[17] Müller-Simonis (Du Caucase au Golfe Persique, Paris, 1892, p. 62), speaking of the celebration of the ceremonies in honour of Ali and Hoseyn at Erivan, says: “Le soir les fanatiques qui devront représenter les martyres à la grande procession, font une promenade aux flambeaux, armés de sabres et de gourdins. Ils agitent en mesure leurs flambeaux et leurs armes, criant en même temps à tue-tête: ‘Hussein, Ali, Hussein, Ali.’ Les reflets rouges des torches, ici découpant les blanches silhouettes des maisons, là plongeant en lueurs étranges sous la verdure des arbres, puis éclairant en plein les figures hideuses de ces dévots, forment un spectacle sauvage et fantastique.” The picture is true to life. I have little doubt that such a procession may still be witnessed at Erivan. [↑]
CHAPTER XVI
EDGMIATSIN AND THE ARMENIAN CHURCH
At five o’clock in the afternoon of the 4th of October we set out for Edgmiatsin. It is a drive of about thirteen miles across the plain. Our luggage was consigned to a waggon of the post, and we ourselves enjoyed the luxury of a light victoria, drawn by four horses abreast. They covered the distance in an hour and forty minutes, although the road is in many places a mere track.
What a drive! It is so well within reach of Europe that it ought to be included, like the journey to Italy, in the programme of a liberal education. The railway will before long arrive at Erivan, and then the pilgrimage will be still easier to undertake. Not all the tourists in the world will disturb the harmony of this landscape; the screeching trains, the loud hotels, the Babel of tongues will be lost, like a flight of starlings, in this expanse. It is here that the spirit of Asia is most intensely present—an inner sanctuary to those outer courts through which the traveller may have wandered and never crossed the threshold of this plain. And it is a spirit and an influence which arouse deep chords within us and send them sounding through our lives.
The landscape at once combines and accentuates the salient features of the Asiatic highlands. There is the plain which was once the bed of an inland sea. It stretches west and east without visible limits; and this evening it has all the appearance of water. In the west it is mirage which produces this effect. The long north-western slope of the Ararat fabric assumes the character of a dark and narrow promontory rising on an opposite shore. From the east, beyond the train of the Little Ararat, a cold mist—may it be from the Caspian?—is slowly wafted over the steppe, and the illusion is complete. Into those liquid spaces sweep the basal vaultings of Alagöz—the boulder-strewn declivities which we keep on our right hand, and which seem to embody on a typical scale that quality of hopeless sterility which is characteristic of vast portions of the continent. But the same vague distance receives the Zanga, diffused into many channels, and lost beneath luxuriant foliage. For over a quarter of an hour after leaving Erivan we pass at a rapid trot between the walls of orchards; and in places the water gushes from the conduits across the road. Once outside this intricate zone the track wanders over the idle soil, skirting the stony slopes in the north. In the opposite direction the plain blooms with fields of cotton and rice, sustained by a small canal which pursues a westerly course before it falls into the Araxes, if indeed it flow so far.
And there are the mountains of Asia—the volcanoes with their vaulted summits, as well as those long ridges with their serrated outline which represent the operation of less impetuous forces through longer spaces of time. To this second category belongs the fine chain on the west of Ararat which gains in definition as we proceed. It stands a little back and behind the fabric of Ararat, and volcanoes too have built themselves up upon this wall. But its rugged and tumbled appearance is the feature which predominates, in striking contrast to the symmetry of the mountain of the Ark. That giant overpowers the lesser Ararat and appropriates their common base. One stands in wonder at the force which could have rent that massive pedestal and opened the yawning chasm which fronts the plain. Night creeps into those recesses, where the blaze of a Kurdish camp-fire calls attention to the extraordinary transparence of the air. The snow-fields, bare and cold above the amber of the sunset, are already free of their coronal of cloud. One full-puffed vapour still floats behind the uppermost pinnacle; another clings to the bastion on the north-west. While we admire this stately scene, made more impressive by the heavy silence, a grove of trees rises from the steppe on our point of course. Two little conical shapes just emerge above their outline, and are recognised as the domes of Edgmiatsin.
We pass through the thin plantation, sustained by runnels derived from Alagöz, and come to a halt before the doorway of a lofty mud wall with round towers at intervals. It might belong to a Persian fortress; but it is the outer wall which surrounds the cloister with the cathedral of St. Gregory. The massive gate is closed, and we thump and thump for some time in vain. The parapet with its crumbling surface betrays no sign of the life within. But there is just sufficient light to reveal the surroundings of the fortified enclosure—a straggling village of above-ground houses, outlying churches, poplars, dust.[1]
