The Bear.--Ruins of a Genoese Castle.--Lynx.--Lemming.--Cara
Guz.--Gerboa.--Wolves.--Wild Sheep.--A hunting
Adventure.--Camels.--Peculiar Method of Feeding.--Degeneration
of domestic Animals.
Of four-footed beasts, the most illustrious is the bear, of which
there are a good many in the wooded sides of the mountains in the
neighborhood of Kars. Near the strange, unearthly lake of Tortoom,
I saw the fresh footprint of a real Ursa Major--a thundering old bear
he must have been. He had only just departed, and the mark of one of
his paws was large enough to hold more than both of mine. In another
place I came upon the ruins of one of the string of Genoese castles
which, in former days, reared up their lordly towers at distances of
not more than eight or ten hours apart the whole way from Trebizond
to Teflis. Their splendid ruins have been my admiration on many an
imposing rock, frowning over an unknown valley. Even the names of
most of these are lost, while we only know of the history of their
founders that once upon a time there were such merchant princes. In
the bottom of a broken turret a bear had taken lodgings, but he was
not at home when I called. Others, not far off, on another hill, had
given a small party, and had been amusing themselves by rolling about
a piece of rock about five feet in diameter--a game of roulette, on a
large scale, which showed their wondrous strength. The mud from their
paws upon the stone was wet when I came up to join the party, but,
perhaps luckily for me, they declined the honor of my acquaintance,
and the society had broken up. Some sturdy peasants of Lazistaun,
hearing of my partiality for strange creatures, brought me two
young bears one day, who lived in our house for some time. They
were very sensible, the she bear keeping her brother in remarkable
order. They became very tame. They were, in some respects, different
from the European bear, and of a light cinnamon color. I sent them to
England. They were great favorites with the sailors on board ship,
and arrived safely at the Tower Stairs, when some white paint being
left out for the beautification of the vessel, the poor bears ate it
all up, and not only died of the unwholesome feast, but the poison
was so strong as to bring the fur off their skins, so that they could
not be stuffed and immortalized in a glass case.
After the bear the next animal is the lynx, the fur of whose belly is
of the highest value in Turkey, while that of the back is worth very
much less. These animals are not rare in Armenia, and Enveri Effendi
prided himself on a splendid robe of this valuable fur, which he paid
for by selling the skins of the backs of the lynxes at Constantinople
for more than he had given for the precious under-fur at Erzeroom. The
lynx is famed for the quickness of his sight, but Enveri Effendi had
a sharper eye than he in all affairs relating to his own benefit.
In the spring of the year, soon after the women and children, the
lemmings come out, and sit upon their hind legs, and wipe their eyes
with their fore-paws, and seem to wonder quietly at those who pass by,
taking a header, or summerset, down their holes if you stop suddenly
to look at these curious little beasts.
A soft, cozy, fat little quadruped, called cara guz (black eyes), about
the size of a young Guinea-pig, and much of the same shape--only his
color is gray, and he has a most wonderfully soft coat--comes out,
too, about this time. He is so fat that he can not walk very fast,
and is easily taken, and in his captivity prefers almonds and raisins
to any other bill of fare which I was able to put before him. This
little fellow eats his breakfast, luncheon, dinner, and supper slowly
and respectably, without testifying any alarm for mankind. I could
not make out his scientific name; he is probably some kind of little
marmotte, and he falls readily into the manners and habits of the
society in which Providence has placed him.
After cara guz, the gerboa comes out of his hole, and hops about on his
long tail and hind legs; a miniature kangaroo, in whose acquaintance I
have rejoiced in the burning deserts of Africa as well as in the frozen
regions of the highlands of Erzeroom. In this country the number of
quadrupeds is very limited; the fox is occasionally seen, as well as
the gray beaver (kondooz), badgers, and wolves. At the melting of the
snow the wolves come even into the towns, and devour the dogs with
which every town is amply supplied. There are awful stories of their
carrying off the little, peeping, blear-eyed children, who creep out
of their holes in the beginning of spring, and who are occasionally
washed away in the torrents of melted snow--the only washing attended
to hereabouts. Wolves are not very unfrequently started out of the
inside of one of the numerous dead horses, whose overworked bodies
have been frozen into the consistency of flint during the winter,
and which form savory banquets for the famished wolves when the snow
and ice recede, and display these dainty morsels to their haggard eyes.
