CHAPTER XVIII

ROUND NIMRUD BY LAKE NAZIK

July 25.--A sharp ride of an hour and a half brought us down from the crater to the village of Tadvan. The descent is more continuous than on the side of Akhlat; the outer slopes of the mountain are seared with deep gullies. Crossing the orchards of the straggling settlement, we pitched our tents on the west of the village, upon the margin of a field of late-sown wheat. A line of well-grown willows, fringing the bank of a tiny stream, promised shade during the later hours of the day, when the sun should be at our backs. That welcome shade was indeed commencing to subdue the brilliance of the young corn while the canvas was being stretched. We looked out over the green field across the waters to the smiling landscape of the opposite shore. The curve of the little harbour of Tadvan was turned towards us, backed by a lofty boss of rock. Quite a number of picturesque craft were lying within it; but only one, so far as I know, was laden. She was carrying wood and charcoal from the Bitlis district. The rest were doing nothing, many of the men having families here. All this time I had seen but a single sail upon the lake, besides that of Captain Elliot's boat. But sea-gulls there are, to give life to the waters, with their beautiful white wings.

Tadvan was in a state of commotion, or what passes as such, in a country where all spirit has been gradually extinguished among the population of Armenian race. Although this village is Armenian, they did not hesitate to betray to the authorities four of their countrymen, who had taken refuge in their midst. These individuals appear to have been under the ban of the law, and, indeed, were alluded to as brigands. One never hears talk of Kurdish brigands; though I have never met a Kurd who was not more or less a brigand, nor an Armenian who either justified or deserved the name. The notorious Ali Bey, police officer at Bitlis, hurried to the scene. He surrounded the hut which harboured the men; fire was opened upon them, which they returned, and a zaptieh was shot. A villager, who tried to mediate, was killed. Then Ali Bey collected straw, and set light to it, and literally burnt them out. I was told that all four succumbed. All this happened a day or two ago. I informed the Kaimakam that I should like to kick the official if he would be so obliging as to come my way. When one is kindly treated by the authorities, one endeavours to avoid getting very angry, except before their face.

We spent several days in the neighbourhood, making excursions, and mapping in these unmapped shores of Lake Van. The Kaimakam was obliged to leave us and return to Akhlat; we were sorry to part, having become mutually attached. The Armenian villages of this district are evidently very old, and have probably existed from the dawn of history. One of the most flourishing is Kizvag, which occupies a situation of ideal quality as a home of Man. It is placed on the southern horn of a beautiful little bay, sheltered on the north by a bold promontory, from which rises a knife-like ridge. This ridge is composed of a lava which has welled up along a latitudinal fissure. One rides there over layers of lava and pumice, some of which show traces of having been deposited in water. The corn was already golden in the fields, very tall in the stalk and heavy in the ear. We had never seen finer crops. Vines flourish along the base of the promontory; but a vineyard is a rare occurrence in these scenes. The air was always radiant and invigorating, in spite of the heat of the sun. Kizvag is a considerable place; but the houses are the usual ant-hills. The dress of the people is gay. The women wear the embroidered aprons which are such a striking feature of their national dress; but the designs were finer than any we had seen. I endeavoured to purchase a few; but all the new ones were vastly inferior; it was only the old ones, now torn and faded, that showed any taste. It is the same in Persia, and Central Asia--everywhere in the East. It is a fact for which one may discover explanations; but none appear altogether adequate.

The lower slopes on the opposite shore of the lake are well wooded, and this pleasing landscape circles round towards Tadvan. The wood is due to the character of the rock, a mica-schist, yielding a fertile soil. But higher up on the face of the range the hard marbles come to view, and, while their surface is well adapted to take the hues of the sky, it is inimical to all vegetation. About a hundred feet above the water, you perceive a well-marked terrace, denoting a former level of the lake. I have already remarked that the level is again rising; and the same occurrence, which was presented in so striking a manner at Arjish (Ch. III. p. 30), is already threatening the village of Kizvag. The hill of Tadvan, at the promontory, is not volcanic, being composed of marble and mica-schist. It is less lofty and extensive than that of Kizvag; the summit is crowned by the substructures of a ruined fort. This fort was erect and proud at the commencement of the sixteenth century. [253] Nothing remains at the present day but a deep pit, which was perhaps a reservoir for water. The inhabitants of Tadvan are in a deplorable condition, the women in rags, the children mostly naked. It was pitiable to see the women stretching out their arms towards us, imploring us to give them food. We distributed a little money.

