Part 29

_Bitlis, November 12._--This is the most romantically-situated city that I have seen in Western Asia. The dreamy impressions of height and depth received on the night of my arrival were more than realised the following morning. Even to the traveller arriving by daylight Bitlis must come as a great surprise, for it is situated in a hole upon which the upper valley descends with a sudden dip. The Bitlis-chai or Eastern Tigris passes through it in a series of raging cataracts, and is joined in the middle of the town by another torrent tumbling down another wild valley, and from this meeting of the waters massive stone houses rise one above another, singly, and in groups and terraces, producing a singularly striking effect. Five valleys appear to unite in Bitlis and to radiate from a lofty platform of rock supported on precipices, the irregular outlines of which are emphasised by walls and massive square and circular towers, the gigantic ruins of Bitlis Castle.

The massiveness of the houses is remarkable, and their courtyards and gardens are enclosed by strong walls. Every gate is strengthened and studded with iron, every window is heavily barred, all are at a considerable height, and every house looks as if it could stand a siege. There is no room to spare; the dwellings are piled tier above tier, and the flagged footways in front of them hang on the edges of precipices. Twenty picturesque stone bridges, each one of a single arch, span the Tigris and the torrents which unite with it. There are ancient ruins scattered through the town. It claims immense antiquity, and its inhabitants ascribe its castle and some of its bridges to Alexander the Great, but antiquarians attribute the former either to the Saracens or to the days when an ancient Armenian city called Paghesh occupied the site of the present Bitlis. It seems like the end of the world, though through the deep chasms below it, through which the Tigris descends with great rapidity to the plains, lies the highway to Diabekir. Suggestions of the ancient world abound. The lofty summits towering above the basin in which this extraordinary city lies are the termination of the Taurus chain, the Niphates of the ancients, on the highest peak of which Milton localised the descent of Satan.[55]

Remote as Bitlis seems and is, its markets are among the busiest in Turkey, and its caravan traffic is enormous for seven or eight months of the year. Its altitude is only 4700 feet, and the mercury in winter rarely falls to zero, but the snowfall is tremendous, and on the Rahwan Plain snow frequently lies up to the top of the telegraph poles, isolating the town and shutting up animals in their stables and human beings in their houses for weeks, and occasionally months, at a time. Bitlis produces a very coarse, heavy cotton cloth which, after being dyed madder red or dark blue, is largely exported, and is used for the embroidered aprons which the Armenian women wear. It also exports _loupes_, the walnut whorls or knots of which I have written before, oak galls, wax, wool, and manna, chiefly collected from the oak. The Bitlis people, and even some Europeans, regard this as a deposit left by the aromatic exhalations which the wind brings in this direction from Arabia, and they say that it lies on any plant without regard to its nature, and even on the garments of men. The deposit is always greatest in dry years. In addition to the white manna, obtained by drying the leaves and allowing the saccharine matter to fall off--and the green, the result of steeping the leaves in water, which is afterwards strained, there is a product much like golden syrup, which is used for the same purposes.

Bitlis is one of the roughest and most fanatical and turbulent of Turkish cities, but the present Governor, Raouf Pasha, is a man of energy, and has reduced the town and neighbourhood to some degree of order. Considerable bodies of troops have been brought in, and the garrison consists of 2500 men. These soldiers are thoroughly well clothed and equipped, and look remarkably clean in dress and person. They are cheery, soldierly-looking men, and their presence gives a little confidence to the Christians.

The population of Bitlis is estimated at 30,000, of which number over 20,000 are Kurds. Both men and women are very handsome, and the striking Kurdish costume gives a great brilliancy and picturesqueness to this remarkable city. The short sleeveless jackets of sheepskin with the black wool outside which the men are now wearing over their striped satin vests, and the silver rings in the noses of the girls give them something of a "barbarian" look, and indeed their habits appear to be much the same as those of their Karduchi ancestors in the days of Xenophon, except that in the interval they have become Moslems and teetotallers! Here they are Sunnis, and consequently do not clash with their neighbours the Turks, who abhor the Kurds of the mountains as Kizilbashes. The Kurdish _physique_ is very fine. In fact I have never seen so handsome a people, and their manly and highly picturesque costume heightens the favourable effect produced by their well-made, lithe, active figures.

The cast of their features is delicate and somewhat sharp; the mouth is small and well formed; the teeth are always fine and white; the face is oval; the eyebrows curved and heavy; the eyelashes long; the eyes deep set, intelligent, and roving; the nose either straight or decidedly aquiline, giving a hawk-like expression; the chin slightly receding; the brow broad and clear; the hands and feet remarkably small and slender.

