Volume Ii Part 26 (2/2)
The last hour of the ascent was very severe. The wind was strong and keen, and the drifting snow buffeted us unmercifully. The mercury fell to 3 below zero, and the cold was intense. Murphy complained of ”trembles” in his knees and severe pain in his legs, and when we reached the summit was really ill. The drift was not only blinding and stinging but suffocating. I was quite breathless, and felt a chill round my heart. I could not even see _Boy's_ neck, and he cowered from the blast; but just as all things were obliterated I found myself being helped to dismount in the shelter of a camel stable full of Lazes, but was so benumbed that I could not stand. Some _zaptiehs_ had the humanity to offer me the shelter of a hovel nearly buried in the snow, and made a fire and some coffee, and I waited there till the wind moderated. It came in such fierce gusts as actually to blow two of the baggage horses over on their sides. Murphy was really ill of fever for two days from the cold and exposure. The alt.i.tude of the pa.s.s is about 6627 feet.
The first part of the descent was made on foot, for the snow had drifted on the road to a height of fully twenty feet, leaving only a path of shelving ice on the brink of a precipitous slope. Earlier in the day twenty laden camels had gone over, and were heaped in the ravine below, not all dead. The road dips with some suddenness into a deep glen, dark with pine and beech forests; large rhododendrons and the _Azalea pontica_ forming a dense undergrowth. Long gray lichen hung from the branches, Christmas roses and premature primroses bloomed in sheltered places, the familiar polypody and the _Asplenium adiantum nigrum_ filled every crevice, soft green moss draped the rocks, there was a delicious smell of damp autumn leaves, and when we reached the Greek village of Hamzikeuy clouds were rolling heavily up the valley from the not far distant ocean.
The two days which followed were easy and pleasant, through a prosperous and peopled valley brightened by the rus.h.i.+ng waters of the Surmel, the ancient Pyxites. Orchards and tillage beautify the lower slopes of the mountains, the road is excellent, the homesteads are in good repair, the people are bright and cheery-looking, and Greek villages with prominent churches on elevated spurs add an element of Christian civilisation to the landscape. The exceeding beauty of natural forests, of soft green sward starred with the straw-coloured blossoms of the greater h.e.l.lebore, of abounding ferns and trailers, of ”the earth bringing forth gra.s.s, the herb yielding seed, and the tree yielding fruit after his kind,” of prosperous villages with cheerful many-windowed houses and red-tiled deep-eaved roofs, can only be fully appreciated by the traveller who has toiled over the burning wastes of Persia with their mud villages and mud ruins, and across the bleak mountains and monotonous plateaux of the Armenian highlands, with their ant-hill dwellings, and their poverty-stricken population for ever ravaged by the Kurd.
”Tilled with a pencil,” carefully weeded, and abundantly manured, the country looks like a garden. The industrious Greek population thrives under the rule of the Osmanlis. Travellers on foot and on horseback abound, and _khans_ and _cafes_ succeed each other rapidly. When the long descent alongside of the Surmel was accomplished, the scenery gradually became tamer, and the look of civilisation more emphasised.
The gra.s.s was if possible greener, the blossoming h.e.l.lebore more abundant, detached balconied houses with their barns and outhouses evidenced the security of the country, the heat-loving fig began to find a place in the orchards, the funereal cypress appeared in its fitting position among graves, and there was a briny odour in the air, but, unfortunately for the traveller, the admirable engineering of the modern waggon road deprives him of that magnificent view of the ocean from a height which has wrung from many a wanderer since the days of the Ten Thousand the joyful exclamation, ”_Thalatta! Thalatta!_”
The valley opened, there was a low gra.s.sy hill, beyond it, broad yellow sands on which the ”stormy Euxine” thundered in long creamy surges, and creeping up the sides of a wooded headland, among luxuriant vegetation, the well-built, brightly-coloured, red-roofed houses of the eastern suburb of Trebizond, the ancient Trapezus.[62]
It was the journey's end, yet such is the magic charm of Asia that I would willingly have turned back at that moment to the snowy plateaux of Armenia and the savage mountains of Kurdistan.
I. L. B.
FOOTNOTE:
[62] The itineraries will be found in Appendix B.
APPENDIX A
Among the prayers recited by the Hadjis are those with which the pilgrims circle the Kaaba at Mecca, a translation of which was given by Canon Tristram in a delightful paper on Mecca contributed to the _Sunday at Home_ volume for 1883. The following is a specimen:--
”O G.o.d, I extend my hands to Thee: great is my longing towards Thee.
Accept Thou my supplication, remove my hindrances, pity my humiliation, and mercifully grant me Thy pardon.
”O G.o.d, I beg of Thee that faith which shall not fall away, and that certainty which shall not perish, and the good aid of Thy prophet Mohammed--may G.o.d bless and preserve him! O G.o.d, shade me with Thy shadow in that day when there is no shade but Thy shadow, and cause me to drink from the cup of Thy prophet Mohammed--may G.o.d bless him and preserve him!--that pleasant draught after which is no thirst to all eternity.”
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