From Tadvan we directed our course towards the head of Mush plain across the volcanic plateau west of Lake Van. [254] Our track conducted us past a projecting outwork of the opposite range, well wooded and consisting of mica-schist. The extremity towards Nimrud is faced with lava. You mount gradually above the fertile surroundings of the lake to arid and, therefore, sterile ground. A few patches of burnt grass, some beautiful hollyhocks, with very large white flowers, are about the only vegetation which it supports. On the right hand rises the Kerkür Dagh, covered with flourishing brushwood, and, behind Kerkür, the immense mass of the Nimrud crater. In the opposite direction the barrier of the Kurdish mountains is less bold and imposing than at other points. This is partly, no doubt, due to the flooding against them of volcanic matter. The plateau attains its highest level at about a third of the whole distance from the point where we gained its surface to the head of Mush plain. The altitude by boiling-point was 6320 feet, or 680 feet above Lake Van.

We were impressed by the fact that in the immediate neighbourhood of the Kerkür the ground slopes towards that upstanding mass. And the broad valley, which we knew must contain the beginnings of the Bitlis Chai, was screened by a somewhat higher level of the field of lava. It may be that this is due to the lavas having swept round Kerkür, leaving a slight depression at its southern foot. Oswald rode off to investigate the material of the Kerkür, and found it to consist of a mass of trachyte. The slopes are covered almost to the summit with talus, and it is evidently a very old volcanic boss.

The plateau descends to the plain by two lower terraces, the descent being fairly gradual in each case. The Kerkür is also screened by a bastion-shaped terrace of talus which sinks into the plain. I have already described this stage of our journey (Ch. VII. p. 162); and I shall only pause to give some account of our visit to the pool of Norshen, which I had omitted to examine during my first journey.

About fifty yards west of the tomb of Karanlai Agha lies an almost circular pool. It is slightly embanked for the purposes of irrigation, and, in places, on its margin there are distinct vestiges of masonry. It is thirty-five yards in diameter; and, in the centre, did not appear to be much more than five feet deep. But our guide from the village believed it to be deeper, adding that it had recently drowned a bullock, which had ventured too far in. There is no trace of this pool having arisen in a crater, although the material, through which the spring wells up, is a tuff. The water is crystal-clear, and is furnished in abundance, giving rise to a little river. It is extremely pleasant to the taste, like water which has come from the chalk. It is cold too; for at 7 P.M., while the temperature of the air was 80° Fahrenheit, that of the water was only 51°. The villagers believe that it is derived from the lake on Nimrud. It is much more likely to be in connection with the springs of the chain on the south. The tomb exactly recalled those of the same period at Akhlat; indeed it is of the same date. The upper portion has fallen into ruin. In the adjacent cemetery there are the same headstones with the honeycomb friezes which we admired about the site in the ravine at Akhlat. A stork was standing on the topmost pinnacle of the crumbling edifice, of which the outline was clearly defined on the western sky. The great plain was veiled in haze, due to the intense heat. Beyond the headlands and little promontories, the sun--a red orb--sank behind delicate beds of perfectly settled cloud.

The situation of the pool of Norshen is well adapted to serve as a standard of the elevation of the head of Mush plain. Tested by boiling-point, the level is 4630 feet, which represents a decline of 1000 feet from that of Lake Van. This difference in level is mainly responsible for a distinct change of climate; the plain of Mush is quite a furnace in July. Norshen itself, although high-seated above the floor of the depression, must be one of the hottest places in the plain. It is screened by the volcanic plateau and by the outworks of the great range, under the wall of which it lies. The level ground at its foot has been flooded with lava; and the pavement, thus formed, glows in the sun. There are a few shady trees on the outskirts of the village, but we were obliged to erect our tents in the open, for want of a suitable place among those groves. In the morning the heat became unbearable under canvas. The inhabitants are a surly, unmannerly set of people, all of Kurdish extraction. The news of the death of the Vali of Bitlis had already reached them; and they were evidently quite out of hand. Our zaptiehs--an abominable lot, sent from Bitlis by the deceased Governor--came near to exciting a serious affray. It did not promise well for the success of an excursion into the wildest districts, that those blackguard Kurds at Bitlis had poisoned the Vali, and that our escort seemed as much pleased by the removal of the least vestige of discipline as the unruly people through whose country we were about to pass.

