Spring in Erzeroom.--Coffee-house Diversions.--Koordish
Exploits.--Summer Employment.--Preparation of Tezek.--Its Varieties
and Uses.
When the snows of winter have melted, and the air becomes more
temperate, the population of Erzeroom begin to revive. The women and
children, who, like the bears, lemmings, and marmottes, have hybernated
all the winter, now peep with red eyes out of their subterranean
habitations; those streets situated upon hills, as most of them are,
become torrents of melted snow, which cut deep ravines through the
frozen mass which is piled up many feet on each side; narrow paths
are gradually dug out from the low doors of the Armenian man-burrows
toward the central river of the street; the winking children creep out
to blink their eyes at the sun, and enjoy the fresh air; fusty cows,
who have been buried for eight months, come slowly staring out; every
now and then a more adventurous infant is carried away by the stream,
and its body quickly devoured by the ravenous dogs at the outskirts
of the town; wolves, it is said, though I never saw one, prowl about,
and eat the dog that ate the child, that came out to see the weather
so mild, in the street by the house that (not) Jack built. Women now
scream to each other in shrill voices, as they pitch down large wooden
spadefuls of half-melted snow upon the heads of those who are passing
in the street; knots of Tartars, Circassians, and Lazes, and Koords,
in iron-heeled boots and white woolen trowsers, tell lies to each other
at the doors of the coffee-houses, which are answered with dignified
exclamations of Wullah! Billah! nobody believing his neighbor's lie,
but considering straightway how he can invent a deliberate falsehood
to lay before the other liars in his turn. Every now and then one of
these stories is true, when a cadaverous-looking Koord, hung round
with arms and leaning on his lance, with the black ostrich feathers at
the top, being a practical man with very little imagination, coolly
relates the history of the sacking of a defenseless village, where
murder unresisted, rapine, sacrilege in the burning of the mosque,
and spearing the children who run shrieking from the flames of their
homes, bear with it the impress of truth, with the conviction on
the part of any honest man (if there should be one in the party)
that, although the rest are liars, the only truthful narrator is a
brute of that atrocious kind, that the falsehoods of the rest are
trifles, like chaff before the wind, in comparison with the real and
true experiences of this infernal child of hell. Such as this are
the Koords; their only virtue is that they are not cowards; but,
although they subscribe to a nominal adherence to the Mohammedan
religion, the most liberal Imaum would be ashamed to own them. The
Yezedis, who worship the devil, are angels in comparison. Yet they
are superstitious to a curious degree, as the foregoing anecdote of
the Koord who was hung through giving evidence about himself testifies.
At the commencement of the summer the whole city of Erzeroom is
engaged, even to desperation, in making tezek; you hear, smell, and
see nothing else. How are you off for tezek? Tezek katch, chok tezek,
tezek var bourda chok, chok, evet, tezek Effendim, katch gooroosh:
in short, no one cares for any thing except tezek, and he who has
most tezek is the greatest man, and he who has but little tezek he is
naught--no one cares for him, or, indeed, for any thing else except
the one absorbing topic of tezek.
The cows, and bulls, and oxen having reappeared on upper earth,
the Augean stable is cleared out. Tezek, the only fuel of Erzeroom,
consists of the production into which the said oxen have converted
their food for many months; it is trodden down hard, and is dug out by
zealous Armenians, and brought exultingly to the tops of the houses;
it is mixed with a good deal of the chopped straw with which horses,
and oxen, and sheep are fed while in the subterranean stables; more
chopped straw is added, mixed with water; and, except the higher
class of grandees, such as the Pasha, the commander-in-chief, and
the author, all true men were employed on the tops of their houses,
treading the chopped straw into the tezek with their naked feet, their
full Turkish trowsers being pulled up and tied with a belt round their
waists. With a stick to lean upon, they are there all day, trotting
about, up to their knees in tezek, shouting to each other; Mohammed
bringing some more water to pour upon it; Hassan staggering up the
ladder with more tezek of the genuine unadulterated kind from the
recesses of the stable; Bekir with a great basket of chopped straw;
and then all set to with a will, and tread steadily for an hour or
two, as sailors do round a capstan, for the dear life; and when they
get very hot they wipe their brow with a tezeky sleeve, and their
sleeve with a fold of a tezeky trowser, so that they become altogether
tezekious before the sun sets upon their labors, and veils his nose,
if not his eyes, under the clouds which hang over the eternal snows in
the dreaded passes of the mountains of Hoshabounar. The tezek being
trodden into a stiff clayey state, about six or seven inches thick,
is left alone for a day or two to dry; amateurs, however, scrambling up
to the top of the house to see how it is going on, to pick a bit off,
and look at it cunningly, and smell it, to find whether it has the true
flavor. There are Armenians who are knowing in tezek, who understand
the thing; and over a remarkably good batch a knot of the fancy will
sit on little stools, and smoke their pipes, and discuss the question
scientifically; telling tales of former celebrated heaps, and of Hadji
such a one, who was famous in that line, and of one Bokchi Bashi,
who had an astonishing talent in the preparation of inimitable tezek.
When it is all ready, it is dug out in square blocks, and carried
down the ladders again carefully in open baskets, and piled up in
the inner treasuries below, and stored for the fuel of the future
winter. It is better for being old, when it resembles peat turf. It
gets somewhat dusty in a year or so, and then rivals that sort of
snuff called Irish blackguard in its capacity for making you sneeze,
if you venture to move a clod of it to put upon the fire; it then
burns clear and clean, without flame, and is very hot; but when more
fresh--though that is not the word--more new, I may say--it produces a
thick stifling smoke, very odoriferous, and not generally appreciated
by those who do not love tezek for itself, or who are not at that
time maneuvering to make you purchase an astounding bargain of the
precious fuel of their own particular manufacture.
Erzeroom is not alone in the production of this article of
merchandise. From thence through the whole of Tartary as we call it, or
Turkistaun as they call it, this fuel is in universal use as far as the
Great Wall of China. Great care is taken sometimes in the production
of it for various artistic purposes. In Thibet it is called arghol,
and in the very remarkable travels of M. Huc, it is related that that
which comes from sheep and goats is more valuable for the purpose
of smelting iron and other metals, as it gives a greater heat, and,
instead of leaving any ash, melts into a vitreous mass of a bluish
green color. I never saw any of this myself, though it may have been
used at Erzeroom, for this place was lately famous for the workmanship
in iron and steel by seven brothers, whose productions are valuable
under the name of Yedi Kartasch, as Manton added a value to those guns
to which his name was affixed. The tezek of oxen and cows ranks next;
that of horses and donkeys last, from the quantity of smoke produced
by it; that of the oxen, with the slightest possible flavor of donkey,
was certainly most fashionable at Erzeroom.