[143] The writer was recounting this anecdote at a meeting after his return to England when an old gentleman in the audience was overheard to remark, in a scandalized voice: “Tut, tut, tut; why didn’t he give him in charge?”
[144] There are no coroner’s inquests in the mountains; but we never killed any one as far as we know.
[145] “Books of remedies” and collections of charms like the one referred to are often found among the Nestorians, and the substance of them is often of almost incredible antiquity. The writer once translated some specimens he had selected to a friend learned in Assyriology and found that they were essentially identical with the charms on the oldest of the Babylonian tablets. A substratum of the oldest faith of the land has survived all the changes of seven thousand years.
[146] The incident occurred in 1901 or 1902. The officer concerned was Captain Maunsell, R.A., then British Vice-Consul at Van. The English “Apostles” do not usually carry arms. It might answer if they could be sure of disabling an assailant; for then he would come to be doctored, and amicable relations would be re-established. But to kill him would start a blood feud, and to miss him would be worst of all. The vacuus viator is safer than one who carries such a valuable prize as an English gun.
[147] The lady is usually allowed very little choice. We were consulted once in a knotty case where a girl had been betrothed to one man by her father and another by her mother; and we mildly suggested that she might at least be allowed a casting vote. “What can it matter to her, Rabbi?” said the Bishop of Berwar who was acting as arbitrator; “one husband is as good as another!”
[148] “And satyrs shall dance there” is the final touch in Isaiah’s picture of the desolation of Babylon. This is doubtless the identical beast.
[149] He entirely confirmed Mr. Bram Stoker’s evidence that the King of the Vampires is Dracula.
[150] Armenians aver that this happened on the summit of Sipan Dagh, near Van. Noah, on feeling the bump, ejaculated “Sipan Allah!” (Praise God!) and this gave its name to the mountain. He must have been the only mariner on record to feel delight at such an event.
[151] These were the gorges that drove Xenophon to take to the mountains in the Anabasis. He could march up the left bank of the river about as high as Jezireh; but there the ravine grew too narrow and difficult for troops.
[152] Herodotus seems to have confused the keleg and the ghufa in his notes; for both existed, on the evidence of the sculptures, in his day. He speaks of “circular craft, covered with skins and caulked with bitumen,” and made on wooden frames. He adds that at the journey’s end the wood was sold, and the skins carried back “to Armenia” on the back of a donkey that had made the voyage down on the vessel. All his details are right, as regards one or other of the two types, save only the voyaging donkey. An experienced jackass will jump readily into a ghufa and be ferried across, or some way down, the river; but he does not, in these days at any rate, come all the way down from Diarbekr to Baghdad. However, there is no reason why he should not.