The Kurdish katirgis turned out very badly. They came at twelve instead of eight, compelling me to do only a half-day's march. Then they brought six horses instead of the four which had been bargained for, and said they would "throw down the loads" if I did not take them. Each night they insisted on starting the next morning at daybreak, but no persuasions could get them off before eight. They said they could not travel with a Christian except in broad daylight. They would only drive a mile an hour, and instead of adhering to their contract to bring me here in four days, took four to come half-way. On the slightest remonstrance they were insolent and violent, and threatened to "throw down the loads" in the most inconvenient places, and they eventually became so mutinous that I was obliged to dismiss them at the half-way halt at the risk of not getting transport any farther.[39]
The "throw on the road" from Urmi was a very large one, and consisted of nearly all the English and American Mission clergy and two Syrians, all on screaming, biting, kicking horses. It was a charming ride through fruitful country among pleasant villages to Anhar. The wind was strong and bracing. Clouds were drifting grandly over the splendid mountains to the west, the ranges to the north were glorified by rich blue colouring, purple in the shadows; among mountains on the east the Urmi sea showed itself as a turquoise streak, and among gardens and vineyards in the middle distance rose Zoroastrian cones of ashes, and the great mound, which tradition honours as the scene of the martyrdom of St. George.
When all my kind friends left me, and I walked alone in the frosty twilight on the roof of my comfortable room in the Qasha's house, and looked towards the wall of the frontier mountains through which my journey lay, I felt an unwonted feeling of elation at the prospect before me, which no possible perils from Kurds, or from the sudden setting-in of winter could damp, and thus far the interest is much greater even than I expected.
The next morning I was joined by Qasha ——, a Syrian priest, a man of great learning and intelligence, a Turkish subject and landed proprietor, who knows everybody in this region, and speaks English well. He is fearfully anxious and timid, partly from a dread of being robbed of his splendid saddle mule, and partly from having the responsibility of escorting an English lady on a journey which has turned out full of peril.
On the long ascent from Anhar a bitter wintry wind prevailed, sweeping over the tattered thistles and the pale belated campanulas which alone remain of the summer flora, but the view from the summit was one of rare beauty. The grandly drifting clouds of the night before had done their work, and had draped the Kurdish mountains half-way down with the first snows of winter, while the valley at their feet, in which Merwana lies, was a smiling autumn scene of flowery pasturage and busy harvest operations under the magic of an atmosphere of living blue.
Merwana is a village of 100 houses, chiefly Christian, though it has a Kurdish ketchuda. It is a rich village, or was, being both pastoral and agricultural. The slopes are cultivated up to a great height, and ox sleds bring the sheaves to the threshing-floor. The grain is kept in great clay-lined holes under ground, covered with straw and earth. I write that the village was rich. Lately a cloud of Kurds armed with rifles swooped down upon it towards evening, drove off 900 sheep, and killed a man and woman. The villagers appealed to Government, after which Hesso, a redoubtable Kurdish chief in its pay, went up with a band of men to Marbishu, a Christian village in Turkey, drove off 1460 sheep, and offered to repay Merwana with the stolen property. As matters now stand 700 of the poorest of the sheep have been restored to Marbishu, Merwana loses all, and Hesso and his six robber brothers have gained 760. The sole hope of the plundered people of both villages is in the intercession of Dr. Cochrane with the Governor of Azerbijan.[40]
As I reached Merwana at 10 a.m., and the katirgis, after raging for an hour, refused to proceed, I took Mirza and Qasha Bardah, the priest under whose hospitable roof I lodged, with me, and went up the valley to Ombar, the abode of Hesso, with the vague hope of "doing something" for the poor people. The path lay among bright streams and flowery pastures, the sun was warm, the air sharp, the mountains uplifted their sunlit snows into a heaven of delicious blue, the ride was charming. Hesso's village, consisting of a few very low rough stone houses, overshadowed by great cones of kiziks, is well situated on a slope above a torrent issuing from a magnificent cleft in the mountain wall, at the mouth of which is a square keep on a rock.
