Chapter VI: Royal Progress

In the line of country stretching from Tarsus eastward to Urfa, there is a series of stations of the American Mission Board. Travelling as we did, in the direction of this line, we made these stations our stages, and hired horses and men afresh at each place.

At Tarsus we camped in the playground of the mission school run by Dr. Christie. On the evening of our arrival out of the Taurus Mountains we were eating off spotless cloths with knives and forks, and were singing "Onward, Christian soldiers" with a hundred Armenian and Greek students.

The plunge out of rough travelling into these oases of civilisation is very sudden, and the contrast gives a full meaning to the advantages and disadvantages of both forms of existence.

The missionaries are the embodiment of hospitality. They know also what the discomforts of our journey have been, for they have gone through much the same experience themselves in order to arrive at their present homes; and so we find hot baths awaiting us and fresh supplies of hairpins; buttons are sewn on, and clothes sent to the wash. We are started off on the road again clean and tidy, and with a linen bag full of home-made white bread, which will see us through many days. We also carry with us thoughts of the splendid work which is being done by them, and of the hardship and danger many of them have gone through in carrying out this work of education among these Eastern Christians. Gathered round the fire at night we would listen to tales of bloodshed and massacre, of domestic tragedies and individual heroism, of anxiety and hope all told with that simplicity and quietness which bears the stamp of a personal experience which has come face to face with the real facts of life in a barbaric land.

But, once we were on the road again, we were glad to be there, glad to hear only the sound of the Turkish tongue; glad to lie out once more under the stars and eat our meal round the camp-fire at night.

Occasionally, too, we would get sudden reminders of the institutions we had left. A stray Armenian would accost us on the road with "Who are you? Where are you going? What is your name?" in the English tongue with a perceptible nasal twang. We would have a momentary unpleasant sense of impertinent familiarity. Then one would pull oneself together and remember the doctrine of universal brotherly love which was being instilled into the minds of mission students, and would try hard not to mind when the individual would proceed to tell us that we were his sisters, that he loved us very much, and would we give him a subscription towards a harmonium for his church.

It was during this stage of our journey, also, that we were taken to be royalties and received at the larger towns with military honours. The idea seems to have emanated from Konia after our departure from there. We had left cards on the officials at the Konak. Now X's Christian name was Victoria, and her address printed on the card was Prince's Gate. To the Turkish mind this was conclusive evidence that she was a relation of the great queen, and instructions for our suitable reception were accordingly telegraphed on. At Adana we found ourselves indisputably "daughters of the King of Switzerland." It was of no use denying it: "naturally we wished to preserve an _incognito_."

We were summoned to pay a state visit to the Vali of Adana and were accompanied by his secretary, who talked French.

VALI. Welcome; you have come.

X. Gladly we have found ourselves.

VALI. By your features and bearing I can see you are of the high aristocracy.

INTERPRETER. The ladies say that they also can see that you are a most high and noble prince. (_Turns to us._ You said that, didn't you?)

VALI. And how do the noble ladies find Adana?

INTERPRETER. The ladies find Adana the most charming and delightful spot in Turkey.

X. Please thank his Excellency for sending the Zaptiehs to meet us; we were very pleased with them.

VALI. The ladies are most welcome; if they should wish for fifty Zaptiehs they would be at their service.

(_Mutual bows and salaams._)

VALI. And where do the ladies intend to travel after this?

X. We wish to go by Aintab and Diarbekr to Baghdad. Does his Excellency think the road is safe?

VALI. Wherever the ladies go their safety is assured; they are the guests of the nation. There is not a governor in the land who has not received orders to look after them in every way.

(_Further bows and expression of thanks._)

VALI (_continues_). The ladies, however, will find it most uncomfortable travelling at this time of year. I would urge them to give up the idea of this journey.

X. We are obliged to your Excellency for your advice, but we do not really mind the discomforts of travel.

VALI (_turns to his Muavin, the_ "Evet Effendi" _already mentioned_). This gentleman has just returned from Baghdad; he will tell you how very disagreeable the journey will be.