July 30.--Starting at eleven o'clock, we made our way across the plain towards the lofty block of heights by which it is confined upon the north. We could already see our track, showing white among the brushwood towards the summit of that long barrier. Even at its upper end, the plain of Mush is of considerable breadth, the distance, measured direct, between Norshen and the foot of that parapet being about eight miles. Two gently vaulted hills, standing close together, are conspicuous features in the plain. We reached the base of the largest and most easterly of the two in about three-quarters of an hour. Oswald rode off at the canter to examine its composition, while we continued our course. He found it to consist of a cindery lava, the flows radiating outwards, especially towards north-east. It has therefore been an independent centre of emission. The ground which we had been crossing is not cultivated, from want of streams, and the slabby lava was aflame with sun. Pushing our horses, we distanced the hill and were approaching the opposite confines of the plain, when I called a halt in the hamlet of Göl Bashi, the first that we had seen. It takes its name from a delightful spring that wells up in the village, with a temperature of only 55°. Inasmuch as the stream was dry which passes Morkh and Norshen, this pool is perhaps entitled to be regarded as the source of the Kara Su, owing to the permanence of the water which it supplies. Another such source is the pool beside the tomb.

A little river collects below Göl Bashi, fed by this and by other springs. The plain is perfectly flat in that direction, and was green with cultivation. The adjacent farms belong to a bey in Bitlis, who has built a good stone house for his steward in the hamlet. Proceeding on our course, and when near the foot of the wall before us, we rose gradually over the surface of a flow of lava. The flow skirts the base of the opposite parapet for some distance towards the west. At the same time it radiates into the plain. It is strewn with blocks and small fragments of jet-black obsidian, which have come from the cliffs above. High up on the terrace, thus formed, is a grove of lofty oak-trees, by the side of water running down from the face of the cliff. A small Kurdish hamlet nestles beneath them, and an ancient cemetery, buried in foliage. Cattle and a flock of sheep were resting in the shade, the sheep panting, and the bullocks lolling their tongues. Black goats, alert and elastic with life, browsed the lower shoots of the oaks. The ascent of the wall begins at this hamlet of Karnirash, and took us over half-an-hour to complete.

The face of the parapet was seen to be the side of a stream or streams of rhyolitic lava with the usual obsidian. They are overlaid, towards the summit, with a pavement of basaltic lava. These lavas have probably proceeded from Nimrud; but at a time when the crater was in its infancy, and when its walls had not yet reached their ultimate height. For those walls towered high and abruptly above us, nor did we think that these lavas could have welled over from that lofty rim. How far west the emissions may extend it was impossible to determine exactly; but the appearance of the block in that direction, when we reached the summit, seemed to disclose, at no great interval, the stratified rocks. The upper slopes of the barrier are abundantly wooded, though only with dwarf oak. We were astonished at the great size and beauty of the hollyhock petals, large as clematis on our English garden walls. The hollyhock is the flower of the surroundings of Nimrud, as the yellow mullein is the flower of Bingöl. It flourishes on the plateau of tuff to which this pass leads over, blossoming white and, much more rarely, a purple pink. The pass has an elevation of 6950 feet or of 2300 feet above the plain.

We soon lost the little wood as we proceeded over the plain of tuff in a north-north-easterly direction. Nothing but the bare pavement, and here and there a patch of burnt herbage; and only those large white flowers to refresh the eye. On our right hand the vast crater, steeply contoured down towards us; before us Bilejan, again exposed. But the stifling atmosphere of the trough behind us had given place to pleasant breezes, and we rode along gaily over the even ground. All of a sudden I hear shouts in the direction in which we are going; and, coming up, observe a group of men in fierce altercation by the side of a small drove of cattle. They prove to be one of our escort and another zaptieh, unknown to me; the rest are peasants, on foot. Our man is threatening a peasant, bending over on his horse; his comrade has blood on his face. The fellow pays not the slightest heed to my peremptory orders; so I send for the zabet or officer of the company, in whom, however, owing to his fussiness and manifest cowardice, I have not the slightest confidence. The zabet, with his extravagant verbiage, does nothing better than inflame the matter; and the wretched wayfarer is on the point of being murdered when I seize his assailant and pull him off. The would-be murderer then faces round, and, as we are both on horseback, extricates himself and turns on me. In an instant he levels his rifle at my chest, and brings it to the cock. Happily for me, my companions all ride up at the same moment, and force his arm up from behind. None of us can learn the cause of the dispute. I take the man on with the greatest reluctance, fearing he may do worse harm if allowed to rove.

