THE END OF THE WAR.
Helping Sick Russians--A Squalid Scene--Work of the Russian
Doctors--Melikoff's Appreciation--Arrival of the Red Cross
Staff--A Novel Candlestick--Great Explosion--The Erzeroum Fire
Brigade--Preparations for our Departure--A Practical Joke on a
Persian--A Pleasant Interlude--The Princess at Erzeroum--Mr.
Zohrab's Library comes in Useful--Our Spanish Widow--Riding on a
Pack-saddle--A Slow March--The Widow meets with
Accidents--Restricted Sleeping Accommodation--We turn Two
Corpses out of Bed--End of a Pack-horse--My Cats from Van--The
Valley of Pear Trees--Trebizond at last.
While the Turks and Armenians in Erzeroum were dying by hundreds from
typhus, the Russian soldiers also suffered severely; and as I went round
the town, I found many of them lying sick and untended, not from any
want of care on the part of the Russian doctors, but simply because the
soldiers stole away and hid themselves when they fell ill.
Captain Pizareff would not believe it when I told him that his men were
dying like sheep, and declared that it was impossible for such a thing
to happen without the knowledge of the colonel of the regiment. In order
to convince the aide-de-camp, I asked him to go with me and see the
state of things with his own eyes.
Next morning I started out early to visit a poor Armenian woman whose
child had been accidentally scalded, and I took Captain Pizareff with
me. The woman lived in a miserable quarter of the town, inhabited only
by the poorest people; and evidences of distress and semi-starvation
were present on every hand. I found my patient easily enough; and after
dressing the injuries of the scalded child, I took Pizareff on a tour of
inspection down the street. The snow was piled high round the walls of
the first dilapidated, tumble-down shanty that we entered; and at first,
as we went inside out of the strong glare of the sun on the snow, we
could hardly see at all. A small latticed window near the roof admitted
a few gleams of light; and as our eyes became accustomed to the
semi-obscurity, we could make out three Russians lying on a heap of
straw in a corner of the room. They were all down with typhus. One was
lying on his back, with his eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. As
we entered he looked at us, and seemed to recognize Pizareff. He made a
feeble effort to rise from the straw and lift his hand in the military
salute; but the strain was too much for him, and he fell back exhausted.
The other two men were moaning and tossing from side to side, calling at
intervals for water. An Armenian child about seven years old was
playing with a dog in the snow which lay thickly in the yard at the back
of the house. While I was looking at the men, the child came to the
door, peered curiously in, and then returned unconcernedly to his game
in the yard. The sight of sickness and death was not sufficiently novel
to disturb the amusement of the moment.
In several other houses in the same street similar scenes were met with;
and in one an Armenian family consisting of a father, mother, and three
children were unconcernedly eating their dinner--a bowl of grain boiled
into a kind of sticky porridge--while the corpse of a Russian soldier
who had just died lay on the floor in the next room.
Captain Pizareff was petrified with astonishment, and reported the
circumstances to General Melikoff at once. I sent word to the Russian
Red Cross doctors, and they despatched a party of ambulance men to
collect their sick and bring them into the hospitals. How it was
possible for the absence of the men from roll call to remain unnoticed I
cannot understand; but I heard afterwards that the colonel of the
regiment to which these unfortunates belonged got into serious trouble
over it.
Denniston, Stoker, and myself found plenty of work to do among the
Russian sick as well as among our own men, and were glad to lend the
Russian doctors our assistance. We found our Russian _confrères_ capital
fellows, and also excellent surgeons. They had worked on bravely while
their army was outside Erzeroum and afterwards at Kars, though their
resources were severely taxed by the number of the wounded at Devoi
Boyun, as well as by the fevers and frostbite that decimated the troops
during the long intervals between the different engagements.
