Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 331, May, 1843

by Various

CHAPTER VII.

FRAGMENT OF A LETTER FROM COLONEL VERKHÓFFSKY TO HIS BETROTHED.

Derbénd, April.

Fly to, me, heart of my heart, dearest Maria! Rejoice in the sight of a lovely vernal night in Daghestán. Beneath me lies Derbénd, slumbering calmly, like a black streak of lava flowing from the Caucasus and cooled in the sea. The gentle breeze bears to me the fragrant odour of the almond-trees, the nightingales are calling to each other from the rock-crevices, behind the fortress: all breathes of life and love; and beautiful nature, full of this feeling, covers herself with a veil of mists. And how wonderfully has that vaporous ocean poured itself over the Caspian! The sea below gleams wavingly, like steel damasked with gold on an escutcheon—that above swells like a silver surge lighted by the full moon, which rolls along the sky like a cup of gold, while the stars glitter around like scattered drops. In a moment, the reflection of the moonbeams in the vapours of the night changes the picture, anticipating the imagination, now astounding by its marvels—now striking by its novelty. Sometimes I seem to behold the rocks of the wild shore, and the waves beating against them in foam. The billows roll onward to the charge: the rocky ramparts repel the shock, and the surf flies high above them; but silently and slowly sink the waves, and the silver palms arise from the midst of the inundation, the breeze stirs their branches, playing with the long leaves, and they spread like the sails of a ship gliding over the airy ocean. Do you see how she rolls along, how the spray-drops sparkle on her breast, how the waves slide along her sides. And where is she?... and where am I?... You cannot imagine, dearest Maria, the sweetly solemn feeling produced in me by the sound and sight of the sea. To me, the idea of eternity is inseparable from it; of immensity—of our love. That love seems to me, like it, infinite—eternal. I feel as if my heart overflowed to embrace the world, even as the ocean, with its bright waves of love. It is in me and around me; it is the only great and immortal feeling which I possess. Its spark lights and warms me in the winter of my sorrows, in the midnight of my doubts. Then I love so blindly! I believe so ardently! You smile at my fantasy, friend and companion of my soul. You wonder at this dark language; blame me not. My spirit, like the denizen of another world, cannot bear the chill and frosty moonlight—it shakes off the dust of the grave; it soars away, and, like the moonlight, dimly discovers all things darkly and uncertainly. You know that it is to you alone that I write down the pictures which fall on the magic-glass of my heart, assured that you will guess, not with cold criticism, but with the heart, what I would describe. Besides, next August, your happy bridegroom will himself explain all the dark passages in his letters. I cannot think without ecstasy of the moment of our meeting. I count the sand-grains of the hours which separate us. I count the versts which lie between us. And so in the middle of June you will be at the waters of the Caucasus. And nought but the icy chain of the Caucasus will be between two ardent hearts.... How near—yet how immeasurably far shall we be from each other! Oh! how many years of life would I not give to hasten the hour of our meeting! Long, long, have our hearts been plighted.... Why have they been separated till now?

My friend Ammalát is not frank or confiding. I cannot blame him. I know how difficult it is to break through habits imbibed with a mother's milk, and with the air of one's native land. The barbarian despotism of Persia, which has so long oppressed Aderbidján, has instilled the basest principles into the Tartars of the Caucasus, and has polluted their sense of honour by the most despicable subterfuge. And how could it be otherwise in a government based upon the tyranny of the great over the less—where justice herself can punish only in secret—where robbery is the privilege of power? "Do with me what you like, provided you let me do with my inferior what I like," is the principle of Asiatic government—its ambition, its morality. Hence, every man, finding himself between two enemies, is obliged to conceal his thoughts, as he hides his money. Hence every man plays the hypocrite before the powerful; every man endeavours to force from others a present by tyranny or accusation. Hence the Tartar of this country will not move a step, but with the hope of gain; will not give you so much as a cucumber, without expecting a present in return.

Insolent to rudeness with every one who is not in power, he is mean and slavish before rank or a full purse. He sows flattery by handfuls; he will give you his house, his children, his soul, to get rid of a difficulty, and if he does any body a service, it is sure to be from motives of interest.

