Wolves are numerous, and their packs are at times a positive danger to life, particularly in hard winters. Solitary travellers are known to have been pulled down by them; and the local sheepdog is of necessity a powerful[{282}] and savage brute, though he has little of the sagacity of a Scotch collie. We have known a case in which a pack of wolves (driven by hunger, of course) actually entered the suburbs of the city of Van, and sent in a crafty old she-wolf as decoy. She brought a pack of rash street-dogs out at her tail, and the ambush was a great and shining success. The wolves got a good meal for once, and the nights in that quarter of the city were more peaceful for some time after. In the same winter (that of 1905-6, which was of exceptional severity) a pack of hunger-driven wolves actually invaded an Armenian village, and remained in possession of it for a matter of an hour. All human beings were driven to take cover in the houses, and every dog in the place was killed, while the middens were cleaned up as they had not been for many a day. The folds could not be entered, nor could the houses—else a grim tragedy would have been enacted—and, after a while, the enemy withdrew, after a strange temporary reversal of the normal condition of things.
Leopards are still to be found in the mountains, but very rarely. We have, however, seen a cub in captivity, and he was certainly not imported into the land. Lynx and marten are rare now; and the foul-eating “ghoul,” which is apparently a type of hyæna, is found on Mosul plain, as mentioned above, in company with the equally disreputable jackal. The lion which, on the evidence of Assyrian sculptures, was once common on the Mesopotamian plain, is extinct now; though old men among the Arabs still look back fondly to the days when a youth was expected to prove his manhood by killing one as a gift to his bride.
If the lion is extinct, however, another great beast that figures with him as royal game for the King of Nineveh would seem to be not quite exterminated yet. This is the aurochs, which appears repeatedly on the carvings in the British Museum.
We have never seen this animal in life, but we once saw the head of something of the genus bos on the wall of the house of a Kurdish gentleman of Amadia. Its preservation was deplorable, but it had long fine horns, and its colour had been white originally, as is the case with wild cattle elsewhere, but is very rare with the domestic animal. We observed to our host that his ox had unusually fine horns, but he declared “that is no common ox, Effendim; it is one of the wild cattle of the mountains, of which there are very few in these days.” We regret to add that seven years later the head had perished altogether, which is a distinct loss; still, there is other evidence that the animal is not entirely extinct as yet.
Birds are not numerous, but what there are are mostly of the decorative order. The great golden eagle is fairly plentiful in the mountains, and the black one is seen at times. Vultures and kites are common enough; and Haji Laqlaq the stork comes in regularly from his pilgrimage to Mecca in the spring. Magpies are plentiful and are seen in flocks of twenty at a time, in numbers that preclude any superstition attaching to them. They are good scavengers; and the parts that appear as black in their English cousins are seen, on examination, to be of a dark metallic blue and green in these specimens, so that the total effect is really brilliant.
The “blue jay” too, is really blue in this land; for he does not confine himself to a few blue feathers in his wings, as with us, but does equal honour to both our universities, by appearing with a Cambridge blue body and Oxford blue wings, and thus has a magnificent appearance. Even he is outdone by the kingfisher, who is a large specimen of his kind, and clothes himself entirely in deep metallic blue with a marvellous sheen. That at least is the livery of the fisher on the River Zab. Lower down[{283}] on the Tigris, the blue is light in colour, though equally metallic in tone, and is set off by a pair of bright russet wings.
The hoopoe comes in the summer and is, as ever, an attractive and gay neighbour, with his body of bright chestnut, and wings and crest of barred black and white. Nestorians call him “the bird of Solomon,” and tell the familiar legend of his crown; but Armenians account for it in a different way. “Their fathers say” that the hoopoe was once a damsel, very pretty, but also very conceited, who would not veil her face as decency dictates, but kept the covering that should have concealed it cocked up on the top of her head, so that all the young men could see her. So she was turned into a hoopoe, and goes about for ever in the same flirty way as of old, with the veil still on the top of her head in the guise of a crest!
Of all feathered fowl, however, none are more brilliant in colour than the bee-eater and the golden oriol. A gold-coloured body and black wings distinguish the latter; but we have never been able to satisfy ourselves as to how many hues go to the livery of the small and quick-flying bee-eater. Gold, red, green, and blue all form part of it we know; and a flock of them flying in the sun is at least a beautiful sight, though not one that is too welcome to the keeper of hives. If only they would turn their attention to flies of other varieties, one would afford them unstinted praise; as it is, one pardons their iniquities for the sake of their good looks.
Page 275. Note. We add a note to make this matter clearer, for the benefit of liturgiologists. Two sorts of leaven are put into the dough to leaven it, and both are called “melka” (King, cf the Spanish title for the Host “Su Majestad.”)
One of these is a portion taken, before consecration, from the loaf prepared for the last celebration, and reserved for this purpose. The other consists of a mere pinch of flour, or of bread reduced once more to the consistency of flour, which is kept in a special vessel in the sanctuary.