They spoke of General Melikoff in terms of the highest admiration,
praising his administrative ability as well as his military capacity;
and I felt that their opinions were well founded, when I reflected upon
the difficulties under which he had laboured, especially in the
transport and commissariat department. On one occasion General Melikoff
said to me himself, "I am prouder of having been able to feed my army
than I am of any of my victories." When it is remembered that everything
in the shape of supplies, including provisions and medical stores, had
to be brought over the snow from Tiflis, four hundred miles away, it
will be conceded that the general's pride in his achievement was
justified. General Melikoff was most appreciative of our medical
services on behalf of his troops, and told us on one occasion that he
would recommend us for decorations at the hands of the Russian
Government. However, during the anxious political times which ensued the
Russian Government had something else to think about besides the
services of three unknown English doctors in far away Erzeroum, and the
decorations never came.
Gladly and willingly as I gave my services in the cause of humanity, it
was nevertheless a real pleasure to find that they were appreciated by
the Russian troops as well as by the Stafford House Committee, and also
the Turkish Government. Captain Morisot, who returned to Erzeroum from
Constantinople, brought me up, not only fresh supplies of money, but
also the news that the Stafford House Committee had passed a special
vote of thanks to myself and the other doctors of the Erzeroum section.
The document setting forth this vote of thanks, signed by the Duke of
Sutherland as chairman of the committee, is couched in most
complimentary terms; and, needless to say, it forms one of my most
cherished mementoes of the war. Similar special votes of thanks were
accorded to Dr. Stiven and Dr. Beresford for their great bravery during
the fighting at Rustchuk. I had already received the fourth order of the
Medjidie, and to this the Turkish Government were afterwards pleased to
add the fourth order of the Osmanli and also the Turkish war medal.
We were reinforced during March by the arrival of Dr. Roy and a party of
doctors sent out by the Red Cross Society. They had undergone a good
deal of hardship since they left Constantinople, and one of their
number, a Dane named Price, had died. I shall always remember Roy
through a remarkable incident of which I was informed by him some time
after I had left Erzeroum. In my quarters I was accustomed to sleep on
the floor on a mat, and even in a besieged town I had kept up the early
habit of reading in bed. The usual military candlestick was a bayonet,
which was stuck in the floor, with the candle jammed into the socket;
but I found a more convenient receptacle in a Turkish conical shell,
which I had picked up somewhere, and which made a capital candlestick
when the brass cap at the end was unscrewed. Into the orifice of the
shell I stuck my candle every night, and read _Vanity Fair_--which I got
out of Mr. Zohrab's capital library--for the first time. I never can
think of Becky Sharp to this day without a shudder, not on account of
her treatment of Rawdon Crawley or her dubious relationship with the
Marquis of Steyne, but simply owing to the circumstances under which I
first met her. She was certainly a risky acquaintance for me. A week or
two after I left Erzeroum my candlestick fell into other hands, and one
night it exploded, fortunately in an empty room, which it wrecked
without damaging any one in the house. My first introduction to Becky
Sharp was effected by the light of a candle stuck in the mouth of a live
shell!
Powder was unnecessarily burnt more than once during our last month in
Erzeroum. One night I was awakened by a terrific explosion, and almost
before I could collect my senses a frantic knocking at the door showed
that somebody wanted the doctor in a hurry. We all jumped into our
clothes, and followed the guide to a place where an Armenian house had
stood a few minutes before, but which when we reached the spot was a
mere heap of wreckage. One of the few survivors explained what had
happened. He told us that a lot of Armenians had got hold of some
Turkish cartridges, and were endeavouring to convert the powder to their
own use. Sixteen men were sitting in a circle on their haunches in the
middle of a big room, busily pulling the bullets out of the cartridges
and emptying the powder into a heap, which was gradually increasing in
size in the centre, when the desire for a cigarette came upon one of
them, and he struck a match. The next instant the house was in the air,
and ten of the Armenians were in paradise--or somewhere else. There was
a good deal of confusion in the darkness; but I recollect finding myself
down on my knees in a stable at the back of the house examining two of
the sufferers who were still alive. One of them lay between the legs of
a cow, and while he was in that position I dressed his injuries. The
crowd had been very troublesome, and I had locked the door of the
stable on the inside to keep them away, when I heard a tremendous
hammering and some one demanding admittance. I called out that there was
strictly no admittance; but in a very few minutes a file of soldiers
burst the door in, and General Duhoffskoy, very angry at being kept out
in the cold, stood before me. He was good enough to accept my apologies
when I explained why I had locked the door, and also to thank me for
attending to the sufferers. General Duhoffskoy was appointed to act as a
kind of chief commissioner of police at Erzeroum in addition to his
military duties, and whenever there was any excitement in the town he
was always on the spot. One night we had a very big fire; in fact, half
the street seemed to be burning. There was plenty of water, however; and
if it had not been for the crowd, there would have been no difficulty in
extinguishing the flames. An Armenian crowd at a fire is very much like
any other crowd, and the people indulged in sudden stampedes and all
sorts of "alarums and excursions" to such a degree that the work of the
soldier firemen was greatly hindered. General Duhoffskoy took in the
situation at a glance, and at once announced that if the crowd did not
disperse it would be blown to pieces, as one of the burning houses
contained an enormous quantity of powder and other explosives. The
effect was instantaneous, and the miscellaneous mass of Turks and
Armenians melted away as if by magic.
