While we were returning to Gunduz a party of four horsemen were seen galloping towards us from Karachoban. They proved to be an officer of zaptiehs and three men. We had received a summons, when in the village, to visit the officer; but had excused ourselves from want of time. It was a forbidding picture, these zaptiehs living at free quarters in an Armenian village. The fierce and almost black face of the officer fawned obsequiously upon us when he had learnt who we were.
From Gunduz we made our way over some grassy heights which continue the outline of the Akh Dagh. They are composed of intrusive rock, mainly basic in character. The marble of the Akh Dagh, dipping to the south-east, is interrupted by them; and the range, as such, is brought to an end. The pass across them is low (6265 feet), but it commands fine prospects over the country beyond the plain of Khinis. A portion of the Akh Dagh comes to view, seen on its reverse side. Two bold ridges were observed, plunging in an east-north-east direction, down from the summit region to a little river. It became clear that the axis of the range, as seen from the plain of Khinis, does not correspond with its axis of elevation. In fact the Akh Dagh appears to consist of a number of ridges, ranged in echelon towards east-north-east. A sprinkling of snow rested on the north-eastern slopes, from which those on the south-west were entirely free. Sipan was exposed from foot to summit, answered further west by another almost insular mass, the sombre rock and jagged outline of Bilejan. Vast tracts of plain were outspread at our feet—without a tree, with only a few rare patches of cultivation, the soil, where exposed by the plough, being coloured a rich brown. The air which we were breathing was strong and invigorating, while the sun, even near five o’clock, was warm. Motionless grey clouds were suspended over the Akh Dagh; towards evening they increased in gloom; it lightened, and a few drops of rain fell. Such is the counterpart upon the tableland of the storms of the Pontic region. A village lay below us at the beginnings of the tracts of plain; it was the Armenian village of Gopal, in which we were to pass the night (5643 feet).
One often wonders, while encamping in such a village as Gopal how the burden of life can be sustained by its inhabitants. Their property, their lives, and the chastity of their women are at stake from day to day. They exist under a perpetual Reign of Terror; and Fear, the most degrading, the most exhausting of human passions, is their companion from hour to hour. Conspicuous in this village were a band of Hasananli Kurds, parasites, no doubt, on the industrious Armenians. A Kurdish agha, in a gay dress which displayed some beautiful embroidered silk, visited us in our tent. We admired the sheath of his dagger, which was finely chased. Between these Kurds and the petty officials and the hungry zaptiehs, the Armenian cultivator hovers on the margin between life and death. From time to time a revolution is invented by an ambitious functionary, and the village becomes the scene of bloodcurdling deeds.
Gopal is situated at the confluence of two little streams which collect the drainage of the mountainous country on the east of the Akh Dagh, and issue upon the plain near the village. The spot is indicated on Kiepert’s map by the site of a place named Karakeupru; but we were assured that no such village exists in the neighbourhood, and that Gopal had never borne this name. Further doubts as to the topography of the map decided us on an excursion to the point where the streams, which unite at Gopal, discharge into the Bingöl Su. Our guide conducted us across the plain, which has here the character of downs, through which the river flows in a deeply-eroded bed. Gopal itself rests on a wide flat of alluvial land; and the level of the plain on the south and east is appreciably higher than that of the plain of Khinis. It has, indeed, been flooded with sheets of lava, which have probably issued from several points of emission at the base of the hills which confine it on the north. These lavas appear to have flowed towards the south-east; in places they are overlaid by calcareous marls. Spaces of grass occur which are almost free from stone, and over which it is a pleasure to canter. On the horizon rise Sipan and Bilejan. In the middle distance we remarked a bold escarpment of limestone which we had noticed at Karachoban. It forms one side of the gorge through which the Bingöl Su issues from the plain of Khinis. The beds were seen to be dipping almost directly towards Sipan; and they are probably continued across the river into the Khamur heights. After a ride of over an hour, we arrived at the tongue of high land filling the fork between the two rivers. Deep below us, at the foot of the cliffs, which are here composed of limestone, meandered the meeting streams. In one direction we looked up the gorge of the Bingöl Su; in another towards the face of the cliff on the left bank of the Gopal Su, which must be several hundred feet high. The village of Murian, on its right bank, a little above the confluence, was a mere speck in the bed of the river at our feet. But we could see its inhabitants running in all directions, the size of ants, and like ants which have been disturbed. Horsemen came spurring up the steep side of the precipice, of which we occupied the neck. Our position was so strong that we had full leisure for our occupations, myself with the mapping, Oswald with the rocks. Krimizi Tuzla is neither at nor near this confluence, as the map of Kiepert shows. The joint waters flow off towards Bayaz Tuzla, which, however, was invisible. The eye follows their winding reaches for some distance as they cut their way through a succession of low, white hills. Murian belongs to the vilayet of Bitlis, and Gopal to that of Erzerum.
In the meantime the horsemen had formed in line on the level ground north of our position. They proved to be a band of Kurds in the employ of a Kaimakam who resides in this remote village. That official stepped forward and saluted us with deference; at his side rode a sergeant of the regular army, commissioned to drill the Kurds. These are members of the great Hasananli tribe. The Kaimakam escorted us for a part of the way to Gopal, over the spacious downs. I employed my brief experience with yeomanry in England in the endeavour to put his retinue through some simple exercises. The sergeant translated the words of command. But it was impossible to keep them in line for any time. They would burst forward, each trooper vying with his neighbour, and careering over the plain, the rifle brandished like a spear. The more I saw of Kurds the deeper grew my impression that they would be completely worthless in time of war.
