we stood.[2] Our friends, the Cossack officers, were lavish of assistance; they wrapped us in the hairy coats of the Caucasus, placed vodki and partridges before us, and ranged us around their hospitable circle, beside the leaping flames.

But the mind was absent from the picturesque bivouac, and the eye which ranged the deepening shadows was still dazzled by the evening lights. Mind and sense alike were saturated with the beauty and the brilliance of the landscape, which, as you rise towards the edge of the platform after rounding the mass of Takjaltu, opens to an ever-increasing perspective, with ever-growing clearness of essential features and mystery gathering upon all lesser forms. The sun, revolving south of the zenith, lights the mountains on the north of the plain, and fills all the valley from the slopes of Ararat with the full flood of his rays—tier after tier of crinkled hummock ranges, aligned upon the opposite margin of the valley at a distance of over twenty miles, their summit outline fretted with shapes of cones and craters, their faces buttressed in sand, bare and devoid of all vegetation, yet richly clothed in lights and hues of fairyland—ochres flushed with delicate madder, amethyst, shaded opaline, while the sparse plantations about the river and the labyrinth of the plain insensibly transfigure, as you rise above them, into an impalpable web of grey. In the lap of the landscape lies the river, a thin, looping thread—flashes of white among the shadows, in the lights a bright mineral green. Here and there on its banks you descry a naked mound—conjuring a vision of forgotten civilisations and the buried hives of man. It is a vast prospect over the world.... Yet vaster far is the expanse you feel about you beyond the limits of sight. It is nothing but a segment of that expanse, a brief vista from north to east between two mountain sides. On the north the slopes of Great Ararat hide the presence of Alagöz, while behind the needle form of Little Ararat all the barren chains and lonely valleys of Persia are outspread.... The evening grows, and the sun’s returning arc bends behind the dome of snow. The light falls between the two mountains, and connects the Little Ararat in a common harmony with the richening tints of the plain. There it stands on the further margin of the platform, the clean, sharp outline of a pyramid, clothed in hues of a tender yellow, seamed with violet veins. At its feet, where its train sweeps the floor of the river valley in long and regular folds—far away in the east, towards the mists of the Caspian—the sandy ground breaks into a troubled surface, like angry waves set solid under a spell, and from range to range stretch a chain of low white hummocks, like islands across a sea. Just there, in the distance, beneath the Little Ararat, you see a patch of shining white, so vivid that it presents the appearance of a glacier, set in the burnt waste. It is probably caused by some chemical efflorescence, resting on the dry bed of a lake. All the landscape reveals the frenzy of volcanic forces, fixed for ever in an imperishable mould; the imagination plays with the forms of distant castles and fortresses of sand. Alone the slopes about you wear the solid colours, and hold you to the real world—the massive slopes of Great Ararat, raised high above the world. The wreath of cloud which veils the summit till the last breath of warm air dies has floated away in the calm heaven before the western lights have paled. Behind the lofty piles of rocky causeways, concealing the higher seams, rises the immediate roof of Ararat foreshortened in the sky—the short side or gable of the dome, a faultless cone of snow.

When we drew aside the curtain of our tent next morning, full daylight was streaming over the open upland valley, and the vigorous air had already lost its edge.[3] The sun had risen high above the Sevan ranges, and swept the plain below us of the lingering vapours which at morning cling like shining wool to the floor of the river valley, or float in rosy feathers against the dawn. The long-backed Cossack horses had been groomed and watered and picketed in line; the men were sitting smoking in little groups or were strolling about the camp in pairs (Fig. [32]). A few Kurds, who had come down with milk and provisions, stood listlessly looking on, the beak nose projecting from the bony cheeks, the brown chest opening from the many-coloured tatters draped about the shoulders and waist.

Fig. 32. Our Encampment at Sardar Bulakh.