Soon after the return of Captain Morisot, I received a telegram from the
Stafford House Committee saying that we had done enough for honour and
glory, and that we had better go back to Constantinople, as the Turkish
administration was able to cope with all the hospital work that remained
to be done in Erzeroum. I was instructed to place the balance of our
medical stores at the disposal of the Turks before leaving, and
accordingly I handed everything over to Hakki Bey, receiving a receipt,
and also a grateful acknowledgment of our services to the Turkish
troops, together with a special letter for presentation to the
Seraskierat.
My last week in Erzeroum was a busy one, as we had to make extensive
preparations for the journey to Trebizond, which was quite a formidable
undertaking. I had collected a great deal of personal baggage during my
travels, and our equipment was considerable; so I arranged with a
Persian caravan which was going down to Trebizond for the conveyance of
the heaviest of our impedimenta, retaining only my valuables and the
curios which I had got together to take down under my own supervision
with the caravan. There were many Persians in Erzeroum, and as a rule
they got on very well with the Turks, though occasionally racial
antipathy was responsible for those minor persecutions known as
practical jokes, of which the Turks were very fond. One day in the
hammam, or Turkish bath, I met an old Persian, who was in a deplorable
state of grief in consequence of the treatment which he had received
from two young Turks. The Persians all grew very long beards, of which
they were inordinately proud, and they were accustomed, after coming out
of the bath, to dye them a fine rich brickdust colour with henna. One
never saw a Persian with a white beard. Now this particular old Persian
had carefully rubbed his beard with henna, in blissful ignorance of the
fact that two mischievous young Turks had been to his henna-pot and had
mixed a quantity of corrosive acid with the dye. The consequence was
that when the Persian applied the dye the beard came away in pieces, and
left the poor man beardless in his old age and disgraced.
On the day before we left Erzeroum I called on General Duhoffskoy, as
the military governor of the town, in order to obtain from him a pass
through the Russian lines and the necessary papers authorizing my
departure. The general was a distinguished-looking man of about forty
years of age, and he received me very courteously, expressing polite
regret at my departure, and promising to facilitate my journey as far
as possible. It struck me that I had never seen him in such good
spirits before, and that there was a beam of sunshiny contentment in his
face, which was an agreeable change from the rigid military look of his
usually stern features. As I was inwardly wondering what could have
happened to effect this change, the door opened, and a lady entered the
room. "Permit me to present you to my wife, Dr. Ryan," said the general;
and turning I bowed, there in remote, snow-clad, devastated Erzeroum, to
one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.
Princess Duhoffskoy, _née_ Princess Galitzin, was then about twenty
years of age, and to my youthful imagination, with her beautifully
chiselled features, complexion of exquisite fairness, and large blue
eyes that looked me frankly in the face, she seemed like a visitant from
another world. For a year and a half almost the only specimens of
womanhood that I had seen were squat and swarthy Bulgarian girls, frowsy
Armenians, or Turkish women closely veiled in their yashmaks. It was no
wonder that this lovely Russian, with her delicate, refined beauty and
her frank and gracious manner, made a profound impression upon me, and
set my heart beating quickly with mingled surprise and delight.