On the outskirts of Gopal were encamped some gypsies, who subsist by making sieves.[2] It was late in the afternoon of the 28th of June before we left the village, and mounted the cliff on the left bank of the stream. For several miles we rode in a north-easterly direction across the upland plain. These levels extend from the ridges of the Akh Dagh, in the west, to a barrier of marble heights which rose on our point of course, and appeared to be continued southwards in a roughly south-east line. The prospect over the region in the direction of Lake Van disclosed an immense area of comparatively even country, limited only by the insular masses of Sipan and Bilejan. These masses were in some sense linked by the long outline of a range of hills, which, in fact, compose the southern edge of the Murad basin, and beyond which repose the waters of the great lake. Khamur was boldly defined in the south-west.
I feel that I shall exhaust the patience of my reader if I follow in detail the remainder of our journey to Tutakh. I have brought him along the outskirts of the important plain of Khinis to the region about Lake Van. In case he may be a traveller, desirous of guidance over the wild country which separates Gopal from Tutakh, I would offer the suggestion that he should shape a direct course by his compass; I doubt that he would be obliged to deviate often or for very far. Such advice would have saved ourselves from getting lost in the intricate districts to the north of such a direct line. Nobody knew the way; there are few villages; and, although the inhabitants appeared to belong exclusively to the Hasananli, each village was at feud with its immediate neighbours, and it was impossible to obtain guides. Moreover the division of the day into tedious units of hours is a process which in that region is unfamiliar and scarcely known. During the summer the few inhabitants are scattered in the yailas; the remnant in the village is largely composed of old men and women, besides the children, male and female, whose naked stomachs are distended by the quantities of gritty bread they are obliged to consume. Such scenes of abject poverty are rarely tempered by a brighter vision—the vision of youth, mature and unimpaired. The few young women and girls, who have not followed the flocks and herds, will be busy at their weaving of material for the black tents, stretching the long strands of goat-hair twine, and adding the woof to the web. Their loose cotton trousers display the slimness of their limbs; and it is a pleasure to watch the rhythm of their bodies, seated by the side of their task with knees apart.
But neither Oswald nor myself regretted our wanderings. By adhering to the higher levels we obtained a picture of structural features, which not only confirmed the studies we had pursued together, but also contributed several interesting facts. It is in this region that the great lines of elevation and mountain-making describe that beautiful curve which attains its greatest orographical significance in the mountains which border the highlands of Armenia and Persia on the north and on the south. In the south it is the line of the Armenian Taurus arching over into that of the Zagros chain; while in the north the wider span of the alps of Pontus and the Chorokh region is deflected into the border range of Russian Armenia and into the mountains of Khorasan.[3] Within the area of the Armenian tableland this curve may be clearly traced; for instance, it is conspicuous in the trend of the mountains from Palandöken to Kilich Gedik, and in that of the Aghri Dagh further north. Even in the country over which we were travelling, some distance south of the former of these barriers, and of comparatively even nature, the strike of the stratified rocks displayed the change in direction; while the sheets of lava, which overlay them, were evidently due to zones of weakness, where the stress of bending over had been attended with fracture, and the apex of the arc had given way. Speaking generally, the rocks consisted of older limestone, hardened into marble, and varied by igneous material, crystalline in character and of intrusive origin. Upon this foundation rested layers of later limestone; while over all were outspread the lavas, sometimes covering the entire series, at others swathing the base of marble eminences. These lavas had welled up from fissures, for the most part on the north of our track; they had flowed towards the south, in the direction of the still distant Murad, often following the trough of the river valleys, and sometimes altering the course of the drainage. The change of strike in the stratified rocks was observed in the neighbourhood of the village of Alkhes. There the axis of the limestone folds was almost latitudinal; and, as we neared Tutakh, it assumed a direction of east-south-east. This was also the direction of the several valleys between Alkhes and the Murad.
In many respects the region resembles Tekman; the higher levels over which we passed have an elevation of from 6000 to 7500 feet. But the lavas have played a greater part in its configuration; and the streams, which were mere runnels, have eaten to an immense depth and flow in meridional valleys. Thus we were always either picking our way over a sheet of lava, crumbled into boulders and yellow with fennel, or descending hundreds of feet into a deep valley through which trickled a rivulet. We crossed only one considerable stream—the Kersuk or Kersik. It was winding through a gorge composed of limestone overlying serpentine, and was changing its course from south-east towards the south. At the bend, on the left bank, at some height above the river, is situated the picturesque village of Alkhes. The channel had a breadth of only a few paces; but the water reached to our horses’ girths.
The district about Alkhes, and for some distance west and east, is known by the name of Elmali Dere, or the vale of apple trees. These pleasant trees, with their grey-green foliage, are found in abundance in the valley and side valleys of the Kersik. But the dreary fennel is almost the only plant on the higher levels; nor can the eye, far and wide, thence discern the shape of a tree. In the north the mournful landscape is framed by the mountains which bend south-eastwards into the Kilich Gedik. At Alkhes they were known under the name of Khalias Dagh; at Tutakh, where our informants were better educated, under that of Mergemir. Towards the south, upon the limits of a wide semicircle, rose the snow-clad and still distant summits of the Ala Dagh, rose Sipan and Bilejan. An unknown mountain, of relatively humble proportions, concealed the western slopes of the giant of Lake Van; it proved to be Kartevin, a volcanic and insular mass, on the left bank of the Murad.