Two American Boys in the War Zone

by Levi Worthington Green

The boys, however, did not take much time for star-gazing, and the aching of their muscles all over their bodies assured them that what they had gone through was no dream. Their prodigious exertions of the previous days culminated in overwhelming fatigue, and they had hardly more than lain down when sleep made them oblivious of everything.

Sidney and Raymond had camped out so much, and so rarely with anything more than blankets to place between them and the earth, that they could sleep on any spot, however hard. If their bed were free from loose rocks they asked nothing more. Sleep, such as they had that night, is a great restorer, and in the morning the boys felt equal to anything that might be ahead of them.

The travelers observed no habitations on the south slope of the range, and in fact the descent was so short and so precipitous that it would have been impossible for any one to make a home there. Even the hardy tribes who had established villages in the almost inaccessible mountains of Daghestan would not have had the temerity to attempt a colony on the opposite slope of the Caucasus.

By noon of the next day, however, the boys had reached the upper margin of the beautiful valley of the Alazan: a valley where the dwellers conducted water wherever they pleased, and that was made luxuriant by the stimulus of irrigation under a warm sun. There the languid air of a semi-tropic early autumn was laden with the fragrance of ripening grapes. A luscious late crop of figs hung heavy on their stems, and pomegranates had burst their rinds to show the crimson kernels within.

In groves of glossy dark orange trees golden globes gleamed amidst the rich foliage, and the ashy green of the olives was set thick with the black of ripened fruit. All was luxurious warmth, abundance, and peace, and seemed to the boys, after the rugged, sterile mountains over which they had toiled, to be a veritable Happy Valley.

The travelers found the people whom they encountered to be very different from the stern inhabitants of the rugged mountains of Daghestan. Indeed, such a type would have been impossible in the languorous air of the Southern valley. The Georgians appeared a mild, gentle folk, and much more fair of face than their neighbors across the mountain barrier.

It was easy to make the owners of the gardens and groves understand that a purchase of fruit was desired, and a delicious variety was heaped before the boys in return for the silver coin which Sidney tendered. And how they did feast! Only one who has been entirely without fruit and vegetables for many days could understand what that abundance meant to the boys. Besides, the semi-tropical fruits reminded them of their own Southwestern home, and created a longing of homesickness that was painful in its intensity.

As it was easy to obtain food, so also there was an open hospitality that made the tramp of two or three days across to Tiflis an enjoyment rather than a task. Possibly the people were not more hospitable than those of Daghestan, and it may be that the soft air and beautiful surroundings lent to them a seeming of suave courtesy. At any rate, the boys thoroughly enjoyed that part of their journey, and it was the first time that they had felt real enjoyment.

While the valleys were filled with luxuriant growth, fostered by the streams that were conducted in canals over their surface, the mountains were more forbidding, and that condition, also, reminded the boys of their own Southwest. They found Tiflis situated where the Kura River emerged from between high bare mountains.

There ended the long tramp of hundreds of miles, and the boys paused and looked back at the sky-line of white that marked the crest of the great Caucasus Range over which they had climbed. As they looked, and their minds ran back over the way by which they had come, the distance to the Caspian, where they had left the steamer, seemed infinity.