MUAVIN. Evet, Effendim; the road, of course, is safe as regards the tribes; but do not the ladies fear tigers and the many wild beasts which may be encountered?

VALI. I assure you it is not safe for you. You hear what this gentleman says. If the ladies will wait till the spring I will arrange for them to accompany my brother, the Prince of Kurdistan, in his expedition to the mountains.

Finding it impossible to dissuade us, the Vali then leads the way to the Council chamber, and makes X sit in the Presidential chair, where, he informs us, no one but the Vali has ever sat. He tells X she is now the Vali Pasha, this is her house, and he is at her commands.

X promptly seizes the opportunity, and asks for favour to be extended to a friend we had met in the course of our travels, who had been banished from Adana owing to having incurred the Vali's displeasure.

VALI. Because he was kind to you I will pardon him. He may come back if it will please the ladies.

X. We are much obliged to your Excellency.

VALI. Many people have spoken to me for him, but I would not listen; but to please the ladies I will now forgive him.

VALI. Will it please the ladies to dine with me to-morrow?

X. We thank your Excellency, it would give us much pleasure. But we must apologise for our clothes; we are travelling, and have no suitable dresses for dining with your Excellency.

VALI (_waves his hand_). The ladies must not mention it. I can see by their appearance how noble they are, and their clothes are therefore of no significance.

X. We will now say goodbye, and we thank your Excellency for all your kindness.

VALI. It is I that am indebted for your presence. Will you send my love to his Excellency your father? for he also is a Pasha, and we are brothers.

* * * * *

From Adana our next stage was to Aintab. Our luggage had now all to be conveyed on pack-mules, for we were going over tracks where wheels could not pass. This made our party seem larger, for we needed three mules for the baggage, and they were accompanied by three muleteers, who also looked after our horses and the mules ridden by our men. Our escort here consisted of four Zaptiehs and a Captain. This was the lowest number to which we had been able to reduce the fifteen men the Vali had pressed upon us. Nominally, they received no pay from us, but the "baksheesh" which we were expected to give them no doubt compensated for the arrears of pay from which the Turkish soldier invariably suffers.

* * * * *

We had parted with Constantin at Adana. He was not very suitable for really rough camping work, and we had asked the missionaries at Adana to recommend us a less civilised person, who would be more competent in tight places. Through them we engaged an Armenian, Arten by name. He could only speak Turkish, so we were now entirely thrown on our own resources as to Turkish conversation. X, however, had acquired quite enough of the language to be intelligible to Hassan, who interpreted our wants to the others.

We had hardly left Adana before incessant heavy rains came on, which turned the tracks into impassable mud swamps. We struggled on as far as Hamidieh, where we sought refuge in the house of an Austrian widow who ran a large cotton mill in the place. For three days the rain came down in torrents. I went to bed indoors with fever; X, however, still preferred to sleep out in the tent in pools of water, which the men vainly endeavoured to keep out by digging trenches all round. On the third day we sallied out again and pitched our camp in the middle of little green pasture fields in the bed of a lovely valley. Real milking cows strayed about in the little fields, and cocks and hens crowed and cackled familiarly close to us. This was a very different country from the one we had left. In spite of the fact that we had had to exchange wheels for pack-mules, it seemed far more civilised and cultivated. Trees and water everywhere gave one a feeling of life and growing things, unlike the stagnation of the waterless parts.

The Zaptiehs here, in greeting the town or village we were approaching, would always include in their praises its power of providing milk and eggs. Our former Zaptiehs had handed on to them that we had an insatiable desire for these luxuries, and they would use this as an inducement for us to come on to any place where they particularly desired to camp, a desire which generally arose from the vicinity of some large khan where they could spend a sociable evening.

"Oh, it is a lovely village; there are many eggs, there is much milk. The cows they are never dry, and the hens they never cease to lay. The chickens, too, they are not all legs, they are fat and juicy."

But we were getting out of the Cilician Plain and the Taurus was with us again. The branch which runs southwards from the main chain to the coast at Alexandretta, the beautiful Amanus range, still cut us off from the fertile plains of Mesopotamia.