The general returned to his writing-table, and I was left to talk to
this beauteous vision alone. I stammered a few remarks in execrable
German; for though I spoke that language fairly fluently on ordinary
occasions, my sensations drove my vocabulary out of my head, and I felt
that for one in my position at any rate the resources of that grave and
elephantine tongue were exasperatingly inadequate.
"Oh, Doctor Ryan, would you not prefer to speak English?" said the
Princess, to my intense astonishment, without the least trace of a
foreign accent. Like many cultured Russians, she had learnt to speak
English as well as French and German when a child; and she soon showed
me that she could not only talk, but talk interestingly, in my own
language. In her lips the Doric harshness of sound in spoken English
disappeared, and the well known words took on something of the smooth,
musical cadence of the softer Italian. She told me that she had only
reached Erzeroum on the previous day, after travelling four hundred
miles across the snow from Tiflis to join her husband, and she chatted
away pleasantly of the incidents which occurred on the way as if there
was nothing unusual in a delicately nurtured lady going through the
hardships necessitated by such a journey in a sleigh. She expressed
great interest in my work among the wounded, and listened attentively
while I spoke of the bravery of the Turkish troops and their fortitude
under pain. When I told her of an Anatolian Turk who died in my hospital
at Plevna with his wife's name on his lips, the beautiful eyes of this
Russian princess filled with tears. "Poor fellow," she whispered softly;
"I hope it is not wrong for us to pity the sufferings of the enemy."
Coffee was brought in, and I sat there for about two hours chatting with
the princess, while the general continued writing at his table. Every
now and then he looked up with a glance which seemed to say, "Not gone
yet? I wonder how much longer this confounded Englishman is going to
stay." At last I managed to tear myself away, and I said good-bye to
this beautiful Russian lady, with many regrets that I had to leave
Erzeroum next day. I never saw her again; but when I got back to the
consulate, I selected about fifty standard English books from Mr.
Zohrab's excellent library, packed them on a little sleigh, and
despatched them to Princess Duhoffskoy with my card, presenting my
compliments, and hoping that the books would lessen the tedium of her
stay in such a dull place as Erzeroum. General Duhoffskoy is now the
governor of a province in Siberia, where he resides with his beautiful
wife, whose visit to Erzeroum was the one gleam of real sunshine that I
had seen throughout that terrible winter.
Before we started for Trebizond, a slight difference of opinion arose
between myself and my comrades, Denniston and Stoker, upon a matter
affecting our joint interest. It did not in the least disturb the
friendly relations existing between us, and I only mention the matter
now because it was all my fault that my companions were induced to
assent to incurring the responsibility and inconvenience of escorting
another traveller to Trebizond--and that traveller a lady.
M. Jardin, the French consul, was a true Frenchman of the best type,
agreeable, polite, and above all things always anxious to oblige a lady.
Accordingly, when he came to me with a pathetic appeal on behalf of a
charming Spanish widow, whose husband had been an apothecary attached to
the medical staff I found the greatest difficulty in turning a deaf ear
to him. He explained to me that the beautiful Spaniard was most anxious
to get to Constantinople, where she had friends who would arrange for
her passage back to her own country, and that he would take it as a
personal favour to him if we would allow the lady to join our party.
I foresaw the inconvenience of taking a lady on an extremely rough
journey, which had to be accomplished entirely on horseback, over
mountain tracks and passes deep in snow; so at first I gave a polite
refusal to the French consul's request. But M. Jardin would not be
denied. He minimized the difficulties of the journey, which he assured
us would be nothing to such courageous and experienced men as ourselves.
He extolled us for the services which we had already rendered in the
cause of humanity, and he urged us not to decline at the last moment to
still further add to our laurels in this direction. Finally he dwelt at
great length upon the grace and beauty of this dark-eyed Spanish lady,
whom none of us had ever seen, and he painted the despair with which she
looked forward to the prospect of remaining widowed and alone in
Erzeroum, perhaps to die, far from her country and from her own people.
What could I say in answer to such an appeal? What could I do? There was
nothing for it but to submit with some misgiving to the inevitable; and
accordingly I informed M. Jardin that I would withdraw my own
objections, and would consent to the arrangement if he could prevail
upon Denniston and Stoker to agree also.
