1876 British Viscount & Ambassador James Bryce - Noah's Ark Search

178 THE EXPLORERS OF ARARAT
Only yesterday somebody coming this way from Tiflis had seen one or two armed horsemen peering round a
hillside, and had escaped them only by galloping to the station, which luckily was near. After this, it was urged by the
postmaster, to go on at night would be downright folly. Such is the perversity of human nature that the more these
stories were told, the less we believed them; and probably we should have disbelieved them altogether could the usual
innkeeper’s motive have been discovered. The same stories reappeared; the same advice was even more solemnly
tendered. However, it was now near midnight, Tiflis was only two hours away, and our impatience to rest in a civilized
bed instead of on a post-house floor made us ready to face dangers more substantial than these seemed to be. “No,”
we answered; “you may say what you like, but we shall go on; tonight shall see us either murdered or in Tiflis. But if it
is any satisfaction to you, or protection to us, give us two or three tchapars to ride beside the tarantass.” To this the
postmaster demurred, and, after beating about the bush for a good while, at last muttered, “We are more afraid of our
own people for you than of the Tatars.” After this there was no more to be said; we called for horses, and drove off
alone, amid many warnings, first that we would be brought back stripped and wounded, and, secondly, that even if we
escaped the band, some stray marauder would certainly climb on to the carriage as we entered Tiflis, and cut away the
portmanteau which was tied behind. Nothing, however, happened, except that once or twice in the darkness, for it was
as black as a wolf’s mouth, with thunderstorms growling in the distance, we ran into Tatar carts making for the city, and
were nearly capsized. At 2 AM we entered Tiflis.
Desiring to see something of the coast of Asia Minor, and especially of Batum and Trebizond, we chose the route
by Poti, and on the 22nd of September took our seats in the train for the Black Sea. After a good many miles of this
narrow glen, the hills recede a little, and the town of Gori appears lying in a small plain at the foot of a castellated rock,
where a broad shallow stream comes down from the Caucasus to mingle its sparkling waters with the muddy Kur.
From the top of the rock, nearly 200 feet above this plain, there is a magnificent view over the Caucasus to the north,
most of the great peaks between Elbruz and Kazbek being visible. At 6:30 AM next morning we started in our host’s
company for the place we had halted at Gori to see, the Petra of the Caucasus, the rock-city of Uphlis Tzikhé. They led
us up the face of the crags by a steep winding path, partly built up of stones, partly cut out of the cliff, to the top, where
we found ourselves suddenly in the midst of the city, a city with streets, palaces, shops, private houses, all hewn in the
solid rock without a fragment of masonry or a piece of timber anywhere through it. The people who lived here were no
mere brutish troglodytes, but a cultivated race.
Returning to Gori, we took the mid-day train, the same, which had brought us from Tiflis yesterday, for the west.
We had very nearly missed it, for the ticket for the luggage we had left at the station had been lost. An appeal to let us
have the goods despite the want of the ticket would have failed in France or Germany; but with these good-natured
people it ultimately succeeded, and they even kept the train, the one train of the day, full of officers and troops, waiting
for fifteen minutes while this difficulty of ours was adjusted; an instance of indulgence to unpopular England which a
little surprised us. We tried to read, but were too stupid to keep awake, and fell into a slumber broken by hideous
dreams. About midnight the lagging train crawled at last into the terminus at Poti, and we drove, under the blackest
night I can remember, across the wooden bridge, through seas of mud, to the miserable inn of the most miserable
town that ever a traveler was condemned to halt in. Better a hungry bivouac under the snows of Ararat than those
dank bedrooms and clammy sheets, heavy with such a smell of putrid slime that one feared to lift the frowsy carpet
and find beneath it a bottomless abyss of foulness. The steamers, which run from Poti to Constantinople and Odessa,
leave only once a week. So at last we settled down to the conclusion that, if the bar continued impracticable tomorrow,
there was nothing for it but to retrace our steps to Tiflis, and go home over the Dariel Pass, and by railway from
Vladikavkaz to Odessa, a circuit of about eleven hundred miles. This seemed too absurd to be true.
Chapter X
Except a few turbaned Ottomans, all, both Christians and Turks, wear the red fez, and the poorer ones their
brilliant crimson sash, with more or less of picturesque variety in jackets. Nothing strikes a Westerner with more
disgust than the way he sees women treated in Mohammedan countries. It is not so much the enforced seclusion that
revolts you as the tacit assumption that women are inferior creatures altogether, unfit to be companions for men.
Constantinople is one of the few places in the world, which surpasses all expectations. It is more beautiful, more
unique, more commanding than any description has prepared you to find it. As everybody knows, it consists of three
parts: firstly, Stamboul [Istanbul] proper, the city of Constantine, standing on the site of old Byzantium between the Sea
of Marmara and the Golden Horn (a long narrow inlet off the Bosphorus); secondly, Galata, a town which grew up in
the later middle ages, also in Europe, but on the opposite or northeast side of the Golden Horn, and Pera, an
extension of Galata up the steep hill which rises behind it; and finally, on the other or Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, the
towns of Scutari and Kadikeui (Chalcedon), with their far-stretching suburbs. If ever a war is undertaken on behalf of
Constantinople, let us understand that is not for the sake of the Turks, but for aesthetic reasons only: to preserve the
loveliness of a city that is unique in the world and could never be replaced.
In these circumstances not only war, but conquest also, is obviously against Russia’s interest. All this is, of
course, perfectly well known and foreseen by intelligent Russians, who cannot understand why foreigners should not
credit them with perceiving what is so obvious. It is felt most strongly by the Emperor and his advisers, on whom a