TO ALEXANDROPOL
To-night we are to sleep on the banks of the Arpa, by the waters
which swell the flood of the Araxes and sweep the base of Ararat! This
was the reflection which lightened the mood of sorrowful meditation
that our visit to Gorelovka had inspired. Our grave hosts, for whom
one felt a vivid sympathy, a warm affection, conducted us in their
spacious waggons to the posting station of Efremovka, a few versts'
distance along our road. It is a Russian settlement with some ninety
houses and a population of 860 souls, besides a collection of huge and
formidable dogs. The station is a stage of 16 versts (10 1/2 miles)
from Bogdanovka, and of 21 versts (14 miles) from the succeeding post
house of Shishtapa, which was our destination for the afternoon. At
Efremovka we took leave of our companions, and, at the same time,
of the solid villages of this Russian zone.
A country of elevated uplands, a natural carpet of springy turf,
broken here and there by patches of cultivation which struggle upwards
from the plainer levels to the hillsides. Grey lights descending from
a grey heaven upon a surface swelling and falling like the sea. In
the east the near reliefs of the mountains of the meridional border,
their base checkered with plots of fallow and stubble, their summits
veiled with cloud. At their foot the lake and marsh of Madatapa,
with the Russian village of Troitskoy upon its shore. In the west
the vague downs, rising to a distant horizon of loftier shapes,
similar to themselves. Such were the opening phases of the scene
through which we passed to the scarcely perceptible water-parting
between the Araxes and the Kur. After less than an hour's drive from
Efremovka we could see the village of Korakhbur (Armenian Catholic)
on the hillside, about a mile away on our left hand; on our right was
an Armenian hamlet, which was named to us Jaila; both are situated in
the southern watershed. The height of the parting between the basins,
at the point where we crossed it, is placed by the Russian map at
6777 feet, a figure which, if it errs, is below the truth. And now
for the first time were disclosed the gleaming peaks which we had
seen from Abul--beyond a line of hummock hills the group of snowy
teeth which break the horizontal outline of Alagöz.
Tazaken, a Turkish settlement; Khancharli, a large village of Armenian
Catholics, were rapidly left behind. The landscape opened to a lofty
range of swelling shapes and rounded outlines on the western margin of
the plain. They were the mountains about Lake Chaldir; the declining
sun was about to touch them from behind a shroud of mist. Sheets of
light were thrown upon those distant opaline masses as upon the coast
of a hazy sea.
At a quarter to six--we had left Efremovka at 4.20--we were winding
between the two Shishtapas, on our right the Turkish Shishtapa, washed
by the young stream of the Arpa; the Armenian Shishtapa further away on
our left. At six o'clock we crossed a bridge which spans a tributary
of the Arpa, coming from the east. The confluence takes place some
hundred yards below the bridge, and the name of the tributary was
given to us as Kizil-Goch (the red lamb). It is a solid stone bridge
with a curious stone ornament; on the further side you rise to an
eminence which overlooks the Arpa, and upon which the lonely post
station of Shishtapa is built.
The doors were heavily barred; when at length they yielded, after many
grumblings, a wizened figure in official uniform stepped forth. It
was the postmaster--it seemed the embodiment of some immense
and ideal sorrow of which all human griefs are but the mirrored
images. How cross the threshold upon which he stood, how enlist
his sympathy with our puny wants, who himself was the incarnation
of Want? But the keenness of the air overcame our hesitation; a
night in tents and without blankets was the alternative course. So
with a greeting, which was coldly returned, we led the way to the
interior, followed by our dismal host. It appeared to consist of a
single room, a spacious apartment with bare floor and white-washed
walls. A few chairs and a large table were the only furniture; the
only ornaments the usual coloured oleograph of the reigning emperor,
and, perhaps, the almanac and the posting map, which were suspended
on the walls. Yet the postmaster was not the only occupant of the
building; children appeared, and with them a young and beautiful
girl. A Polish maiden? one could not doubt of the answer, as one
admired the slender form, the swelling bust, the full lips and the
pale face with its animated eyes. Ah! the pitiful story eloquently
told by this unambiguous presence--the mother already a victim to
the prolonged atrophy of these cheerless surroundings, the father a
sapless tree in an alien soil. Who sent them to such cold solitudes,
these warm natures and passionate temperaments? Find a wilderness and
it will be tenanted by a Pole.... The practical question arose: how
accommodate ourselves and the family within the four white walls? The
father protested that it was completely impossible; the girl came to
our assistance, and revealed the existence of an adjoining closet,
which she offered to share with the children for the night. After
partaking of a frugal meal, after several futile attempts at sustained
conversation, our strange party disposed itself for the night.
For myself, I could not sleep, for all the comfort of my camp bed,
and memories of sound slumbers which it evoked. Was it the grave
faces of the Russian peasants and the strange irony of their history
and circumstances that haunted and kept the mind strung? Or were the
senses fluttering under the presence of the fair woman whose soft
breathing one could almost hear? God residing in those frames of
steel, God incarnate in her voluptuousness!--Yet their God was not
the God of the pantheist, but a stern, a militant God.... And thought
wandered out into the stony by-paths, the home of the sprites that
mock thought. The ingenious wickedness of man with his Churches and
his heretics, and all the cowering crowd of Jews, Armenians, Poles!