If M. Jardin had not been an exceedingly decorous as well as polite
Frenchman, I feel sure he would have jumped with joy when I capitulated,
and he went off forthwith to interview Denniston and Stoker. What
occurred at that interview I cannot precisely say, because both my
comrades were strangely reticent upon the subject. I conjecture,
however, that M. Jardin praised their courage and their chivalry in a
truly generous spirit, and I am convinced that he dwelt with all his
astonishing eloquence upon the grace and loveliness of this poor
Spanish beauty in distress. At any rate, Denniston and Stoker agreed to
let her travel with us.
Just before we started, and when the pack-horses upon which we were to
ride to Erzeroum were at the door, M. Jardin brought up his beautiful
Spaniard and introduced her to us. I hope I shall not be considered
impolite when I confess that our jaws all dropped simultaneously. No
doubt the lady had been beautiful in her youth; but her particular style
of beauty had not been proof against the devastating power of years, and
I doubt whether any man in Erzeroum, except that very polite French
consul, would have seen extraordinary loveliness in the lady who was
handed over to our care at the very last moment. However, there was
nothing for it but to hoist her upon a pack-saddle, to mount ourselves
upon similar uncomfortable seats, and to start the melancholy
procession. We said good-bye with real regret to Pizareff, who had been
a capital friend and a most charming and genial companion. Fully thirty
or forty other Russian officers came to see us off, and we parted on the
very best of terms. They told us laughingly that they intended to drop
in upon the British army in India some day, and we assured them that we
would be there to meet them when they came. Then we waved our last
adieux, and turned the heads of those long-suffering pack-horses towards
Trebizond.
Our party consisted of Denniston, Stoker, Morisot, myself, and Williams
our trusty dragoman, while last, but not least, came the lady. We had
hired twelve horses to carry ourselves and our baggage, contracting to
pay the headman of the caravan four pounds per horse for the journey to
Trebizond; and accordingly when we started we formed an important
section of the whole caravan of about fifty horses which set out from
Erzeroum. Besides the headman, who was a most forbidding-looking
Persian, there were fifteen drivers who accompanied us; each, I think,
dirtier, hungrier, and more truculent-looking than the other. We guessed
when we started that the journey would not be exactly a pleasure
excursion; but the reality far exceeded our anticipations, and the next
time that any one asks me to make an overland journey with a widow, a
still small voice within will whisper, "Beware! Remember Erzeroum and
the Spanish doña."
Riding on a pack-saddle, which consists of two plates of hard wood
joined by hinges at the apex where it fits over the horse's spine, is
not the most agreeable way of taking horse exercise; and the doña, who
was necessarily riding _en cavalier_, began to give tongue before she
had gone a hundred yards. We made a cushion out of an old sack filled
with hay, and our incubus heaved a sigh of relief when we placed it
between her ill used anatomy and the bare boards which she bestrode.
Then the procession went forward again, the horses stepping out in
single file on the first stage of the long journey of one hundred and
eighty miles that lay between us and the sea.
We left Erzeroum on March 31, intending to catch the Messageries steamer
_Simois_, which was due to leave Trebizond on April 10, and fancying
that by giving ourselves ample time we would have three or four days in
Trebizond to recruit before going on board. However, we reckoned without
our host, or on this occasion, to speak more accurately, without our
guest--the lady. She spoke every continental language except English
with equal facility, and her vocabulary in each was surprisingly
extensive. Day and night for one consecutive fortnight her shrill
falsetto voice poured forth a never failing stream of complaint and
invective, abuse and lamentation in half a dozen languages. What she
suffered no one knew except herself, although this was not her fault, to
be sure, for she lost no opportunity of imparting the information,
sometimes in Spanish, and when she had exhausted the resources of that
noble language in the slang of half the capitals of Europe. We found too
late that our doña had not been cast in the heroic mould. She had never
learnt how beautiful it is to suffer--and be silent.
A few miles from Erzeroum we came to the village of Ilidja, which was
occupied by the Russians; and there we halted for half an hour, and had
a glass of wine with a party of jovial officers, who were keeping up
their spirits as well as they could in the lonely, God-forsaken place.