For three days we rode on the outskirts, now climbing gentle, wooded slopes, now winding round a stony valley path; every evening we found ourselves at a higher altitude. We were getting into the Kurdish country. Their handsome women sat on the wide doorstep, which often formed the roof of a house beneath, grinding corn between two flat stones, or baking flat cakes of bread. They wore huge white headdresses, spotlessly clean, covered with silver ornaments, and short crimson zouave jackets. They were disposed to be very friendly, and used to come into our tent with offerings of oranges and eggs. At one small village we came in for a Kurdish wedding. We happened to arrive just as the bride was being torn, struggling and weeping, from her father's house by the bridegroom and his friends. At first we imagined ourselves witnesses of some domestic tragedy, but we were informed that the display of grief and resistance was part of the ceremony. The bride was plastered over with ornaments and her head was bedecked with a great crown of feathers. She was put, still sobbing, on a white horse, and led away to the bridegroom's village, to the sound of bagpipes and flutes and the shouts and laughter of a hundred brightly dressed natives.

Then we had a precipitous ride up to Avjila, a wild, Kurdish village, 3,000 feet above sea-level. Hidden away amongst the rocks, a few score of shepherds tended their mountain flocks. From Avjila the road wound round grassy hills and through richly wooded slopes, where the crimson berries of the carob-tree hung over our path and the leaves of the golden plane dazzled our eyes in the sunlight. The woodman would be busy too, and we would hear the sound of his axe in the pine-trees, or brush past a mule loaded with long, scratching bundles of firewood.

The Amanus range slopes very abruptly to the plain on the opposite side. It was not till the tenth day after leaving Adana, owing to our delay at Hamidieh, that we reached the gap in the trees at the summit of the pass which gives you one short glimpse of Aintab on the plain below. The muleteers stopped here to throw stones on a cairn beside the track and greeted the town with expressions of endearment and praise.

"Give us a coin for luck, Pashas," they said, "and that no evil may befall us in the place."

* * * * *

We rode straight into the Mission compound at Aintab, and found ourselves at once in a very academic atmosphere. The mission has been established here over sixty years and has a brave show of buildings: a college with five professors, a hospital, an orphanage, a girls' and a boys' boarding school, and a church. The women missionaries are mostly graduates of some American University, and one feels rather behind the times in conversation. Their work fills one with respect: there is no proselytising about it; their idea is to civilise by education.

From Aintab it is two short days' journey to the Euphrates. We were now in a country of rich red soils covered with olive groves and vineyards. Near the villages small sized black and yellow cattle, brought in from the pastures, munched maize straw in the rough enclosures of reed or straw round the houses. The road was lined with signs of primitive cultivation and luxurious crops, evident even in these winter months. But the peasants seemed miserably poor. They were partners mostly of city men, who provided the seed and the stock and took two-thirds of the produce in payment.

The Euphrates is visible a long way ahead as it winds southwards. At first you see it as a streak of light across the plain; then slowly you differentiate the banks, the alluvial shores, the flow of the waters. Then Birejik appears on the opposite side. Its houses, built on a limestone cliff four hundred feet high, rise up above the river tier upon tier; then the black marks on the face of the rock below the houses take on the shape of rock tombs. We descend a long, gentle slope towards the ferry, and find a few buildings on this side also. We wait while great herds of oxen and sheep going to the market at Killis are ferried across in the great, clumsy, flat-bottomed, flat-sided boat, whose one end rises up in a high, curved keel. Then our turn comes, and one by one our horses plunge into thick mud and up the slippery end of the boat, which lets down to form a gangway. Surely they are not going to take us all at once? Our horses get jammed up tighter and tighter at the far end as each animal enters the boat; they begin kicking and biting at one another. We draw our feet out of the stirrups and hunch them up on our horses' necks to be out of harm's way. There is no room now for the horses to kick--they are wedged too tight--but they struggle hard. We are shoved off the mud with long paddles, the cranky old boat lurches and wobbles, and we seem horribly near the water. The stream catches us and we are wafted down to a lower point on the opposite shore. Hassan, his great legs stretched up high and dry on his mule's neck, fumbles in his pouch and brings out the little bit of paper on which he writes down our expenses. He slowly puts on his spectacles and proceeds to write, holding the paper on the top of his thumb, and apparently oblivious of the struggles of his steed to kick the horse who is biting his flank behind. Then the gangway is let down and a terrific pandemonium ensues as each animal strives to get its saddle disentangled from the pack saddle of its neighbour and jump ashore. The hindmost land on the first, who have stuck hopelessly in the mud, the muleteers hit and shout, and we climb slowly on to firmer ground and wind up the steep path to the street at the top.