The women when young are beautiful, but hard work and early maternity lead to a premature loss of form, and to a withered angularity of feature which is far from pleasing, and which, as they do not veil, is always _en evidence_.

The poorer Kurds wear woollen socks of gay and elaborate patterns; cotton shoes like the _gheva_ of the Persians; camlet trousers, wide at the bottom like those of sailors; woollen girdles of a Kashmir shawl pattern; short jackets and felt jerkins without sleeves. The turban usually worn is peculiar. Its foundation is a peaked felt cap, white or black, with a loosely-twisted rope of tightly-twisted silk, wool, or cotton wound round it. In the girdle the _khanjar_ is always seen. Over it the cartridge belt is usually worn, or two cartridge belts are crossed over the chest and back. The girdle also carries the pipe and tobacco pouch, a long knife, a flint and steel, and in some cases a shot pouch and a highly-ornamented powder horn.

The richer Kurds dress like the Syrians. The under-garment, which shows considerably at the chest and at the long and hanging sleeves, is of striped satin, either crimson and white or in a combination of brilliant colours, over which is worn a short jacket of cloth or silk, also with long sleeves, the whole richly embroidered in gold. Trousers of striped silk or satin, wide at the bottom; loose medieval boots of carnation-red leather; a girdle fastened with knobbed clasps of silver as large as a breakfast cup, frequently incrusted with turquoises; red felt skull-caps, round which they wind large striped silk shawls, red, blue, orange, on a white or black ground, with long fringed ends hanging over the shoulders, and floating in the wind as they gallop; and in their girdles they carry richly-jewelled _khanjars_ and pistols decorated with silver knobs, besides a number of other glittering appointments. The accoutrements of the horses are in keeping, and at marriages and other festivities the head-stalls, bridles, and breast-plates are completely covered with pendent silver coins.

The dress of the women is a foil to that of their lords. It consists of a blue cotton shirt; very wide trousers, drawn in at the ankles; a silver saucer on the head, from which chains depend with a coin at the end of each; a square mantle hanging down the back, clasped by two of its corners round the neck, and many strings of coins round the throat; a small handkerchief is knotted round the hair, and in presence of a strange man they hold one end of this over the mouth. The Turks in Bitlis are in a small minority, and the number of Armenian Christians is stated at from 2000 to 5000. The Old Church has a large monastery outside the town and several churches and schools. The Protestant Armenians have a substantial church edifice, with a congregation of about 400, and large boarding-schools for boys and girls.

The population is by far the wildest that I have seen in any Asiatic city, and is evidently only restrained from violence by the large garrison. It is not safe for the ladies of this mission to descend into the Moslem part of the city, and in a residence of more than twenty years they have never even passed through the bazars. The missionaries occupy a restricted and uncertain position, and the Armenian Christians are subject to great deprivations and restraints, and are distrusted by the Government. Of late they have been much harassed by the search for arms, and Christian gunsmiths have been arrested. Even their funeral ceremonies are not exempt from the presence of the police, who profess to believe that firearms are either carried in the place of a corpse or are concealed along with it. Placed in the midst of a preponderating and fully-armed Kurdish population, capable at any moment of being excited to frenzy against their faith, they live in expectation of a massacre, should certain events take place which are regarded as probable within two or three years.

It was not to see the grandeur and picturesqueness of Bitlis that I came here so late in the season, but to visit the American missionaries, especially two ladies. My hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Knapp, have returned from a visit to America to spend their last days in a country which has been their home for thirty years, and have lately been joined by their son, who spent his boyhood in Bitlis, and after graduating in an American university has come back, like so many sons of missionaries, to cast in his lot with a people to whom he is bound by many links of sympathy, bringing his wife with him. The two Misses ----, who are more than half English, and are highly educated and accomplished, met Mr. and Mrs. Knapp long ago in a steamer on the Mediterranean, and decided to return with them to this dangerous and outlandish place, where they have worked among the women and girls for twenty-three years, and are still full of love and hope. The school for girls, in which fifty boarders are received in addition to fifty day pupils, has a _kindergarten_ department attached to it. The parents of all are expected to contribute in money or in kind, but their increasing poverty is telling on their ability to do so, and this winter the supply of food contributed by them is far short of the mark.

