On the 27th of October I awoke in the morning, but, as I suppose, went to sleep for a while; in the afternoon I fairly came to my senses, and saw my servant sitting on the scarlet-cloth divan under the window looking at me. I felt something strange, and still, and gloomy in the air, and was rather bewildered with the sensation. This was soon to be accounted for: the servant, seeing that I was alive, came forward toward the bed, while a low rumbling noise made itself heard. This noise became louder; flakes of plaster fell from the ceiling; the room trembled, and was filled with a fine dust, with which I was nearly choked. My man exclaimed, “The earth moves—are you not afraid?” As he spoke, the noise which we had heard increased, and an immense beam, made of the trunk of a whole tree, which was immediately above my bed, split with a report like a cannon. The earthquake shook the house terribly; it creaked and trembled like a ship in a heavy gale of wind; the noise increased to a roar, not like thunder, but howling and bellowing, with a low rumbling sound, while the air was as still as if Nature was paralyzed with dread; every now and then a tremendous crash gave notice of a falling house. The one opposite our house, belonging to a poor widow, was entirely destroyed; and, in the midst of a most fearful uproar, the two rooms, one on each side of my bed-room, fell in, while the air was darkened altogether, as in an eclipse, with clouds of dust. So great was the noise of the earthquake all around, that neither my attendant nor I distinguished the particular crash when the two rooms adjoining us fell in. Some of the minarets, and many of the houses of the city, were demolished; parts of the ancient castellated walls fell down. The top of one of the two beautiful minarets of the old medressé, the glory of Erzeroom, called usually Eki Chifteh, disappeared. Those who were out, and able to witness the devastation, and to hear the awful roaring noise, said they had never seen or heard any thing more tremendous than the scene before their eyes. It is difficult to express in words the strange, awful sensation produced by the seeming impossible contradiction of a dead stillness in the midst of the crash of falling buildings, the sullen, low bellowing, which perhaps sounded from beneath the ground, and the tremendous uproar that arose on all sides during the earthquake. I have not met with an account of this strange phenomenon in the descriptions of other earthquakes, and do not know whether it is a usual accompaniment to these terrible convulsions of nature.
The earthquake accomplished its mission: in the midst of terror and destruction, it restored one poor creature to life. I regained my senses and my faculties on the 27th, as suddenly as I had lost them on the 1st day of this month. God give me grace to make a good use of the life which was restored to me under such awful circumstances!
On that day the doctor, who had some difficulty in getting to my room through the ruins of the ante-room, took the ice off my head, and in a few days I recovered sufficient strength to move my limbs, which I could not do at first.
As soon as it appeared that there was any probability of my recovery, my kind friends agreed that the best chance of regaining my health lay in removing, as soon as I could bear the journey, to a better climate. During great part of the year, and naturally in the winter, the cold was so severe that any one standing still for even a very short time was frozen to death. Dead frozen bodies were frequently brought into the city; and it is common in the summer, on the melting of the snow, to find numerous corpses of men, and bodies of horses, who had perished in the preceding winter. So usual an event is this, that there is a custom, or law, in the mountains of Armenia, that every summer the villagers go out to the more dangerous passes, and bury the dead whom they are sure to find. They have a legal right to their clothes, arms, and the accouterments of the horses, on condition of forwarding all bales of merchandise, letters, and parcels to the places to which they are directed.
During the whole month of December the Pasha had caused four mules to be exercised every day with a takterawan, or litter, which he provided for my conveyance to Trebizond. Two mules, led by one man, carried the litter; the other two followed tamely, led by another man, close behind, to be ready to take the places of the others if they were tired or disabled. From morning to night, the men and the mules, and the takterawan, stumped along through the snow, till they dared to face the storm and the immense cold, and could climb up and down the icy rocks like goats. As soon as I was able, I was sent out in the litter to try how I could bear it, and to settle various contrivances for keeping out the cold, and enabling me to bear the motion of the mules.
One day Colonel Williams rode out on the Persian road to see whether it was passable for Dr. Wolf, who was then staying at Erzeroom, and who wished to continue his journey to Bokhara, when he met a number of horses, each laden with two frozen bodies of Persian travelers, one tied on each side of the pack-horse. An unfortunate Piedmontese doctor had been lost in a snow-storm a short time before, and his body was found afterward near a small monastery, three or four miles from Erzeroom, where he had wandered, bewildered with the falling snow; and a whole party, with one or two ox-carts, who left a village in the morning on their way to another a short distance off, never arrived there; they were found huddled together, oxen, horses, men, and women, in a snow-drift, dead, and frozen hard and stiff, some weeks afterward. The cold was so tremendous at this time that the mountains were impassable, and no one was able to move beyond a short distance from the town.
CHAPTER XII.
Start for Trebizond.—Personal Appearance of the Author.—Mountain Pass.—Reception at Beyboort.—Misfortunes of Mustapha.—Pass of Zigana Dagh.—Arrival at Trebizond.
On the 27th of December, all preparations being completed, I started on my journey over the mountains to Trebizond. Kiamili Pasha had prepared an order to all and sundry, great and small, upon the road, to give me every assistance, and, with this and a powerful firman from the Sultan, I had authority to do whatever I pleased in that part of the world. About twenty attendants accompanied me, besides a certain levy from every village I passed, who were to march to the next village every day to clear the roads, move the snow, and pick us out of it when we tumbled in, &c. These villagers were all armed with the peculiar dagger of Circassia, called a cama, a most efficient tool as well as weapon, and a short, heavy rifle, generally beautifully made, with which they hit objects at very long distances, 400 yards not being considered out of shot. My personal appearance must have been remarkable: I had a long beard, and so thin a face that my nose was translucent, if not transparent. I had a Persian cap upon my head, and over other garments a toilet of my own invention, which vested me with a dignity peculiar to myself: this was a large eider down quilt, of bright green silk, in the middle of which I had caused a hole to be made, through which I put my head; the two ends of the quilt hung down before and behind, like a chasuble or a poncho; round it I tied a girdle. My general appearance must have been rather striking to the beholder, and was probably considered by the natives on the road as the official costume of an Elchi Bey. I was so weak that when I was bundled into the takterawan I could not turn round, and was nearly smothered in my own feathers, till somebody turned me on the right side upward, when I was able to bid adieu to all the principal Europeans and others who had kindly assembled to see me off. A number of people accompanied me for some distance out of the town; and Colonel Williams came as far as Elijè, about three hours in the snow, which ended my first day’s march.