It appeared that the Kurd wished to buy a wife from a neighbouring farmer who had some marriageable daughters. Their father, nothing loth, and who was in want of a pair of broad yellow trousers, had consented, provided the candidate for his girl's hand would provide him with a beautiful pair, a turban, and some tea. Broad yellow drawers, or pants, as Yankees would call them, are not often to be met with in Kurdistan. They are brought from Erivan in Russia, and are greatly prized by the mountaineers. The Kurd had been to Khoi on purpose, had sold there a horse and two sheep; with the proceeds of the sale he had purchased the attire in question. He was now dreadfully alarmed lest the father of the girl should decline giving his daughter in exchange for the soiled apparel.
"But what can I do in the matter?" was my next question.
"Give me a baksheesh," said the Kurd, "and I will return to Khoi and buy some more garments."
The man had forgotten about the mail-bag, which lay buried beneath the frozen surface of the river.
Desiring him to go and fish up the letters, I promised that, later in the day, I would take his case into consideration.
The snow disappeared as we approached the town of Van. We rode by a small lake, about twelve miles from our halting-place. Continuing on over a succession of table-lands, the path sloped down towards the great lake or sea, to which the capital of Armenia gives a name.
Van stands in a plain and is surrounded by orchards filled with fruit-trees. The ground in the neighbourhood is highly cultivated, corn and other cereals flourishing throughout the district.
I had sent forward a letter of introduction to the governor of Van from Ismail Pacha of Erzeroum. The man to whom I had entrusted the epistle had not taken the trouble to deliver it. The governor was quite ignorant of my arrival.
I stopped at his house, and, going up to the reception-chamber, found him busily engaged in conversation with an official who had recently arrived from Constantinople, to inquire into the excesses said to have been committed by some soldiers upon the Armenians in Van.
The Pacha received me very courteously, in spite of my not having a letter for him; he remarked, with a smile, that there were no hotels in Van as in Constantinople, and said that he would provide me with a room in a barrack which had been lately erected in the town.