The tastefulness and generosity of these ladies have produced as bright and beautiful a schoolroom as could be found anywhere, and ivy trained round the windows, growing plants, and pictures which are not daubs give a look of home. With them "Love is the fulfilling of the law"--love in every tone, look, and touch, and they have that true maternity of spirit which turns a school into a family, and trains as well as educates. They are now educating the children, and even grandchildren, of their earliest pupils, and have the satisfaction of seeing how very much their school has effected in permeating the household and social relationships of the Armenian women with the tone of Christian discipleship, so that one would scarcely hear from the lips of any of their married pupils the provoking question, "We are only women, what can we do?" Many of them have gone to homes in the roughest and wildest of mountain villages, where they sweeten village life by the gentle and kindly ways acquired in the Bitlis school. These ladies conduct a mothers' meeting, and I thought that the women were much developed in intelligence and improved in manner as compared with the usual run of Armenian women. On being asked to address them, I took their own words for my text, "We are only women," etc., and found them intelligent and sympathetic.

These ladies have endured great hardships, and their present position is one of continual deprivation and frequent risk. One of them was so severely stoned in Bitlis that she fell unconscious from her horse. In the winter Miss ---- itinerates among the Armenian villages of the Mush and Rahwan Plains and the lake shore, travelling over the crust of the enormously deep snow in a hand-sled drawn by a man, braving storms which have nearly cost her her life, sleeping and living for a month or more at a time chiefly in _odahs_, and fearlessly encountering the very roughest of Kurds and others in these dim and crowded stables. The danger of village expeditions, and the difficulty of obtaining _zaptiehs_ without considerable expense, have increased of late, and the Mush Plain especially has been ravaged all the summer and autumn by the Kurds, with many barbarities and much loss of life, so that travelling for Christians even in companies has been dangerous. Caravans have lately been attacked and robbed, and in the case of one large mixed caravan the Christians were robbed but the Moslems were unmolested. A traveller was recently treacherously murdered by his _katirgis_, and Miss ----, having occasion to employ the same men a few days ago, saw and heard them rehearse his dying agonies more than once for the amusement of Kurds on the road.

Luxury is unknown in this mission house. It is so small that in order to receive me the ladies are sleeping in a curtained recess in the kitchen, and the reception-room for the natives is the eating and living room of the family. Among them all there is a rare devotion, and lives spent in cheerful obedience to God and in loving service for man have left on their faces the impress of "the love which looks kindly and the wisdom which looks soberly on all things." The mission has had a severe struggle. The life on this mountain slope above the fanatical city is a very restricted one,--there is nothing of what we are accustomed to regard as "necessary recreation," and a traveller is not seen here above once in two or three years. All honour to those who have courage and faith to live such a life so lovingly and cheerfully!

I. L. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[54] It does not present any difficulty to me that Xenophon omits all mention of the lake of Van, for a range of hills lies between it and the road. I have travelled over the track twice, and failed to see anything in the configuration of the country which would have led me to suppose that the region to the eastward was anything but a continuity of ranges of hills and mountains, and if the Ten Thousand took the route from the eastern head-waters of the Tigris to the Murad-chai at the farther end of the plain of Mush, directing all their investigations and inquiries in a westerly direction, there are very many chances against their having been informed, even by their prisoners, of the existence of the sea of Van.

[55] _Paradise Lost_, iii. 741, "Nor stayed, till on Niphates' top he lights."

LETTER XXXIII

PIKHRUZ, _Nov. 14_.

I was indeed sorry to leave the charming circle at the Mission House and the wild grandeur of Bitlis, but a certain wan look in the sky and peculiar colouring on the mountains warned my friends that winter might set in any day, and Dr. Reynolds arranged for _katirgis_ and an escort, and obtained a letter from the Governor by means of which I can procure additional _zaptiehs_ in case of need. My Turkish _katirgi_, Moussa, is rich, and full of fun and jollity. He sings and jokes and mimics Mirza, rides a fine horse, or sprawls singing on its back, and keeps every one alive by his energy and vitality. My loads are very light, and his horses are strong, and by a peculiar screech he starts them off at a canter with no other object than the discomfiture of Mirza, who with all his good qualities will never make a horseman. Unluckily he has a caravan of forty horses laden with ammunition for the Government on the road, so things may not be always so smooth as they are now. Descending by a track more like a stair than a road, and crossing the Tigris, my friends and I performed the feat of riding through some of the bazars, even though Mr. Knapp and I had been pelted with stones on an open road the day before. There was no molestation, for the people are afraid of the _zaptiehs'_ swords. Bitlis is busy, and it is difficult to get through its crowded markets, low, narrow, and dark as they are, the sunbeams rarely entering through their woven roofs. The stalls were piled with fruits, roots, strange vegetables, red home-dyed cottons, gay gear for horses, daggers and silver chains such as Kurds love, gay Kurdish clothing, red boots with toes turned up for tying to the knees, pack-saddles, English cottons ("_Mankester_"), mostly red, and pipes of all kinds. There was pottery in red and green, huge earthen jars for the storage of water, brooms, horse-shoes, meat, curds, cheeses, and everything suited to the needs of a large and mixed population, and men seated in the shops plied their curious trades.

