Fig. 175. Monastery of Sumelas.
The traveller to Erzerum who is in search of romantic scenery could not do better than follow this valley of Meiriman. It is the route which I selected upon our return from this second journey; but it is not practicable during the winter months. A steep ascent from the head of the glen leads to a country of grassy uplands, rising gradually to the pass of the Kazikly Dagh. This pass is the more easterly counterpart of the Zigana, but exceeds it in height by more than 1000 feet (8290 as against 6640 feet). The barrier on the north of the plain of Baiburt is crossed at the Kitowa Dagh by a pass of 8040 feet (as against the 6470 feet of the Vavuk Pass). Beyond the Kazikly Dagh there is a fair track which is used by caravans in summer; but between that point and Trebizond they pursue a shorter route. This approach to the plains of Armenia is almost in a direct line, avoiding the long detour by Gümüshkhaneh. The journey from the cloister of Sumelas to Baiburt may be performed in two days.[1]
On the present occasion we were constrained by perverse orders from Constantinople to follow the chaussée. The tributary, which we crossed at Jevizlik by a bridge of several arches, appeared to bring almost an equal volume of water as the river which it feeds. The upper stages of the main valley are picturesque in character, with none of the gloom and savagery of the vale of Meiriman. The slopes on either side terrace upwards into the haze of the sky; and for some miles above Jevizlik they are alive with settlements. At mid-height you admire the frequent clusters of the villages; the churches are built on projecting pinnacles of rock, and consist of a group of gables surmounted by a dome and approached through a belfry with two storeys of open arches. A white-faced monastery is seen high up on the opposite or left bank of the river; it fills a niche or natural recess in a vertical wall of rock, and its roofs are overhung by the roof of the cave. The stream is spanned at frequent intervals by little stone bridges with single arches, the arches highly curved and the roadway rising to the centre of the bridge. In one place the way which led up the cliff-side to a village was flanked at its upper end by a strong tower from which the inmates could resist attack from below. Above this inhabited zone, at the foot of the firs, near the crests of the ridges, sparse hamlets or isolated châlets are just discerned in the vague detail of the uppermost slopes. A report of guns, sounding distant, comes from one of those eyries where they are celebrating a marriage feast. In the fields, with their strange gradients, men and women are at work, the men lithe of limb, the women square-set, with skirts to below the knee and thick stockings on their legs. It is a dreamy southern scene, in one hand beauty, in the other squalor; and it repeats on a large scale the characteristics of those transverse cuttings which extend from the coast to the highlands of Asia Minor and are inhabited by a population of Greek race.
The chaussée follows the right bank, at some height above the stream, in full possession of the views on either hand. The valley maintains its width; but the nature of the landscape changes; cultivation ceases, and the forest descends to the road. Thickets of rhododendron are seen for the first time—the tree-like bushes with which we are familiar in England and the large flowers. The brakes were a mass of bloom; a little higher we met the azaleas; the yellow azalea and the pale mauve petals of the rhododendron were in the splendour of their latest blossoming. In the lush forest we noticed the beech tree, the walnut, and the maple, the hazel, the oak and the elm; the elders were in full flower, and the cherry trees were conspicuous for their number and size. The more open spaces were covered with masses of forget-me-nots; calices of hellebore, withered yellow, rested on the rank grass; and yellow mullein, filling the air with its subtle perfume, rose from among the rocks. Little waterfalls leapt through the deep shade of narrow clearings; we were nearing the head of the valley. A bed of sandstone, holding the moisture like a sponge, interrupts the lava beds. The ridges circle inwards; the valley becomes an amphitheatre, and its stately character is preserved to the last.
Upon a terrace of this amphitheatre the little settlement of Lower Hamsi Keui commands the long perspective towards the north. It is distant some fourteen miles from Jevizlik and thirty-four from Trebizond. We made our stage at the Upper Hamsi Keui, over a mile beyond the Lower, by a continuous ascent. It is situated above one of the two larger side valleys which converge towards the hamlet first named. It is from here that you commence the first portion of the climb to the Zigana Dagh, through forest glades in which the spruce firs alternate with the beech woods, and which are carpeted with an undergrowth of rhododendron and azalea and tall palm-leaved bracken. As we rose on the following morning above our surroundings we looked in vain for the vista of sea, the horizon being veiled in mist. Our ears were greeted by the song of nightingales, and by the clear call-notes of the cuckoo; while the plashing of innumerable streamlets and waterfalls mingled to a background of tremulous sound. Flocks of sheep were passed on their way to their summer pastures, and we could hear their liquid bells from afar. They were accompanied by shepherds with dogs not much smaller than mastiffs, which had long white hair and tails like a fox’s brush. The side valley is left behind, and then a second and still smaller valley; until the forest ceases and you enter the region of dreary heights. But the azalea still continues, mounting the ridge like our English gorse and not less riotous of flower. Patches of snow remain unmelted even at this season. At the saddle of the pass we had covered about 10 miles and risen nearly 2600 feet (Upper Hamsi Keui, 4060 feet; Zigana Pass, 6640 feet).