For some short time we had been skirting the immediate outworks of the Nimrud mass; a new feature was introduced when these turned off to the east-north-east, and gave us space in the direction we were pursuing. Before us lay a wide depression of the surface, the levels about us tonguing into that lower ground. The heights on the further side were of no great relative elevation, but they screened a considerable portion of the pile of Bilejan, and they completely concealed Lake Nazik. We could see, at this distance, our track winding across them; they were evidently of volcanic origin. Sipan now came in view; and those heights stretched across the horizon towards the heights on the west of Sipan. The depression did not appear to have much westerly extension; but it was continued, mile after mile, towards the east. I can scarcely doubt that the drainage which collects within it finds its way into Lake Van.

We forded a nice stream of crystal-clear water, flowing into the plain, along the base of Nimrud. At this point we passed an extensive cemetery. Perhaps there was a village in the immediate neighbourhood; but we saw no habitations as we rode across the plain. The trough of the shallow basin is followed by the course of a rivulet, which, at this season, had run dry. According to a single reading of the aneroid, it has an elevation of 6460 feet. The ground consists of a decomposed lava; nor did we observe lacustrine deposits, though one cannot doubt that this plain was once the bottom of a shallow lake.

It was six o'clock before we reached the opposite heights, and commenced to mount the side of a ridge covered with a pavement of lava. But from the summit of this low vaulting we overlooked a second ridge, with a grassy valley of some breadth at our feet. Not a glimpse as yet of the lake. After fording the stream in this hollow, which was flowing towards the plain, we rode through the Armenian village of Mezik, situated at the base of the second and principal ridge. A short ascent brought us to the slope on the further side, whence, at last, the long-hidden waters came to view. We had struck the lake close to its south-western extremity, towards which we lost no time in directing our course. At this upper end there is a marsh and a considerable stretch of alluvial soil, which, however, does not extend to the east of the beginnings of the lake. It was a tedious ride over stony slopes to the floor of these meadows; but still no village was in sight. Mistrusting our escort, but without a guide, I hesitated for a moment whether to follow them up the valley towards the west. But one of them was so positive he knew well where the village lay, that I resolved to try him for a certain time. He proved to be in the right; but the light was already failing when we entered the Kurdish settlement of Nazik.

It is situated out of view of the lake, on the right bank of a pleasant stream, which feeds the marsh along which we had passed. The ridge, against which it lies, is the same that we had crossed, and the same that we had seen from afar. It had first attracted our attention as we descended into the great depression, having a bold conical peak, a little west of the village. The people received us with marked coolness; and no sooner had we commenced to erect our tents by the side of the stream than they offered objections, and bade us remove to some other place. They said that our tent would face that of a great bey on the opposite margin of the water. I answered that I should place ours in such a way as to respect decency; but that, if it were a question of either party moving, it would better become the bey than us, who were his guests. This speech had a good effect; but supplies were not forthcoming, and, as usual, I summoned the mukhtar (head of the village). After much delay they bring me a lean greybeard, with sunken cheeks, beak nose, long yellow teeth and a cavernous voice. He laughs grimly when I address him as mukhtar. It is evident that these people hate the Turks.

July 31.--In the early morning our entire escort appear before the tent, headed by the zabet, whom I admit. He complains that the villagers refuse, for love or money, to supply food for themselves and horses. At the same time the five or six privates approach, and make use of threatening language towards me. Realising how the matter stands, I endeavour to persuade the officer to get out of the place as quickly as possible with his men. He urges that we shall then be at the mercy of these Kurds; I retort that I prefer it so than to be at his. He answers with some reason that to desert us might cost him his post; but I reply that he may regard himself as already cashiered should he dare to disobey my deliberate orders. A compromise is at length arrived at, under which he undertakes to dismiss his men, provided I will allow him to remain. He also begs that he may send the man who attempted my life back to the headquarters at Bitlis. But this last proposal I refuse to entertain. After much palaver, they are all induced to take themselves off, with instructions to await us on the shore of the lake. The villagers, seeing them gone, and ashamed to abuse our confidence, at once adopt a much more friendly tone. The Bey of Nazik, a young man, brings his little brother with him, and converses with us in our tent. On the opposite bank, beyond the willows, lies the encampment of the older bey, who does not appear to belong to the village. His two large tents, of black goat-hair, are open on this side. The coarse canvas, with several supports and considerable span, descends within a few feet of the ground. At the bottom, a screen of reeds at once provides shade and a pleasant draught of air. Similar screens divide the interior into compartments; in the centre sits the bey, an oldish man, who never smiles, by the side of a cradled baby which rarely remits its cries. A young woman, who may be his wife, or one among them, is engaged in swinging to and fro a large vessel of earthenware, which they use for making cheese.