Emerging into the full sunlight on the waggon road to Erzerum, we met strings of girls carrying water-jars on their backs from the wells, and long trains of asses and pack-bullocks bringing in produce, mixed up with foot passengers and Kurds on showy horses. Bitlis rejoices in abundant streams, wells, fountains, and mineral springs, some strongly chalybeate, others resembling the Vichy waters. The grandly picturesque city with its piled-up houses, its barred windows suggestive of peril, its colossal ruins, its abounding waters, its bridges, each one more remarkable than the other, its terraced and wooded heights and the snow-crested summits which tower above them, with their cool blue and purple shadows, disappeared at a turn of the road, and there too my friends left me to pursue my perilous journey alone.

The day was superb, and full of fine atmospheric effects. As we crossed the Rahwan Plain the great mountains to the west were enshrouded in wild drifting mists, through which now and then peaks and ledges, white with recent snow, revealed themselves, to be hidden in blackness the next moment. Over the plain the blue sky was vaulted, and the sun shone bright and warm, while above the mountains to the south of Lake Van white clouds were piled in sunlit masses. After halting at Tadvan, a pleasant village among streams, fountains, gardens, and fruit trees, we skirted the lake along pleasant cultivated slopes and promontories with deep bays and inlets to Gudzag, where I spent the evening in an _odah_, retiring to sleep in my small tent, pitched in the village, where a big man with a gun, and wearing a cloak of goatskin reaching to his feet, kept up a big fire and guarded me till morning. The water froze in my basin during the night. The _odah_ was full of Armenians, and Murphy interpreted their innumerable tales of wrong and robbery. "Since the Erzerum troubles," so the tales ran, "the Kurds kill men as if they were partridges." On asking them why they do not refuse to be robbed by "demand," they replied, "Because the Kurds bring big sticks and beat us, and say they will cut our throats." They complained of the exactions of the _zaptiehs_ and of being tied to the posts of their houses and beaten when they have not money wherewith to pay the taxes.

Starting at sunrise on the following morning I had a very pleasant walk along the sweet shore of the lake, while water, sky, and mountains were blended in a flood of rose and gold, after which, skirting a wooded inlet, on the margin of which the brown roofs of the large village of Zarak were scarcely seen amidst the crimson foliage, and crossing a low range, we descended upon a plain at the head of a broad bay, on the farther side of which, upon a level breezy height, rose the countless monoliths and lofty mausoleums of Akhlat, which I had made a long detour to see. The plain is abundantly watered, and its springs were surrounded with green sward, poplars, and willows, while it was enlivened by numerous bullock-carts, lumbering and creaking on their slow way with the latest sheaves of the harvest.

After winding up a deep ravine we came upon a great table of rock scarped so as to be nearly perpendicular, at the base of which is a stone village. On the other side is a fine stream. I had purposed to spend the night at Akhlat, but on riding up the village street, which has several shops, there was a manifest unfriendliness about its Turkish inhabitants, and they went so far as to refuse both lodgings and supplies, so I only halted for a few hours. Few things have pleased me more than Akhlat, and the dreamy loveliness of the day was altogether propitious.

I first visited the Kharaba-shahr or "ruined city." The table rock is honeycombed with a number of artificial chambers, some of which are inhabited. Several of these are carefully arched. A very fine one consists of a chamber with an arched recess like a small chancel, and a niche so resembling a piscina at one side that one involuntarily looks for the altar. These dwellings are carefully excavated, and chisel marks are visible in many places. Outlining this remarkable rock, and above these chambers, are the remains of what must have been a very fine fortress, with two towers like those of the castle of Bitlis springing from below the rock. The whole of it has been built of hewn red sandstone. The walls have been double, with the centre filled up with rough stones and mortar, but not much of the stone facing remains, the villages above and below having been built of it. Detached pieces of masonry, such as great masses of walls, solitary arches, and partially-embedded carved fragments extend over a very large area, and it is evident that investigators with time and money might yet reap a rich reward. Excavators have been recently at work--who or what they were I could not make out, and have unearthed, among other objects of interest, a temple with the remains of a dome having a cornice and frieze, and two small circular chambers, much decorated, the whole about twenty-five feet long.

Akhlat Kalessi, or the castle of Akhlat, stands on the sea-shore, on which side it has no defences. It is a fortress with massive walls, with round and square towers at intervals, and measures about 700 paces from the water to the crest of the slope, and about 330 across. The enclosure, which is entered by two gates, contains two ancient mosques solidly built, and a few houses among fruit trees, as well as some ruins of buildings. The view of the Sipan Dagh from this very striking ruin is magnificent.