The slopes are inclined at an angle of about 30° and the rock is much decomposed. Time was wanting for a careful examination; but Oswald favoured the conclusion that it is hard and holocrystalline, similar in character to that of the Kitowa Dagh further east. The descent is long and gradual from the pass to the valley of the Kharshut, which eats its way through wild mountains to the Black Sea. The road is carried along the heights, on the east of a basin of ridges, by a succession of terraces. In winter, when the snow spreads a carpet at the foot of the fir trees, the view is at once inspiring and superb. But in summer the long stretches of barren yellow talus—a trachyte, decomposed and weathered a staring yellow, fatigue the eye and repel the sense. There is a certain contrast in the vegetation of the southern slopes. The luscious forest has disappeared, and so have the rhododendra; but the azalea and the spruce firs still clothe the walls facing the Pontic winds. On the other hand, the Scotch fir takes the place of its slenderer rival on the parapets which are less exposed to the moisture. At the foot of the main descent are placed at intervals three hamlets with numerous caravanserais. The first is Maden; the other two are known respectively as the Upper and the Lower Zigana (4330 feet). The distance from the pass to the Lower Zigana may be about 4½ to 5 miles. Thence it is another 7½ miles to the bridge over the Kharshut (3100 feet). The landscape, of immense extent and of the most savage character, is framed in the south by the serrated outline of the Giaour Dagh, veined with snow and capped by cloud. Between the pass and the hamlets we noticed huge volcanic dikes seaming the hillsides with bold causeways of finely crystalline rock.
The little town of Ardasa on the banks of the Kharshut affords shelter for the night. It is placed at a distance of about 2 miles above the bridge, and of about 24½ miles from the Upper Hamsi Keui. The straggling settlement is overtowered by a cliff some thousand feet in height, perhaps a limestone and coloured a rusty brown. On the summit are seen the fragments of a mediæval castle. Between Ardasa and the pass of Vavuk we followed next day the winding river, tracking it up almost to its source. The valley is fairly open, with a number of side valleys; but the scene is desolate and bare. Not a remnant of the azalea enlivens the landscape; the vegetation adheres to the margin of the water—fruit trees and willows, the large mauve flowers of the field-iris, hawthorn in bloom, the yellow blossoms of the barberry. There is a certain air of comfort in the pretty wooden houses with their gables and wooden roofs, shining white. But this note is often and quickly lost in the sounding discords of a chaotic Nature—the shales and limestones compressed into almost impossible contortions and baked and uplifted by huge bosses of igneous rock. Beyond such a devil’s gorge, which is overhung by a robber’s eyrie, is situated the considerable town of Gümüshkhaneh, famous for its silver mines, now no longer worked. You leave it on your right and pass through a lower suburb, at a distance from Ardasa of about 16½ miles.
Another 10 miles brings you to the large village of Tekke; and about 2 miles further a bridge crosses the Kharshut. It takes a road which here diverges to follow a tributary to the left bank, and which leads across the Giaour Dagh to Erzinjan. We slept at Murad Khan, a comfortable shelter, having made a stage of about 33 miles (alt. 4430 feet). On the morning of the 10th of June we again pursued the river, now become shallow, and were soon passing beneath the castled crag of Kalajik, one of the wonders of the journey to Erzerum (Ch. X., [Fig. 174], taken in winter). The size of the ruin and the scale of the outworks, which defend each ledge of the limestone precipice, far surpass the similar fastnesses in this wild valley. At 7 miles we left the stream to ascend by easy gradients the gentle slopes of the Vavuk Pass (6468 feet). At the saddle we had covered a distance of rather over 10 miles.
We stood on the threshold of the Armenian tableland, beneath a new climate and in face of a new scene. The contrast impressed Oswald, who saw it for the first time, and who at once seized the special features of this new world. We had crossed the zone of sparse fir trees; the summit is completely barren; the plain before us, as well as the rounded outlines of the opposite hills, devoid of vegetation of any kind. Only by the margin of a slowly-flowing river beneath us beds of buttercups marked out in patches its idle course. Limestones and shales are the material of this and the further eminences; it is a country of soft, swelling downs on a large scale. The clouds stand arrested on the higher summits of this barrier; the sky beyond is pellucid, the air bracing, the tints warm. As we made our way beneath the night to our distant goal beyond Baiburt the evening star was shining with the brilliance of a beacon, and my friend mistook the milky way for a luminous cloud. When we arrived in Erzerum (6168 feet) on the 14th of June the lilac filled the gardens with its heavy scent. It was commencing to blossom in our native country before we left its shores behind.