It was eleven o'clock before we again reached the corner of the lake. There we took the boiling-point. We found that the elevation was 6406 feet, or about the same as that of the depression which we had crossed on the previous day. The water tasted like very flat lake water. Proceeding along the southern shore for some distance, we kept the ridge, over which we had ridden last evening, close up on our right hand. It had grown considerably lower and was dying away. It consists of a stream of lava from the little peak which has already been mentioned. Further eastwards, the line of low heights is continued by what appears to be an independent, latitudinal volcanic ridge. The lake widens rapidly from the little bay at its westerly extremity, and describes, so far as we could judge from a hasty survey, a triangular figure of which the base is on the south, and the apex in an inlet of the northern coast. Its greatest length is from west to east. The opposite shore appeared to consist of a block of heights in connection with those west of Sipan, and of streams of lava, descending from Bilejan. The wide stretch of sand along the shore may perhaps be regarded as an indication of a somewhat higher normal level during recent times. From a boss of dark lava, forming a promontory, we obtained a far-reaching view. We could see but a single village on the lake; and that settlement clustered on the extreme point of a little cape, just east of the one upon which we stood. It was Jezirok, partly Kurd and partly Armenian, the only village, as we afterwards learnt, which is placed immediately upon these shores. About half-a-mile away, we overlooked an islet, white with the droppings of waterfowl. Indeed it is a nursery for many varieties of this description, and was alive with wings and sharp cries. Pelicans abound on Lake Nazik, swimming, singly, like swans, over the mirror of waters, or sweeping above our heads with rapid, shooting flight, in movements perfectly combined. There must be fish in plenty beneath that blue surface, which lends a touch of beauty to the dreary, yellow landscape, and derives enhancement from the distant snows of Sipan.

We now left the lake, and gained the further slope of the low ridge on the south, whence the view extends over the broad depression at the foot of Nimrud. Here we remained for some considerable time. While I was engaged in mapping, Oswald made one of his beautiful drawings of the wondrous landscape before our eyes. The northern buttresses of the great crater towered up from the opposite margin of the level ground at our feet. We could plainly see the volcanic dike leaving the rim of the caldron, and bursting the northern wall of the little terminal crater. Turning towards the east, the heights on that side of the lake displayed a number of conical forms. But the outline appeared unbroken, as it extended towards Sipan. Between it and the Nimrud outliers we obtained a distant glimpse of the waters of Lake Van.

Our course was directed towards that vista, over the bare surface of the plain, which widens considerably; it is completely covered over with brown lava. It might be made a granary; yet it is now but little cultivated; and rarely were we deflected by a patch of standing corn from a course almost as straight as a bee-line. Lake Nazik was never in sight, although its waters find an outlet into the great lake. [255] We saw only a single village, at some distance on our left hand. Low hills confine the plain upon the east, but a dip in the outline disclosed a deep ravine. The cleft, which was now dry, would give issue to the water collecting in the depression, which we now left behind.

Soon after crossing these heights, we entered the barren highlands on the north of Akhlat. The lava, which is thickly covered with pumice sand, shelves away towards Lake Van. A little river which we forded, coming from the direction of Lake Nazik, must be the same that cascades into the delta below the site of the old city, and is perhaps derived from the lake. Its water had exactly the same flat taste. On our right, in the direction of Nimrud, we observed a broken-down crater, which has sent its principal flows to Lake Van. A little further on we descended into the ravine of Akhlat, and crossed the stream within the hollow; and not long after we were again in our shady orchard, and in the society of the Kaimakam. The old imam was there, squatting among some beanstalks, taking foretastes of paradise. His mad son was not long in coming, nor his scold of a daughter-in-law; while in the morning the pretty little girls made their appearance, slipping gracefully on their errands through the bush. But our home was no longer there; we felt as emigrants feel when their voyage is already prepared. I handed over my rascal zaptieh to the Kaimakam, who consigned him to the prison. The rest of the crew, with their zabet, I dismissed. After resting a single day, we set out for Adeljivas, along the shore of Lake Van. The ride was shorter than we expected, for the position of Akhlat is wrongly placed upon the best existing maps. [256]