The wild sheep frequent the inaccessible rocks of the lower mountains,
where a scanty herbage may be browsed beneath the line of perpetual
snow. No two animals can be more different, both in appearance and
habits, than the wild and tame sheep. The wild sheep of Armenia (Ovis
gemelli) is in size, shape, and color like the doe of the fallow-deer,
only it has two short horns bending backward, like those of a goat. The
strength and agility of this most nimble creature are astonishing;
they are more difficult of approach than the chamois of the Alps. I
have usually seen them in pairs, but was never able to get a shot. I
brought three skins and several heads of this rare animal to Europe,
out of which one stuffed specimen was made up in the British Museum;
it is, I believe, the only one extant. The method employed to hunt
this sheep is to climb to the highest summit of a mountain, and then,
cautiously approaching the edges of the cliffs, to peep down with a
telescope into the gorges and ravines below, where, if you have luck,
you may see the sheep capering about on the ledges of the precipice,
jumping, standing on a stone on their hind legs to reach a little tuft
of herbage, and playing the most curious antics, for no perceptible
reason, unless it is that they find their digestion improved by taking
a considerable deal of exercise. In these gymnastics the hunter
must participate to a great extent in following the tracks of the
jumpingest creatures (excepting fleas) that he can ever have to deal
with. It requires much activity, and a good head for looking over
a height, to attempt to come up with them, and many a sad accident
has occurred to the adventurous sportsman in this pursuit. I myself
have been in some awkward situations: once particularly, having
let myself down by the roots of a kind of juniper on the ledge of
a tremendous precipice, I found there was no way further down, and,
what was of more consequence, no way up again, for the roots of the
stunted tree were above my reach. A hunter--a Laz, or a native of
Lazistaun--was with me, and when we had done watching the two sheep
scampering off out of shot below, we looked at the place we were on,
and then in each other's faces in blank dismay. We were in the same
scrape as the Emperor Maximilian got into in the Tyrol, near ... only
there being no angels about in the mountains of Lazistaun, we had no
expectation of being assisted by a spirited or a spiritual goatherd,
as he was. After a good deal of pantomime, which would have puzzled
any bird who might be wondering at our maneuvers--for we did not
understand each other's language--we took off our boots, all our
outer clothes, and our arms and rifles, and tied them in a bundle;
then I planted myself firmly, with my face to the wall of the cliff,
sticking my rifle into a crevice to give me more steadiness, and the
hunter climbed carefully up my back on to my shoulders till he got
hold of the roots of the tree; the tree shook, and plenty of stones
and dirt fell upon my head, while the hunter scrambled into the trunk,
and he was safe. He sat down a while to rest, and then hauled up the
clothes and guns with our shawls that we had taken off from round our
waists; a gentle qualm came over me at this moment, for fear he should
be off with my, to him, very valuable spoils, and leave me in peace
upon the shelf. But he was a true man, as a hunter generally is; so,
after a variety of signs and gesticulations to each other as to how
it was to be done, he lugged me up, first by the shawls, and then
by hand, until I could reach the roots of the tree. Here there was
only room for one, so he climbed higher, and, after some wonderful
positions, struggles, kicks, and scrambling, I got back among the
roots, then up the trunk of the old gnarled juniper, or whatever
it was, and at last upon a slope, partaking much of that character
which, in the states of the free and independent slave-dealers over
the water, is called slantindicular. Here we both lay down. As for me,
I was quite faint with giddiness and hard kicking, with nothing under
me to kick at; but soon we picked up our effects, put on our boots,
&c., scrambled, slid, and climbed about again after some more sheep;
but, by reason of their having two pair of legs each, and each pair
better adapted to present circumstances than our one pair each, they
always got away, and we came down the mountain muttonless and hungry
for that day, not sorry to find a famous good supper in the tent,
in our encampment by the trout stream, in the Valley of Tortoom.
One more quadruped nearly concludes the short catalogue of the mammalia
of Erzeroom--the capricorn, many specimens of whose enormous horns
are nailed up over the doors of houses in the city; but I never saw
this last animal at Erzeroom, alive or dead.
Innumerable camels accompany the caravans from hence to Persia, looking
very much out of place in the deep snow. They are the Arabian camel
with one hump, and I had no notion that my old acquaintance of Arabia
could bear the tremendous cold of Erzeroom. Great quantities of corn
and meal are brought here from the more prolific countries of the
neighborhood. This is the staple merchandise of the city, which is
the only place on the road between Persia and Turkey where caravans
can recruit their thousands of jaded horses, and procure provisions
for their journey. In this consists the political importance of an
otherwise worthless and infertile spot. The number of camels, horses,
mules, and beasts of burden assembled sometimes at Erzeroom is immense,
and they have here a peculiar method of feeding the camels by opening
their mouths with the left hand, and with the other shoving down the
poor beast's throat a ball of dough about the size of a cricket ball.
One peculiarity of the domestic animals in this fearful climate is,
that they are dwarfed and dwindled in size to an extraordinary
degree. A bull used to run about the lower regions of my house,
which was barely eighteen inches high; the sheep were so small that
grown up mutton looked like lamb. The same occurred with fruit; none
at all grew at Erzeroom, but we had from villages some miles off,
on the edges of the plain, plums the size of damsons, apricots the
size of walnuts, and other fruits in proportion.