“Allahkerim!” (God is merciful!) said his companions, when he had told us this sad history. His family was swept from the face of the earth; there was not a servant left, not one old well-remembered face to greet him in his visit to the village where he had passed his childish days. He had heard nothing of the fever or of the infliction which had fallen upon his house, and suddenly he found himself alone in the wide world. We were all grieved for him, but what could we do? every one looked grave as we plodded on again through the snow and ice, and smoked the pipe of reflection in silence on our weary way.
On the 7th we got into a fix near a place called Madem Khanlari, in the pass of Zigana Dagh, a worse place than Even Hoshabounar: we had been all day scrambling about in rocky ledges, and crossing torrents and snow-drifts, each of which seemed impassable till we went at it with a will: a number of villagers, with axes and ropes, came with us, and worked valiantly in clearing the ice off the narrow shelves of rock, and leading the horses through the most difficult places, where they could hardly stand; sometimes the horses were almost lifted by the men. By the greatest care and exertion, none as yet fell over the precipices. My takterawan was surrounded by a posse of zealous, active mountaineers, clinging to each other, and putting the mules’ feet into the holes which they cut for them with their axes. At last we got to a place where there was a sudden turn at the narrow edge of a gorge or cleft of rock: the length of the litter, with one mule before and another behind, made it impossible to turn without going over. Somehow, by the help of a number of men, the front mule was carried by main force round the corner, till we were in such a position that the hinder mule was being dragged over the precipice by the poles of the takterawan, to which it was harnessed. Without a drawing it is difficult to describe the position we had got into; but it may be partly understood by the fact that, out of whichever side of the takterawan I looked, there was nothing under me, for perhaps two hundred feet, till you arrived at a brawling torrent, which kept itself alive by violent exercise, in jumping, leaping, and tumbling over the rocks and cascades at the bottom of the ravine, so that it was the only thing not frozen hard and still in the dead landscape of thick ice, and snow, and shattered rock, and the clean, smooth precipice towered up from the little merry stream to hundreds of feet above our heads, where an edge of snow and a fringe of icicles shone in the bright sky upon the topmost margin of the cliffs. Some of the men now sat down, with their legs hanging over the precipice; they were supported by other men, while, in their turn, they held the legs of the mules, who were beginning to get frightened, or perhaps choked, and gave utterance to curious exclamations. My friend Beyragdar made a bridge of his long body, by leaning over from the inner angle of the road to the side of the takterawan. As for me, beyond peeping like an old rat out of a cage, I could not move, so I lay still till I was pulled out by two men over Beyragdar’s back, handed like a bundle over the foremost mule, and stuck upon a horse a little farther on. The mules were, somehow or other, saved and released from the shafts of the takterawan, which I never saw again; they could get it no further, and the rest of the journey I made on horseback, supported by a man on each side when the road was wide enough, by one when it was too narrow for two, and, when there was only room for the horse alone, Beyragdar carried me in his arms till we got to the Strada Reale, good two feet wide, when I was put upon a horse again.
Quarantine Harbor, Trebizond.
In this way, by slow degrees, we scrambled on our way, till, on the 10th of January, after fifteen days’ journey through the intense cold of the mountains, I arrived, in better health and strength than when I started, at the edge of the table-land, from whence I saw the blue waters of the sea, and at 11 o’clock A.M. I was seated in my room in the quarantine station at Trebizond.
CHAPTER XIII.
Former History of Trebizond.—Ravages of the Goths.—Their Siege and Capture of the City.—Dynasties of Courtenai and the Comneni.—The “Emperor” David.—Conquest of Trebizond by Mehemet II.
Trebizond, so famous in the Middle Ages as the residence of magicians, enchanters, and redoubted heroes of chivalry, is better known in the pages of romance than for any facts of historical importance which occurred there during many centuries. The only person who might probably have been able to throw much light upon the ancient history of this Byzantine city was that veracious chronicler, the Cid Hamet Bengenelli, who, in his account of the renowned and valorous Knight of the Rueful Countenance, records of Don Quixote that “the poor gentleman already imagined himself at least crowned Emperor of Trebizond by the valor of his arm; and wrapped up in these agreeable delusions, and hurried on by the strange pleasure he took in romances of chivalry, he prepared to execute what he so much desired.”
Two real events, however, occurred at Trebizond which I shall endeavor to describe—the only ones which stand out with any prominence in the records of the dukes, counts, and governors who held this province in their languid rule.