The tradition concerning this is as follows. When the Lord distributed the elements at the first Qurbana in the upper room, he gave a double portion of the bread to St. John. The Apostle consumed one part and reserved one, which he moistened with the blood of Christ on Calvary, and divided, after the Ascension, into twelve portions. One was given to each Apostle when they went forth to preach, that the act of mingling particles of it with the dough to be consecrated at every Eucharist, might connect the bread used on each occasion with that used at the first. This Melka is supplemented as needful, either with pulverised bread from the Qurbana or with fine flour, (our informant was not clear on this point), and is held to contain particles of the original, or at least to have been put into connexion with it.
CHAPTER XIV
THE GREAT CAÑONS
(THE NESTORIAN “ASHIRETS” OF HAKKIARI)
QUDSHANIS is probably a spot that is unique on the world’s surface; but on leaving it for the south, the traveller soon finds himself in a land that is fascinating enough, though plenty of parallels might be found for it, even in the present orderly world, and numbers in the history of every nation in the past. This land is the country of the Nestorian “ashirets” of Tyari, Tkhuma, Diz, Baz, and a few other wild mountain cantons; men who live under the peculiar conditions described in an earlier chapter.
It is to be expected that the natural features of a land where so primitive a state of things prevails will be rugged; and those of Hakkiari are wild and strange enough to merit a special description. The mountains are in fact a section of that great Taurus range, which extends in a curve from the shores of the Mediterranean to somewhere south of Baghdad. At this point they are pierced by a large river, the Zab, which rises well to the north of them on the Armenian plateau; and with rare determination bores its way clean through the range, till it emerges on the Mesopotamian level to the south of it, and so falls into the Tigris a little below Mosul. The cleft that it makes in the mountains is one of the great cañons of the world, comparable, in the opinion of those who have seen all, to the gorges of Yosemite and the “great Cañon of Colorado.” Midway in its course the peaks of Supa Durig and Koka Bulend, the two kings of that wilderness, stand opposite to one another. Each is nearly fourteen thousand feet in height above the sea; and as a bird flies, their crests[{285}] are not more than twelve miles apart. But the level of the river Zab that flows between them is only 4000 feet above the sea at that point, so that the net depth of the gorge is over 9000 feet.
We presume that this insistence on the part of the river arises from the fact that the huge wrinkle of the earth’s surface which men call the mountains of Taurus is of later date than the elevation of the plateau to the north of it; and that consequently, as the rivers were already flowing to the south, they steadily gouged away the barrier, as it was being slowly heaved up. Or perhaps the Zab may have found some great crevasse in the mountains which gave it the opportunity that it needed. Whatever the process, the result has been a series of most magnificent gorges, with walls falling almost precipitously from the level of eternal snow to that of fig-tree, vine, and olive; and side ravines which are scarcely inferior to the main gorge in grandeur. So narrow is the chasm, and so steep the sides of it, that even at the river level avalanches form a very real danger to spring travel, and must often be crossed by hundreds in a day’s march. Such crossing is not too easy; for smooth snow at an angle of 40°, terminated by a drop into a swollen torrent, may be dangerous for any caravan to traverse; and many are the tales told of the escapes or deaths of mountaineers.
One man of our acquaintance was caught by a descending avalanche and swept down the hill by the moving mass. While motion lasted, he was of course fairly safe; but he had the wits to remember that the peril must come when the foremost part of the great snow-slide was checked on the level, and the hinder part, still advancing, squeezed itself together like a telescoping railway train. By good luck he was upright when motion ceased and he felt the snow consolidating round him. Working his body frantically to and fro, he made as it were a little cell for himself, so that he remained uncrushed; but he was buried and held a prisoner, for his legs and feet were fast. There he remained for three days, for a man can breathe through a considerable thickness of even compressed snow; and there[{286}] he was when his friends came out to search for his dead body. They probed the snow with stick; and, as it happened, poked one down actually into his chamber, so that he was able to catch the end of it and hold on. He was extricated but little the worse.
An American missionary in the land had a similar experience in one of the side valleys. He and his party made a rash attempt to cross a slope of new snow, lying to the depth of perhaps six inches on the smooth surface of old hard stuff; and naturally they started an avalanche. The whole party of eleven men were borne down a matter of 2000 feet; and the marvel was that only one of them perished.
At one particular place an enormous avalanche is an annual event, owing to the peculiar configuration of the gorges. The winter fall on a whole mountain side is artfully concentrated into one funnel-shaped valley, which discharges into the Zab itself; and the snow-slide frequently dams the stream for some hours. There is a profitable harvest of great fish to be gathered in the dry bed below the dam at that time; though such gleaning is of an unusually exciting character. For naturally when the dam does go, it goes with a rush; and the point of safety is a good distance above the normal level of the current!
The average width of the river in the mountains is perhaps fifty yards, and its pace is very great; yet such temporary bridgings are not uncommon. The writer has seen a case where an avalanche had not only crossed the river, but had then been swirled round by the configuration of the rocky slope on the other side, so that it overwhelmed a house that had been built in what appeared to be an absolutely safe recess. Seven lives were lost on that occasion, though one old man was found living after six days burial under the snow, the roof-beams having so fallen as to make a protection for his head.