The caravans stop at a khan (as the old-fashioned hotels are called where entertainment is given to both man and beast), just outside of Trebizond, and we went down there to see the camels and their drivers. Two hundred camels had just arrived from Persia after a journey of thirty days, bringing twelve hundred bags of rice. I talked with the boss driver, a gigantic Persian with a broad, cheerful face, who told me that he had never been anywhere but along the same route between Tabriz and Trebizond, and had travelled that regularly two or three times a year for more than twenty years. Caravans often went to Tibet and as far as China, he said, but he had never been that far.
The camels used on this line are a common species of dromedary with only one hump, and cost all the way from $50 to $150 each, according to age and condition. There is no regular system of camel-breeding in Asia Minor, although that animal is the only beast of burden and is absolutely indispensable. Most of the animals used here come from Arabia, where they are bred by the Bedouins, and at the age of three years are broken to load. The strength of a camel begins to decline at twenty years, and after he reaches twenty-five he is not worth much. An ordinary caravan is made up of groups of seven camels in charge of one man, who leads them, feeds them, and cares for them from the time he is twenty years old until they all die together. A camel driver has no home. He is a nomad. He never has anything but the clothes he wears. He sleeps with one of his camels for a pillow, and it might be said that he eats the same food, which consists of straw and beans. A caravan is usually led by a little donkey, for camels, as well as human beings, will follow donkeys wherever they may go, in a most mysterious manner.
A camel is never relieved of its load from the beginning to the end of a journey. It eats, sleeps, and travels under its burden, often for weeks at a time, and will carry six hundred pounds without a murmur. When the load is off, the driver rides, but when the load is on he walks by the side of his charge.
Camels are used for all kinds of purposes, the same as horses. They are broken to saddle and to wagon. They are hitched to plows and haul saw logs out of the forests. They can go for ten days over a desert without water. Their stomachs are divided into compartments and the contents are digested in order, one after the other, as the system needs nourishment. And it is often said that a “fifth stomach” is kept as a reserve for an emergency.
Our word caravansary comes from the Turkish term caravanseria, which means literally a bower for caravans, or a resting place where the animals are fed and the camel driver eats his bread and drinks his wine. He gets nothing and pays for nothing except space, shelter, and protection against robbers and thieves. These caravanserias are found in every town along the caravan roads. They are distinguished from khans—which are usually square enclosures or court-yards paved with stone, with rooms opening upon them, where travellers can store their goods, and often a gallery and a second floor, where the better class can obtain lodgings. These khans may be found in Constantinople and in every other Eastern city, and in the day-time are busy places, the freighters loading and unloading and merchants showing their goods to customers. At sunset the gates are closed, the donkeys and the animals lie down to sleep, and their drivers lie down beside them.
There is a long range of snow-clad mountains along the southern coast of the Black Sea reaching almost the entire distance from Trebizond to Rizeh, the next stopping place, and between them and the water side are low foothills covered with farms. The new wheat was a vivid green that lights up a lovely picture. There is no more beautiful sea coast. Indeed, there is nothing to surpass that landscape in the Alps, or the Pyrenees, or the Andes, or the Rocky Mountains, or anywhere else, owing to the great variety of scenery that lies between the water and the snow-capped crags. In May, when we were there, nature is all smiles. Both the woods and the fields are alive with glory. The foliage is perfect; rhododendrons and azaleas hide the scars in the rocks and creepers drape the rugged cliffs with a profusion of garlands that artificial decorations cannot compare with. Here and there the farming land is broken by a lofty precipice rising a thousand feet or more directly out of luxuriant vegetation, just as an artist would put some bold figure into a picture to offer a contrast to the peaceful, cultivated slope. And the lofty mountain peaks look bolder and sterner because they rise so near the wheat fields, the gentle valleys dotted with white villages, and the sombre forests that are so thick and so green.
We were told that the finest oranges, cherries, and other fruits in the world come from the slopes that line the shore of the Black Sea. We were told, too, that cherries got their name from the town of Kerasun, which was called Cherryson by the Greeks. We were too early, of course, for all the fruits except oranges, but the captain said that in the summer and fall cherries, grapes, plums, peaches, pears, and melons, finer than can be found in Paris, “can be bought for almost nothing.”
The people of the villages on that part of the coast, and particularly those of the town of Rizeh, are sailors and fishermen. They are wild, reckless, handsome fellows, wearing short open jackets of scarlet or blue, with zouave trousers, purple or yellow sashes bound around their waists, and a knotted black turban with the tasselled ends hanging down over their shoulders. Most of the seamen on the Turkish cruisers and gunboats come from that town and the neighbouring villages.
“Rizeh is the most beautiful place on the Black Sea,” said the captain with a shrug, “but everybody carries a knife, and would not hesitate to kill a stranger for his hat or his handkerchief.”
And we learned afterward that there were two hundred murderers serving sentences of from fifteen years to life in the prison that day. We saw several of the short-sentence men at the windows as we passed the prison, and somebody was standing on a tomb in the cemetery under the windows talking to them in a loud tone. The people on the street did not appear to pay any attention to him, although he was very much in earnest.