The next day we ride slowly out of red soils and cultivation. The road is dangerous here, we are told; two extra Zaptiehs and a Yuzbashi are sent with us. We are in a desert plain again. A fearful storm of wind gets up and howls weirdly round us; the sun is getting low, and we have somehow missed the village where we should camp. The small cluster of huts that we pass or see in the distance have no accommodation for the horses, and the muleteers will not let them stand out on such a wild night. The Yuzbashi, who is a mysterious Kizilbash with a long black beard, gets anxious and makes us push on hard. At last we reach another cluster of huts, where the shepherds are calling in the flocks. It is nearly dark and we can go no further that night. The muleteers are sulky about the shelter for their horses, so we take a house for the purpose and the family cram in somewhere else. The tents are pitched with difficulty in the teeth of the wind. All night long the Yuzbashi, apart from the other men, walks up and down and round and round our tent, muttering in his black beard.

* * * * *

The next day we ride over a bleak, stony country, exposed to fierce lashes of wind and rain. Smooth faces of rock lie across the scarcely perceptible path, less slippery for our flat-shod horses than the mud in which they are embedded. We can see nothing ahead but low, rounded hillocks covered with broken stone. Suddenly yellow dogs spring from under our very feet and tall figures emerge out of the bowels of the earth. We have stumbled into the middle of a Kurdish village. The huts are hollowed out of the earth and roofed over with the stones which cover the whole ground.

The chief of the village welcomes us at the door of his hut, and we descend the dark passage, blinded by the smoke of the dried camel-dung fire. We sit on strips of felt, thankful to be out of the wind and the rain, and stretch our frozen hands and feet in the direction of the thickest fumes.

The tears run down our cheeks from the smarting of our eyes, but we hardly notice it, for it is heaven to be out of the bluster outside. Slowly our eyes get more accustomed to the darkness and the fumes, and we find the hut is full of arms and legs and motionless bodies, and gleaming eyes fixed on our eyes. But they are friendly and curious, and we feel at home.

Then we crawl out to where Arten has prepared hot Maggi soup in the tent. It has been impossible to pitch ours, but they have tied the men's little tent on to the big stones forming the wall of our house, and the roof of another; we can see smoke mysteriously crawling out of the crevices of the ground at our feet. A sudden furious gust shakes the whole tent, and a Zaptieh's rifle, leant against the side, tumbles across and upsets the steaming soup. We pick our belongings ruefully out of the little trickling streams of thick liquid, and make a meagre meal by soaking bits of native bread in what remains. Then we get to bed as best we can, and all night long the wind howls and the tent flaps, and dogs sniff stealthily on the other side of the canvas.

* * * * *

A hard, broad, high-road runs ostentatiously some miles out of Urfa on the side which we were approaching. From the town it looks as if it were going on like that for ever. We stumbled suddenly out of our stony track on to it--where it ends abruptly in the middle of nowhere. The native does not walk on it much; he prefers the soft places at the margin, where the caravans, also shunning it, still make wobbly tracks. At one place, where it passes through a deep gully, the bank has been made up to make a more level run; but even here, as we rode over it, we noticed an old man and a boy driving a couple of mules, slowly crawling up the narrow path down below, which marked the line of the original road.

We could see Urfa some little way ahead of us, and wondered whether the missionaries would have heard of our arrival through their friends at Aintab. For the post travelled quicker than we did; it had passed us days ago, borne at a gallop by two mounted men.

