The pursuers who should have pressed on their tracks, as soon as they found that the Yailas had been evacuated, stayed behind to quarrel over the division of such sheep as had been abandoned; and the isolated detachments that strove to check their progress were surprised by their sudden sally and easily brushed aside.
The Patriarch marched with the Tal column, and his march was marked by an incident as moving as it is picturesque. His route led him over a lofty mountain col near Julamerk,[163] whence for the last time he was able to look down upon the little green “alp” that marked the site of his own village of Qudshanis; and, as he paused to gaze, one natural sigh escaped him: “When shall I ever drink the waters of Qudshanis again?” The words were caught by as attentive ears as those of the three mighty men who followed the son of Jesse. Without a word to their chieftain a small party of devoted warriors broke away from the line of march, burst through the Kurdish picket that attempted to bar the path against them, and brought back to their beloved Patriarch a pitcher of water from the Qudshanis spring.
The columns from Tal and Diz joined hands again at Kotranis, and the reunited nation reached Albaq according to plan. Here they had one last struggle; for a body of Kurds from Gawar had crossed the Zab by one of the higher bridges and cut into their path ahead of them. But the pass was carried triumphantly by a detachment under Khoshaba of Lizan; and the Assyrians, saved by their own exertions, poured at last into Salmas Plain.
It was not a beaten host that arrived—or, at all events, no more beaten than that untamable Serbian army which, just at this very same period, was being driven from its own country by the combined Austrians and Bulgars. They had held their own against great odds as long as resistance was possible; and, when forced to retreat under appalling difficulties, they had brought away with them not only their women and children, but a large proportion of their[{375}] flocks and herds as well. They had indeed suffered heavy losses in the fighting and many women and children had succumbed to the hardships of the retreat. But their spirit was still unbroken, as they were yet destined amply to prove.
Their irruption over the border of Persia introduced an additional complication into a medley of anomalies which was already quite complicated enough. Persia was nominally neutral, but too weak to enforce her neutrality; and both combatants were still professedly respecting a neutrality which their every act ignored.
Azerbaijan is an appanage of the Vali Ahd (the Persian heir-apparent). The Governor of Urmi is consequently his nominee, and the Governor’s Advisory Council are the Moslem notables of the place. But the infamous régime which these gentry had established during the previous winter had been promptly suppressed by the Russians as soon as they returned in the spring. The Governor still held his post—was he not still (nominally) Governor? But the only orders he was allowed to issue were those that were put into his mouth by the Russian “consul.” And, if the Russian consul chose to take previous council with anyone, he consulted not the Moslem notables, but the despised local Christians, who possessed no locus standi in the eyes of the Government at all. How intolerable this position must have seemed to a city full of fanatical Moslems will be appreciated by those who know the overbearing arrogance with which fanatical Moslems are accustomed to treat any Christian helots who may be subject to them, and the amount of swagger which an Oriental menial is apt to assume to celebrate his emancipation. But, grin as they might in secret, they did not dare do so openly in the presence of Russian soldiery; and, indeed, though he may be a bully, the Persian is generally a coward.
And now to complete their afflictions came this horde of ruffians from the mountains—men whom they despised, not merely as Christians, but as savages yet of whose physical prowess they were all mortally afraid; men who had lost their all, and who (so at least Urmi credited) had[{376}] been accustomed from their cradles to regard robbery and bloodshed as their ordinary daily work. Here they were with arms in their hands and Urmi at their mercy.
Yet in truth (in the words of Dr. Macdowell of the American Hospital at Urmi) the newcomers “behaved much better than anyone could reasonably expect.” They certainly plundered at first—not, indeed, in the district of Salmas where the Patriarch had settled himself, but in the neighbourhood of Urmi where there was no controlling hand. But it is certain also that the Persians who complained of them had themselves been asking for trouble rather importunately. Starving men with arms in their hands are apt to grow rather restive when they find conspicuously hard bargains being driven at their expense; and, having just saved their bare lives by means of their trusty weapons, they are mighty suspicious of invitations to surrender those weapons in exchange for a little food. Moreover, they had uglier treatment to complain of. Ijlal el Mulk, the Persian Governor of Urmi, came suddenly upon a party of Assyrians as he turned the sharp, rocky point at the northern end of the lake which is known as “Snatch-beard Corner,” and promptly loosed his guards upon them in sheer panic terror, under the crazy delusion that they were an ambuscade. But even events like these were presently smoothed over; and, as there were plenty of deserted villages in the districts of Urmi and Salmas, the Assyrians found little difficulty in gradually suiting themselves with new homes.
Meanwhile they were not quite oblivious of the fact that “there was still a war on.” Now, for the first time, they began to get adequately armed with modern rifles and ammunition from the Russian arsenals. And perhaps it deserves to be recorded that they took extremely kindly to bombing. Bombs made such noble detonations when used liberally in echoing ravines. Surma, the Patriarch’s sister (as the only non-combatant who carried sufficient authority), was installed in charge of the ammunition depot; and, after living for months in a house crammed to the doors with high explosives, was amused to overhear a couple of her reckless tribesmen lamenting her pitiable “nervousness,” because[{377}] she had sternly prohibited their smoking when they came to fetch powder from the magazine.