The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1877-09-05

the narrow valley of Bitlis, it seemed both to
my father aud myself that we had never seen
anything moro paradisaic Great fountains,
yielding little river at once, gushed from
the hill.sides and ran foaming down the yal-
ley to swell the branches Of tho Tirris -
Thickets Of delicious verdure along the water
courses, and trees for fruit and shade upon
the slopes, gave harbor TO birds Of various
song and feather. Outside the picturesque
Oriental town, with its towering castle, its
mosques, and its Armenian churches and
monasteries, were remains Of baths, kiosques
and villas Of strangely diversified architecture,
representing many successive dynasty that
has ruled this region from the days Of the
Byzantine Empire downwards.
From Bitlis our course was still upward. -
We waded our horses through the upper
springs of many an ancient river" and we'll
remember the impression made on me by a
new form Of natural beauty-the sh'nifg beds
of many-colored pebbles, red, yellow and
black, beneath the swift and shallow streams.
By and by we descended into the broad plain
of Erzoroum, from which, not far from the
town, are visible, due east, the twin snowy
peaks of the traditional :" Mount ARAFAT
Now, if you look little closely into the
text, you will find that there is no mention of
Mount Ararat " in the Bible, any more than
speaks of the mountains of Armenia, y and
it is natural enough that the people herea-
bouts should pitch upon the highest peak in
their neighborhood as the proper place for
SO great an event, and point that out as the
place whore the ark rested. But it is not very
cargo should have been debarked on the sum
init Of an inaccessible and 10y cliff, and left
there to scramble down as best they might
It is more rational to suppose that to some
point in this great plateau Of Eden, or the
" highlands of Armenia which was the
scene of the first experiment of human his
tory, the relics of mankind were brought
back to recommence their career.
The great plain of Erzeroum is one Of the
natural battlefields of the world. Associated
with it are some of the great names that fig
ure in Roman history : Lucullus and Mark
AlJluuyf 0tltulludtco tuu AlStduSo auo IA
later days the terrible name of Tamerlane, or
Timur the Tartar In the Russo Turkish
war of forty years ago the sweet zelda Of
Eden were desoated in turn by Cossack
and by Tartar, and bear the marks Of their
ravages to this day.
The war correspondents have not failed to
remark on the peculiarties of village arclti-
lecture which strikes every traveller in Ar
mena The houses are half dug in a hill side,
and the roofs heavily banked oycr with earth
and sods, so that the horseman rides over
them and sometimes comes down into them
at unawares. But am not aware that any
one has suggested the likeness Of this mode
of building to that Of tho Ninevites whose
ruined palaces have been preserved to this
day by the tumbling In of the masses of the
superintendent earth. If Yankee may be
allowed to guess, / guess that the famous
changing gardens . of Babylon were built on
the roofs of the houses. The expodient which
has been retained by the peasants of Ararat
as a security against the cold was practiced at
the other end of the Euphrates as a protection
against the awful heat
There is higher yet to climb before we reach
the sea: On the high ridges that wall III the
" inhospitablc Euxine the snow les wasting
all through the Summer. We rode through
it about the first of July. Clouds hang long
about these heights, covering in the traveller
for days together with impenetrable fog. In
such fogs suspect the ten thousand Greeks
whose line of retreat we had been following
all the way from Mosul we're wrapped, and 50
lost several days journey which commcntat-
ors find it difficult to account for. We made
shorter work of it, In one day we reached
Baiboort with it's magnificent Genoese Castle
monument of the days when the trade of the
Indies came to Europe by this road. And on
the evening of the second day, clambering up
the richly wooded height to the north of It,
we saw the same fair vision that made glad
the eye Of Xenophon's ten thousand Greeks,
the town OF Trebizond beneath our feet, and
stretching northward beyond the fair horizon
the vast expanse Of the Black Sea-.