"If ever we wanted cleaning up," I said, "it is at this moment; what with the rain and the mud and Maggi soup and camel-dung fumes, we are almost unfit to be seen even by a missionary."

The words were hardly out of my mouth when a party of some twenty mounted soldiers appeared in the distance. As they got nearer they fired off a volley into the air and ranged up in a line down the road. The Captain rode up and saluted us. There was no mistaking it. We were Royalties once more.

The Captain explained that the Governor was sending his carriage for their Royal Highnesses to make their entry into the town, and that he was expecting to receive them at the Konak. The carriage appeared up the road, a smart landau with red cushions, drawn by two splendid Arab horses, and followed by outriders in uniform.

In we got. It is very difficult under such circumstances to feel the least royal. We were only conscious of our dishevelled looks and dirty clothes. We made Hassan get in with us, for he always had the air of a prince. The driver cracked his whip and we went off at a great pace, headed by the Captain and Zaptiehs, including our own escort, and followed by the outriders. Borne along in the cavalcade came Arten on his mule, looking worse than any of us, in a seedy old black overcoat and a red scarf round his neck. The inhabitants of Urfa lined the streets and waved and cheered lustily. Flags and decorations were hung out. We bow hard--it is getting easier to forget our dirty clothes. I begin to wonder if indeed we are not Royalties. Why not? Hassan looks more princelike than ever, sitting opposite to us, very erect and very gravely gracious, acknowledging salutes.

At the main entrance to the town a smiling Armenian on a mule obstructs the way, and frantically waves a letter. The cavalcade stops, and riding up to the carriage he shoves a well-thumbed envelope into our hands. It is from the lady missionary, they tell us.

"The Government," she writes, "are making great preparations for your entertainment, but I hope that you will not despise such hospitality as my house affords, and that you will spend your time in Urfa with me."

What are the Government going to do with us? Once more I became conscious of our outward appearance. We sent a verbal message to say we would call later, and then we are dashed on again; the smiling Armenian whacking his mule and trying to keep pace with the formal, solemn officers.

Finally we draw up in front of the Government buildings. A red carpet is unrolled before us, over which we walk gingerly in our muddy boots between rows of salaaming Turks. Hassan stalks after us, grave and dignified, returning salaams.

We are received by an official, corresponding to the Mayor of the town, and his secretary. X tried to deliver the sentences she had been concocting as we were driven through the streets, but the general bewilderment of the situation and uncertainty as to what we were expected to do was making intercourse more difficult than usual. We were almost at our wits' end when the Head of the Education Department appeared on the scene. He talked French fluently, and explained that rooms had been prepared for us in the building and that the Pasha Effendi expected us to be his guests. After giving us tea, and thereby showing familiarity with the customs of foreign Royal personages, they conducted us to the Vali. He was of a very different type from those we had previously seen. A young, pleasant-mannered, intelligent Turk, he received us in a reserved, Western way, with no flowery greetings.

Hassan, in whose hands we felt safe as regards points of Turkish etiquette, had whispered to us that we had better camp outside as usual, for the Pasha's harem was absent at the moment and we could not therefore visit the ladies. For this reason we declined as best we could his offers of hospitality. The Head of the Education Department, instructed by his chief, said the Pasha Effendi was "_desole_" at our decision. Would we not reconsider it? We were causing his Excellency intense disappointment. His Excellency indeed looked crestfallen, and we would also have enjoyed being royally entertained, but we knew Hassan's judgment was never at fault, and thought it best to be on the safe side. We were also conscious of the fact that in all probability this was but a polite form of espionage, for Urfa is the centre of the district where the worst Armenian massacres took place; European visitors, therefore, especially those who say they are "travelling solely for their health" in all the discomforts of winter, are suspected of being mere gleaners of damaging facts.

So we only accepted his Excellency's invitation to dine and, taking leave of him for the moment, were escorted to the Mission-house by the officers and Zaptiehs who had formed our escort, led by the smiling Armenian on the mule.

Thus ended our triumphal entry into Urfa, which some call the ancient city of Abraham--"Ur of the Chaldees."