A faint light was already diffused over the cheerless apartment as
I passed down the row of heavy sleepers and gained the door and the
open air. Day had broken--a morning of perfect stillness, the vapours
lingering on the saturated grass. A cold, grey world of bleak uplands
and mist-veiled mountains, a chill atmosphere which sent one pacing
to and fro. But when the sun rose above the haze into the clear vault
of heaven, the colours started, the chill softened into delicious
freshness, and the peculiar beauty of the scene was revealed. One
looked in vain for the snowy fangs of Alagöz; they had been lost to
view behind the amphitheatre of nearer outlines which composed the
closing phases of our stage of yesterday. But within the limits of
those gentler shapes was outspread an ideal landscape, typical of the
most elevated areas of the tableland (Fig. 22). The plainer levels
were invested with the character of swelling downs, and down and
hillside were carpeted with turf. Over the green and fibrous surface
flowed the Arpa and its tributary, flashes of white and luminous
blue. Here and there brief patches of cultivation checkered the soil,
especially towards north-west and west. In the middle distance one
could discern two villages of moderate size--the two Shishtapas,
barely distinguished from the waste. Beyond the Turkish Shishtapa,
obscuring all but the first line of the settlement, lay a captive
cloud, an opaque opaline mass. The illustration shows the rivers
descending towards you and uniting at your feet. The hills which line
the distance circle round and mass behind you, closing the prospect
towards the south. In that direction the united waters bid farewell
to the grassy uplands, and enter the stony tracts which slope to the
plain of Alexandropol between the outworks of the Chaldir system and
those of the meridional border range.
September 7.--By half-past eight we were following the course of the
Arpa and taking leave of the green meadows and blue streams. We were
soon involved among the hummock ridges which confine the amphitheatre
of the Shishtapas, and through which the river winds in a stony
valley, at some little distance to the west of the track. Progress
was retarded by the steepness of the inclines as we crossed this
elevated ground. Once again in possession of a prospect, we were
skirting the bases of successive promontories, which projected,
on our left hand, from the mountains of the meridional border into
the broken surface of a volcanic plateau. This plateau extends for
many miles to the westward, and is bounded by lofty mountains on
that side. The Arpa was running off into the easier levels in the
west, while the road hugged the rocky eastern shore. The waters of
the river were not visible after leaving Shishtapa; they are buried
in a cañon, of which you trace the sinuous edges through the bleak
and boulder-strewn waste. Ala-Kilisa, a village of Armenian-speaking
Greeks; Amasia, a Turkish settlement; Karachanta and Kara Mehemet, the
first inhabited by Turks, the second by Armenians, were successively
left behind. At half-past ten we arrived at the station of Jellap,
a stage of twenty versts (thirteen miles).
The post house is situated at some little distance from the village--an
Armenian settlement which is exposed to view after you have left the
station, high-seated among the rocks above the road. It is a gloomy
habitation, standing in a stony valley by the banks of a stream which
descends to the trough of the Arpa from the rocky hummocks to which
the road adheres. Starting at a few minutes after eleven, we commenced
by crossing a projecting promontory, mounting the slopes of the puny
ridges by steep gradients, and never regaining the prospect which had
been lost before reaching Jellap. At length, at half-past eleven,
the valleys opened; and we overlooked the landscape of the plain
of Alexandropol.
A vast plain lay before us, level as water, to the floor of which
the ground declines on every side. A single mountain, which has the
appearance of a gigantic bank of soil, is drawn in a long horizontal
outline along its southern verge. This outline is the dominant
feature in the scene, extending from north of east to south of west
(Fig. 23). The heart and highest points of the volcanic elevation are
situated in the easterly portion of the mass; they are represented
by the jagged profile of the broken outer side of a crater, and
they gleam with perpetual snow. Some conception of the stupendous
proportions of the mountain may be derived from a rough measurement
of its protraction in a latitudinal sense. On the east the volcanic
emissions have been arrested by the barrier of the border ranges; on
the west they have descended from the central or subordinate points
of eruption to the valley of the Arpa Chai. From that valley, in the
neighbourhood of Ani, to the road which passes between the volcano
and the meeting slopes of the border chain is a distance of over 40
miles. Throughout this space the bulk of the giant is thrown across
the landscape, his head and body resting against the framework of the
border ranges, his feet extended to the margin of the historic stream.
Such a prospect is the rich reward of the traveller; we paused to
admire and to realise the scene. It was difficult to believe that
those snowy peaks were over 30 miles distant; yet a glance at the map
brought home to us this fact. The floor of the plain has an elevation
of some 5000 feet, while those peaks are 13,000 feet high. Between
us and the base of the mountain no meaner object disturbed the view,
which ranged uninterrupted across dim tracts of earth and stone,
tinted with shades of ochre in the burnt grass and scanty stubble,
but treeless, without verdure of any kind. In the east the limit
of the plain is the outline of the border ranges, of which we were
touching the skirts; they describe a wide curve, concave towards the
expanse, and appear to pass over into a meridional direction before
the point of intersection with the volcanic mass. Their sides are bare
of vegetation, as are those of the volcano, and they are much broken
into hummock forms. From north-west descend the slopes of the Chaldir
system, of which the base is inclined towards the plain. In the west
the eye is unable to discern a boundary to the misty distance of flat
or undulating ground. A little to the right of the white summits in
the south your attention is directed to a slender line of grey--a
low relief upon the surface of the plain. It is Alexandropol; such
is the first view of the site of the city, backed by Alagöz. We made
rapid progress across the level interval and arrived in the town at
a quarter before one.