On a dunghill in the village we counted eleven dead Russians; so we
guessed that the typhus was not confined to Erzeroum.
When we got to Purnekapan, we camped for the night in the town,
intending to make an early start, so as to negotiate the Kopdagh Pass
before the sun spoiled the road. An unexpected difficulty, however,
presented itself, for our Persian headman refused to go on, declaring
that it was necessary to rest his horses for a day. In vain did we
cojole, threaten, or bully him. He had come under the spell of a fixed
idea, and nothing that we could say seemed to have the slightest effect
upon his diseased intelligence. But at last I found a way to move him.
There was a Turkish regiment in the village, and I sought an interview
with the colonel, who had heard something about our work, and was very
well disposed towards us. Tapping the butt of his revolver
significantly, he suggested to the Persian that it was high time to
start, and the hint was accepted with alacrity. However, all this had
taken time, and before we left the foot of the mountain and began the
ascent it was eleven o'clock, and the sun's rays were ruining the track.
It was as exciting a bit of mountaineering as I have ever gone through,
and we had to strain every nerve to climb the pass. In many places the
track was only a couple of feet wide, a winding path cut round the side
of the mountain, with a cliff on one side and a precipice on the other.
As we mounted slowly and cautiously up the path, every nerve was at
tension and every sense on the alert. Now and then, as the Persian
drivers shouted and urged the frightened horses with voice and whip to
face the slippery rising ground, one of the animals would slip, and for
a second or two one's heart was in one's mouth. In spite of every effort
we lost three pack-horses before we won the summit. A slip on the glassy
surface, a couple of frightened plunges in the loose snow near the edge,
and then the unfortunate creatures disappeared over the side, falling
upon a lower spur four hundred feet beneath us. One of the horses that
we lost in this way was loaded with my personal effects. The presents
that I was taking back to my friends, some beautiful turquoises from the
Tiflis mines, as well as the Russian furs, the Russian leather
cigar-cases, and the other keepsakes that the warm-hearted officers in
Erzeroum had given me, all vanished with that hapless pack-horse into
some inaccessible ravine far below the Kopdagh peak. However, all the
Persian drivers came through safely, and there were no missing faces in
our party when we reached the summit, nine thousand feet above the
level of the sea. The widow was still with us, numbed with the cold,
exhausted with fatigue, and half shaken to death on her pack-saddle, but
voluble as ever, and, like the person in the Greek play, "full of groans
and not devoid of tears."
Just as we neared the summit I saw a Turkish woman climbing slowly and
painfully up the track; but when we got to the shelter-house erected on
the crest of the mountain, I lost sight of her. As we resumed our march,
I noticed tracks in the snow in front of us, and drew the attention of
Williams the dragoman to the impressions which had evidently been made
by a woman. The dragoman disappeared for ten minutes on a tour of
exploration, and when he returned he brought back a strange piece of
intelligence. A Turkish baby had been born in a shed near the
shelter-house while we were there, and the mother, whom we had seen
climbing the pass, was already walking off with her newborn infant to
her own village five miles away across the snow. Surely the cares of
maternity lie lightly on those hardy Turkish mothers in the mountains of
Asia Minor.
As may be guessed, we found a good deal of difficulty in replenishing
our commissariat during this eventful journey. The Turkish troops had
pretty well swept the board; and if the villagers had not hidden away
some of their scanty stock from the foraging parties, we should have
come off very badly. We managed to get eggs occasionally _en route_, and
onions were also obtainable. I used to stuff my pockets with these
delicacies and munch them raw. I found them very sustaining, and I have
no doubt that my companions when they ventured near me could testify
that my diet was strong. When we reached the village at the foot of the
Kopdagh where we were to camp for the night, we were all ravenously
hungry, and as I shot a keen glance round the village in search of
supplies I espied a kid. It was a very nice-looking kid, and it frisked
and gambolled most alluringly. I slipped off my pack-horse, and
approached the kid in a friendly manner that disarmed suspicion. Then I
grabbed it by the ear, drew my big clasp knife, and cut its throat on
the spot. I skinned it and cleaned it with my own experienced hands, and
Williams the dragoman made an excellent _ragoût_. I gave the owner of
the kid a Turkish lira as compensation for his loss, which was truly our
gain, for the kid was a succulent little creature, and tasted very much
like venison.
