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The country still presented the same features; one large valley succeeding another. These valleys are less cultivated than those in Persia; today, however, I saw one which was tolerably well planted, and in which the villagers had even planted trees before their huts. 24th August. Station Erivan.
Bryce himself says: “I am persuaded that there is not a person living within sight of Ararat, unless it be some exceptionally educated Russian official at Erivan, who believes that any human foot, since Father Noah’s, has trodden that sacred summit. So much stronger is faith than sight; or rather so much stronger is prejudice than evidence.”
The heart of the mountain-region, the tract extending from the district of Erivan on the east to the upper course of the Kizil-Irmak river and the vicinity of Sivas upon the west, was, as it still is, Armenia.
Nadir marched early in the succeeding year to meet a large Turkish force which had advanced to near Erivan; and we are told that he desired to encounter his enemies in battle on the same plain where he had ten years before acquired such renown; but their general, subdued by his own fears, fled and was massacred by his soldiers; who, thrown into confusion at this event, were easily routed by the Persians.
Everything is promised, nothing is done. The only hope of getting a move on is by bribery, and one may bribe the wrong people till one finds one's way about. 13 January. The car took us up the Kajour road, and behaved well; but the chauffeur drove us into a bridge on the way down, and had to be dismissed. Tried to go to Erivan, but the new chauffeur mistook the road, so we had to return to Tiflis.
Our narrow, monotonous horizon breaks away all about us; five minutes suffice to take us quite out of the commonplace and familiar regions of our experience: we are in the Court of the Great Khan, we are pitching tents under the shadows of the ruined temples of Tadmor, we are sitting on a fallen block of the Pyramids, or a fragment of the broken nose of the Sphynx, dickering with Arab Shieks, opposing Yankee shrewdness to Ishmaelitish greed and cunning: we are shooting crocodiles on the white Nile, unearthing the winged lions of Ezekiel's vision on the Tigris watching the night-dance of the Devil-worshipers on their mountains, negotiating with the shrewd penny-turning patriarch of Armenia for a sample from his holy-oil manufactory at Erivan, drinking coffee at Damascus, and sherbet at Constantinople, lunching in the vale of Chaumorng, taking part in a holy fête at Rome, and a merry Christmas at Berlin.
Tabriz, Ardabil, and all the principal cities of that quarter had surrendered; and the conqueror was preparing to besiege Erivan, the capital of Armenia, when he received from his brother, whom he had left in the government of Khorasan, an account of an alarming rebellion of the Afghans of that province.
Fugitives from the host have brought us the tidings that the army of Küprilizade has been scattered to the winds; four thousand horses and six hundred camels, laden with provisions, have been captured by the Persians; the general himself has fled to Erivan, and the provinces of Hamadan and Kermanshan are once more in the possession of the enemy.
Nadir hastened to occupy Armenia and Georgia, which were the principal of the disputed provinces. He threw a bridge over the rapid Araxes; and at once invested the cities of Tiflis, Gunjah, and Erivan, in the hope that the danger with which they were threatened would lead the Turkish general to hazard an action. Nor was he deceived.
Before the result of the mission sent by Nadir could be known, Tamasp had marched to besiege Erivan, had retreated from before that fortress, been defeated by a Turkish army, and had lost in one month all that the genius and valor of his general had gained during the preceding season.
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