The traveller himself could not put into words the wonder and awe with which he was filled by the spectacle which lay before him. We can only indicate the chief features of that astonishing panorama, which included Kazbek and Elbruz, the latter two hundred and eighty miles away, and had the Caspian Sea upon its dim horizon. The mountains of Daghestan, the extinct volcano of Ala Goz, Erivan with its orchards and its vineyards, Araxes like a silver thread, the Taunus ranges and Bingol Dagh, the great Russian fortress of Alexandropol, and Kars, its enemy then, now in Russian hands. Two hundred miles away could be faintly descried the blue tops of the Assyrian mountains of Southern Kurdistan, ‘mountains that look down on Mosul and those huge mounds of Nineveh by which the Tigris flows.’ Below and around, included in this single view, seemed to lie the whole cradle of the human race, ‘from Mesopotamia in the south to the great wall of the Caucasus that covered the northern horizon, the boundary of the civilised world.’ No wonder that looking on such a scene, a solitary man should feel terrified at his own insignificance. ‘Nature,’ says the traveller, ‘sits enthroned, serenely calm, upon this hoary pinnacle, and speaks to her children only in the storm and earthquake that level their dwellings in the dust.’
No wonder the solitary man could take no heed of time until, while the eye was still unsatisfied with gazing, the curtain of mist closed again, and, says the author, ‘I was left alone in this little plain of snow, white, silent, and desolate, with a vividly bright green sky above it, and a wild west wind whistling across it, clouds girding it in, and ever and anon through the clouds glimpses of far-stretching valleys and mountains away to the world’s end.’
Mr Bryce accomplished the descent speedily and safely, reaching the encampment at six o’clock in the evening. Two days later, he and his friend went to visit the Armenian monastery of Etchmiadzin, near the northern foot of Ararat, and were presented to the Archimandrite. Here is Mr Bryce’s pithy account of the interview: ‘It came out in conversation that we had been on the mountain, and the Armenian gentleman who was acting as interpreter turned to the Archimandrite, and said: “This Englishman says he has ascended to the top of Massis (Ararat).” The venerable man smiled sweetly. “No,” he replied; “that cannot be. No one has ever been there. It is impossible.”’
LEGAL GLEANINGS.
Sticklers for their rights or fancied rights are rarely deterred from trying legal conclusions with an adversary by reason of the game not being worth the candle. In 1819 the Master of the Rolls delivered judgment in a case he described as the most difficult one he had ever been called upon to decide; a case which had been before the court for ten years, and cost each side some four thousand pounds; the matter in dispute being the ownership of a couple of perches of land of the value of ten pounds.
Not long ago a traveller by a London tram-car refused, ‘from principle,’ to pay his fare of two-pence until he arrived at the end of his journey; and a magistrate sympathising with him, dismissed the summons obtained by the Company. The latter appealed to the Court of Queen’s Bench, and got the case remitted to the police court; the upshot being that the traveller was fined one shilling, and had to pay the costs incurred by the Company, amounting to something like fifty pounds!
To pay for defeat is bad enough, but to win and yet lose by victory is certainly worse. A gentleman once spent two thousand pounds in establishing his claim to compensation for an infraction of his rights, and then was awarded one hundred and ten pounds by the assessor of the damages.—Nor, if his time was of any value to him, did a labourer, seeking to recover ten shillings from an innkeeper for refusing to supply him with refreshment, find himself the richer for invoking the aid of the law. Going into a public-house, he called for half a pint of ‘four-half,’ for which he put down his penny; but mine host refused to serve him, so that he was compelled to go farther, to a house on the opposite side of the street, where they sold beer that ‘did not suit him so well.’ For this he claimed damages in the county court, and got them, the judge giving him one shilling.—But more unfortunate was a Yorkshire wight who won his cause and two shillings damages at York assizes, but had to go to prison for his own costs.
Something said by a frank-speaking witness in a case tried by Lord Mansfield impelled his lordship to remark: ‘You have said the parish funds are often imprudently applied, and you have mentioned that you once served as churchwarden yourself. If you have no objection, I should wish to hear what was done with the money at that time?’
‘Why, my lord,’ said the farmer, ‘the money was worse applied when I was churchwarden than ever I knew it to be in my life.’