We could not have travelled fast under the most favourable conditions,
and hampered as we were by the Spanish widow our progress became very
slow indeed. It was not an easy task, even for one accustomed to riding,
to remain on the wooden pack-saddle when a rough horse was plunging
about in the snow; but for the Spanish widow it was literally
impossible--a fact which she demonstrated by falling off five times
during the journey over the Kop. It always happened in the same way. The
hind legs of her pack-horse would slip down in the loose snow up to the
hocks, while the fore feet remained steady for just one second on a
harder patch, so that the animal's back described an angle of forty-five
degrees with the surface of the ground. During that one second the widow
seized the opportunity of slipping off backwards over the horse's tail;
and so quickly did she accomplish the feat that the watchful Williams,
whom I specially told off, much to his disgust, to look after her, only
arrived in time to pick her up. The sight of that middle-aged,
sallow-faced Spanish person, in short skirts and blue goggles, sitting
helplessly in the snow while Williams patiently collected her once more,
would have made us laugh heartily were it not for the "damnable
iteration" of the occurrence.
The presence of the widow caused us much annoyance whenever we camped
for the night, because sleeping accommodation was usually scanty, and we
always had to find a room for the lady before we turned in ourselves.
Once, when we reached the village where we were going to camp for the
night, we found that there were only two sleeping-rooms available for
the whole party, so that we had to give one to the widow, and camp--all
five of us--in the other. First we showed the lady to her apartment, and
then we went to look at our own. It was not a cosy bedroom, with French
bedsteads, dimity curtains on the windows, and roses creeping up the
walls outside. On the contrary, it was a small, square room, that would
have made an excellent dog-kennel. The floor was of mud, and in a corner
there was a heap of dirty straw, on which lay two dead Turkish soldiers
who had died of confluent small-pox. We put the bodies outside the
house, and Denniston, Stoker, Morisot, and myself, with Williams the
dragoman, all went to sleep on the straw.
As we travelled along day after day the glare on the snow was very
trying to the eyes; and though we all wore blue goggles, we suffered a
good deal of inconvenience, while our faces were dreadfully blistered by
the sun. The Persian headman was always wanting to stop and rest his
horses; so that what with perpetually working at him to keep him up to
the mark, pacifying the Spanish widow, and foraging for our daily bread,
we had plenty of occupation _en route_. All our drivers of course were
eager to rob us whenever the opportunity offered; and in addition to the
furs and turquoises which I had already lost through a pack-horse going
over the precipice, I was also deprived of two very fine cats from the
province of Van. I had purchased these creatures, which were very much
like Persian cats, in Erzeroum, and I had hired a pack-horse specially
to carry them. They were transported in a wooden box fixed to the
pack-saddle, and Williams fed them with milk whenever we halted at a
village. A couple of days before we reached Trebizond, however, my
beautiful cats disappeared; and the only consolation that was vouchsafed
me for my bereavement was the vague lie of a Persian driver, who averred
that they had escaped from their box during the night. Of course he had
planted them somewhere for subsequent conversion into ill gotten
piastres.
When we commenced to get down towards Trebizond, we left the snow behind
us on the mountains, and entered a tract of well timbered country, which
was looking its best in the first flush of the early spring. The sides
of the hills were gorgeous with pink cyclamen, and with a beautiful blue
bulb which I could not identify. At last we entered the avenue of pear
trees which were laden with juicy fruit when I passed up to Erzeroum six
months previously. When I retraced my steps to Trebizond with new
companions, I found the pear trees in full bloom. Since I had seen them
bending under the burden of the ripening fruitage, fire and sword and
frost and fever had brought many hundreds of men to death before my
eyes, and I myself had been down to the very borders of the Valley of
the Shadow. But now the war was over, the winter was done, and the
scent of the white pear blossoms that filled all the valley blended with
the first faint fragrance of the breezes from the ever nearing waters of
the Black Sea.
Trebizond at last!