I asked the Kaimakam whether he could tell me the number of the inhabitants; and, forthwith, he most kindly consulted his registers. According to his figures there are 387 houses in Khinis, besides numerous shops. Of the dwellings 250 are inhabited by Mohammedans and 137 by Armenians. The former are censused at 1350 and the latter at 586. But there is a large discrepancy between males and females in the case of both denominations in favour of the males. He was of opinion that the figures for the Armenians were too low; they evade the census in order to avoid the military tax. Small and large, he put the total of villages in his caza at 287. It forms part of the vilayet of Erzerum, and its borders march with those of the caza of Erzerum.[15]
He knew of no Yezidis within the limits of his district; but gypsies wander through it in summer. Of Kizilbash Kurds he believed there to be about fifteen villages. The principal tribes in the neighbourhood are the Haideranli and Zirkanli, besides about eight villages of Jibranli Kurds. Four battalions of Hamidiyeh are said to be enrolled in the caza.
I am sensible of the defective standpoint of my photograph of Khinis, taken, to avoid suspicions, before entering the town.[16] But it clearly shows the mingling rivers, with their cavernous beds, sunk into the volcanic soil. It shows the castle—of which the ruins display a face of hewn stone upon a structure of agglomerate rubble—and, in the background, behind the picturesque disorder of the clambering township, the distant terrace of the Bingöl plateau. At eleven o’clock on the 3rd of December we were winding our way in the shadowed gorges, about to issue upon the plain on the north.
The day was fine, with a warm sun and a blue sky; the air was fresh and strong. Before us, and on every side, stretched the undulating surface, of rich and friable brown loam. It is subjected to primitive methods of cultivation; but at this season it was difficult to trace the hand of man. We saw no villages; what there are must be hidden in laps of the ground; and Nature, a kind and bountiful Nature, is allowed to revolve her seasons almost in vain. Bright streams come bubbling down from the distant framework of mountains, and wind on a south-easterly course to the far Murad. We passed no less than three of these tributaries to the river of Khinis. The first was flowing between high banks of volcanic rock, and sheltered a beautiful church in the old Armenian style, called Kilisa Deresi, or the church in the valley. Around this monument were grouped the tall headstones of a disused cemetery, some engraved with the elaborate crosses which were so dear to the ancestors of the unhappy people, now the bondsmen of parasite Kurds. Even as we stood in admiration of this charming building, an active Kurd in a showy dress stepped into the path. He vaulted upon the back of a graceful chestnut Arab, which was being led to and fro. We saw him cantering off to the neighbouring Armenian village, and we wondered upon what errand he was bent. At a quarter-past one we commenced to ascend to a passage of the hills which confine the plain upon the north.
Fig. 160. Terrace of Lava resembling Human Fortifications.
In the space of half-an-hour we had reached an elevation of over 6000 feet. We stopped for some little time to fully realise the scene which we were now about to leave behind. The terraces of the Bingöl plateau had been following our steps at some distance on our left hand. We had come in a northerly direction from Khinis; and the heights we were preparing to cross were an immediate spur from that table surface, linking it to the long range on the north of the plain. Both that spur, or connecting ridge, and the range which it joined, tended to incline south-west from a latitudinal course. The plateau itself was now close up; indeed it rose immediately above us, on the west of our winding track. It is therefore plain that it must have pursued a north-north-easterly direction, since it had formed a distant background to the town. I turned the camera upon the flanking ridge ([Fig. 160]), and then mounted to an adjacent eminence, almost on a level with the surface of the plateau. My illustration shows a formation characteristic of the edge of the terraces, great blocks of stone welded together as if by a human hand. The surface is flat and is covered with rough grass, of which the higher stalks pierced the covering of recent snow.
So little interest is taken by the people in their surroundings that even the Kaimakam was unable to tell me the name of this adjacent range, which forms a lofty barrier to the plain. He was of opinion that it was called the Akh Dagh (white mountain) or Tekman Dagh; to some it was known as the Kozli Dagh. I prefer to retain the name which I heard the most often, that of Akh Dagh. East of these linking hills it assumes lofty proportions; but it appears to die away in the remote south-east.
In the south, far away, rose the mass of Khamur, with hill ranges circling round the plain. Above those humble outlines was revealed the whole fabric of Sipan, some seventy miles distant from where we stood. Such is the extension of these vast depressions; you cannot define their limit; they render easy the traffic of peace or the passage of war. And we may reconstruct in fancy the remote period, when many of these bold landmarks were wreathed in smoke and reflected fires, and thundered with the energy of the Globe.
Proceeding at two o’clock, we reached the pass in twenty minutes; it is just under 7000 feet. We were now in the basin of the Upper Araxes, approaching the districts on the north. The passage into a new sphere could scarcely have been accentuated with more emphasis than on this day. We dived into a dense fog; the cold was intense; and, whereas not a single flake had hitherto lain on the track, it was now all strewn with snow. Nor was the change of a merely local application; it was the commencement of a new order of things.