In money matters (this is the weakest side of a Tartar) a ducat is the touchstone of his fidelity; and it is difficult to imagine the extent of their greediness for profit! The Armenian character is yet a thousand times more vile than theirs; but the Tartars hardly yield to them in corruption and greediness—and this is saying a good deal. Is it surprising that, beholding from infancy such examples, Ammalát—though he has retained the detestation of meanness natural to pure blood—should have adopted concealment as an indispensable arm against open malevolence and secret villany? The sacred ties of relationship do not exist for Asiatics. With them, the son is the slave of the father—the brother is a rival. No one trusts his neighbour, because there is no faith in any man. Jealousy of their wives, and dread of espionage, destroy brotherly love and friendship. The child brought up by his slave-mother—never experiencing a father's caress, and afterwards estranged by the Arabian alphabet, (education,) hides his feelings in his own heart even from his companions; from his childhood, thinks only for himself; from the first beard are every door, every heart shut for him: husbands look askance at him, women fly from him as from a wild beast, and the first and most innocent emotions of his heart, the first voice of nature, the first movements of his feelings—all these have become crimes in the eyes of Mahometan superstition. He dares not discover them to a relation, or confide them to a friend.... He must even weep in secret.

All this I say, my sweet Maria, to excuse Ammalát: he has already lived a year and a half in my house, and hitherto has never confessed to me the object of his love; though he might well have known, that it was from no idle curiosity, but from a real heartfelt interest, that I wished to know the secret of his heart. At last, however, he has told me all; and thus it happened.

Yesterday I took a ride out of the town with Ammalát. We rode up through a defile in the mountain on the west, and we advanced further and further, higher and higher, till we found ourselves unexpectedly close to the village of Kelík, from which may be seen the wall that anciently defended Persia from the incursions of the wandering tribes inhabiting the Zakavkáz, (trans-Caucasian country,) which often devastated that territory. The annals of Derbénd (Derbéndnámé) ascribe, but falsely, the construction of it to a certain Iskender—i.e. Alexander the Great—who, however, never was in these regions. King Noushirván repaired it, and placed a guard along it. More than once since that time it has been restored; and again it fell into ruin, and became overgrown, as it now is, with the trees of centuries. A tradition exists, that this wall formerly extended from the Caspian to the Black Sea, cutting through the whole Caucasus, and having for its extremity the "iron gate" of Derbénd, and Dariál in its centre; but this is more than doubtful as far as regards the general facts, though certain in the particulars. The traces of this wall, which are to be seen far into the mountains, are interrupted here and there, but only by fallen stones or rocks and ravines, till it reaches the military road; but from thence to the Black Sea, through Mingrelia, I think there are no traces of its continuation.

I examined, with curiosity, this enormous wall, fortified by numerous towers at short distance; and I wondered at the grandeur of the ancients, exhibited even in their unreasonable caprices of despotism—that greatness to which the effeminate rulers of the East cannot aspire, in our day, even in imagination. The wonders of Babylon, the lake of Mœris, the pyramids of the Pharaohs, the endless wall of China, and this huge bulwark, built in sterile places, on the summits of mountains, through the abyss of ravines—bear witness to the gigantic iron will, and the unlimited power, of the ancient kings. Neither time, nor earthquake, nor man, transitory man, nor the footstep of thousands of years, have entirely destroyed, entirely trodden down, the remains of immemorial antiquity. These places awake in me solemn and sacred thoughts. I wandered over the traces of Peter the Great; I pictured him the founder, the reformer, of a young state—building it on these ruins of the decaying monarchies of Asia, from the centre of which he tore out Russia, and with a mighty hand rolled her into Europe. What a fire must have gleamed in his eagle eye, as he glanced from the heights of Caucasus! What sublime thoughts, what holy aspirations, must have swelled that heroic breast! The grand destiny of his country was disclosed before his eyes; in the horizon, in the mirror of the Caspian, appeared to him the picture of Russia's future weal, sown by him, and watered by his red sweat. It was not empty conquest that was his aim, but victory over barbarism—the happiness of mankind. Derbénd, Báka, Astrabád, they are the links of the chain with which he endeavoured to bind the Caucasus, and rivet the commerce of India with Russia.