"I have a pain here;" taking off his slipper, he showed the remains of an old frost-bite. "The cold did this," he added: "the fire there," pointing to the wet paper, "will put it right again."
I had considerable difficulty in explaining to the man that the plaster in question would be a useless remedy.
The following morning the wind blew harder than before. The mountain which barred our progress was entirely hid from view in what seemed to be a whirlwind of snowy particles. The cold, too, was intense. The thermometer was still several degrees below zero.
"It is no good starting," said the postman, coming to me; "to-day the sun does not shower its rays upon our destiny. Fortune is against us. We must wait here till the wind goes down."
The two merchants had made another attempt to ascend the mountain a little before daybreak. They had found it impossible to cross the passes. The track was hid from their view by the snow. They were half blinded by the flakes which the wind carried with it in its course.
There was nothing to be done but to wait patiently. In conversation with a Turkish lieutenant, I discovered that it would be possible to reach Bayazid, and from Bayazid there was a road to Van. It would be a much longer route than the one which led direct from Erzeroum to Van.
The officer interrupted me in my reflections, and proposed that we should go to Bayazid.
"Who knows," he continued, "how long we may have to wait here? The mountain is sometimes impassable for two or three weeks at a time; and, besides this, the smell in this room is enough to poison any one. These Christians do stink," he added, pointing to my Armenian host and hostess, who, begrimed with dirt, were squatting in a corner—the woman engaged in making some cakes with flour and water, and the man in looking for what it is not necessary to mention amidst his clothes.
The Russian moujik is not a sweet animal; a Souakim Arab, with hair piled up two feet above his head, and covered with liquid fat, is an equally unpleasant companion; but either of these gentlemen would have smelt like Rowland's Macassar oil in comparison with my Armenian host, who, apparently, had no ideas beyond that of manufacturing fuel from cows' dung. His conversation was entirely engrossed with this subject. It was also an important topic with the rest of his family, who were all longing for the frost to go, so as to commence making the article in question on a large scale.
Wood is very dear in these parts. The inhabitants would die if they had not a supply of fuel. It is not surprising that they take a considerable interest in their tezek. But to hear this subject discussed from morning to night, and in a room with an atmosphere like a sewer—besides being ill at the time—was a little annoying to my senses. I made up my mind that, if the weather did not improve in the course of the next twenty-four hours, I would continue my journey towards Bayazid.