July 31.—In the early morning our entire escort appear before the tent, headed by the zabet, whom I admit. He complains that the villagers refuse, for love or money, to supply food for themselves and horses. At the same time the five or six privates approach, and make use of threatening language towards me. Realising how the matter stands, I endeavour to persuade the officer to get out of the place as quickly as possible with his men. He urges that we shall then be at the mercy of these Kurds; I retort that I prefer it so than to be at his. He answers with some reason that to desert us might cost him his post; but I reply that he may regard himself as already cashiered should he dare to disobey my deliberate orders. A compromise is at length arrived at, under which he undertakes to dismiss his men, provided I will allow him to remain. He also begs that he may send the man who attempted my life back to the headquarters at Bitlis. But this last proposal I refuse to entertain. After much palaver, they are all induced to take themselves off, with instructions to await us on the shore of the lake. The villagers, seeing them gone, and ashamed to abuse our confidence, at once adopt a much more friendly tone. The Bey of Nazik, a young man, brings his little brother with him, and converses with us in our tent. On the opposite bank, beyond the willows, lies the encampment of the older bey, who does not appear to belong to the village. His two large tents, of black goat-hair, are open on this side. The coarse canvas, with several supports and considerable span, descends within a few feet of the ground. At the bottom, a screen of reeds at once provides shade and a pleasant draught of air. Similar screens divide the interior into compartments; in the centre sits the bey, an oldish man, who never smiles, by the side of a cradled baby which rarely remits its cries. A young woman, who may be his wife, or one among them, is engaged in swinging to and fro a large vessel of earthenware, which they use for making cheese.
It was eleven o’clock before we again reached the corner of the lake. There we took the boiling-point. We found that the elevation was 6406 feet, or about the same as that of the depression which we had crossed on the previous day. The water tasted like very flat lake water. Proceeding along the southern shore for some distance, we kept the ridge, over which we had ridden last evening, close up on our right hand. It had grown considerably lower and was dying away. It consists of a stream of lava from the little peak which has already been mentioned. Further eastwards, the line of low heights is continued by what appears to be an independent, latitudinal volcanic ridge. The lake widens rapidly from the little bay at its westerly extremity, and describes, so far as we could judge from a hasty survey, a triangular figure of which the base is on the south, and the apex in an inlet of the northern coast. Its greatest length is from west to east. The opposite shore appeared to consist of a block of heights in connection with those west of Sipan, and of streams of lava, descending from Bilejan. The wide stretch of sand along the shore may perhaps be regarded as an indication of a somewhat higher normal level during recent times. From a boss of dark lava, forming a promontory, we obtained a far-reaching view. We could see but a single village on the lake; and that settlement clustered on the extreme point of a little cape, just east of the one upon which we stood. It was Jezirok, partly Kurd and partly Armenian, the only village, as we afterwards learnt, which is placed immediately upon these shores. About half-a-mile away, we overlooked an islet, white with the droppings of waterfowl. Indeed it is a nursery for many varieties of this description, and was alive with wings and sharp cries. Pelicans abound on Lake Nazik, swimming, singly, like swans, over the mirror of waters, or sweeping above our heads with rapid, shooting flight, in movements perfectly combined. There must be fish in plenty beneath that blue surface, which lends a touch of beauty to the dreary, yellow landscape, and derives enhancement from the distant snows of Sipan.
We now left the lake, and gained the further slope of the low ridge on the south, whence the view extends over the broad depression at the foot of Nimrud. Here we remained for some considerable time. While I was engaged in mapping, Oswald made one of his beautiful drawings of the wondrous landscape before our eyes. The northern buttresses of the great crater towered up from the opposite margin of the level ground at our feet. We could plainly see the volcanic dike leaving the rim of the caldron, and bursting the northern wall of the little terminal crater. Turning towards the east, the heights on that side of the lake displayed a number of conical forms. But the outline appeared unbroken, as it extended towards Sipan. Between it and the Nimrud outliers we obtained a distant glimpse of the waters of Lake Van.
Our course was directed towards that vista, over the bare surface of the plain, which widens considerably; it is completely covered over with brown lava. It might be made a granary; yet it is now but little cultivated; and rarely were we deflected by a patch of standing corn from a course almost as straight as a bee-line. Lake Nazik was never in sight, although its waters find an outlet into the great lake.[3] We saw only a single village, at some distance on our left hand. Low hills confine the plain upon the east, but a dip in the outline disclosed a deep ravine. The cleft, which was now dry, would give issue to the water collecting in the depression, which we now left behind.
Soon after crossing these heights, we entered the barren highlands on the north of Akhlat. The lava, which is thickly covered with pumice sand, shelves away towards Lake Van. A little river which we forded, coming from the direction of Lake Nazik, must be the same that cascades into the delta below the site of the old city, and is perhaps derived from the lake. Its water had exactly the same flat taste. On our right, in the direction of Nimrud, we observed a broken-down crater, which has sent its principal flows to Lake Van. A little further on we descended into the ravine of Akhlat, and crossed the stream within the hollow; and not long after we were again in our shady orchard, and in the society of the Kaimakam. The old imam was there, squatting among some beanstalks, taking foretastes of paradise. His mad son was not long in coming, nor his scold of a daughter-in-law; while in the morning the pretty little girls made their appearance, slipping gracefully on their errands through the bush. But our home was no longer there; we felt as emigrants feel when their voyage is already prepared. I handed over my rascal zaptieh to the Kaimakam, who consigned him to the prison. The rest of the crew, with their zabet, I dismissed. After resting a single day, we set out for Adeljivas, along the shore of Lake Van. The ride was shorter than we expected, for the position of Akhlat is wrongly placed upon the best existing maps.[4]
[1] Merchant in Persia, Travels of Italians in Persia, Hakluyt Society, London, 1873, p. 159. [↑]
[2] The name Rava is sometimes applied to this plateau. [↑]
[3] The Kaimakam of Akhlat, who knows the district well, assured us that there was a permanent outlet. Layard, on the other hand, speaks of an intermittent one (Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, London, 1853, p. 21). I regret that I am unable to express certainty on the point. In the case of Lake Bulama, however, I am able to vouch for the fact that its waters find their way to the Murad. [↑]
[4] The following are the approximate distances along the route described in this chapter:—Tadvan to Norshen, 12¾ miles; Norshen to Nazik, 23½ miles; Akhlat to Adeljivas, 15 miles. [↑]