Armenia, Travels and Studies (Volume 1 of 2) The Russian Provinces

ARMENIA

                          TRAVELS AND STUDIES


                                   BY
                             H. F. B. LYNCH



                    Nature's vast frame, the web of human things.

                                                       Shelley, Alastor.

                    Who can foretell our future? Spare me the attempt.
                    We are like a harvest reaped by bad husbandmen
                    amidst encircling gloom and cloud.

                                                         John Katholikos
                     Armenian historian of the Xth century Ch. CLXXXVII.



                             IN TWO VOLUMES

          WITH 197 ILLUSTRATIONS, REPRODUCED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
                      AND SKETCHES BY THE AUTHOR,
                NUMEROUS MAPS AND PLANS, A BIBLIOGRAPHY

              And a Map of Armenia and Adjacent Countries

                                 VOL. I

                         THE RUSSIAN PROVINCES



                        LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
                       LONDON: 39 PATERNOSTER ROW
                          NEW YORK AND BOMBAY

                                  1901







PREFACE


This book contains the account of two separate journeys in Armenia,
the first extending from August 1893 to March 1894, and the second
from May to September 1898. Before embarking upon them, I was already
familiar with the contiguous countries, having spent a considerable
portion of the years 1889 and 1890 in Mesopotamia and Persia. The
routes shown in my map from Aleppo to Diarbekr and down the Tigris,
and from Batum across Georgia and the Caspian to Resht, were taken
during the course of these earlier wanderings, and they contribute
no part of the ensuing narrative.

What attracted me to Armenia? I had no interests public or private in
a country which has long been regarded even by Asiatic travellers as a
land of passage along prescribed routes. One inducement was curiosity:
what lay beyond those mountains, drawn in a wide half-circle along
the margin of the Mesopotamian plains? The sources of the great rivers
which carried me southwards, a lake with the dimensions of an inland
sea, the mountain of the Ark, the fabled seat of Paradise.

With each step forward in my knowledge of the countries west of India
came a corresponding increase of my original emotion. Sentimental
were reinforced by purely practical considerations; and I seemed to
see that the knot of politics tightening year by year around these
countries was likely to be resolved in Armenia. I became impatient
to set foot upon Armenian soil.

When my wish was realised, my first experiences of the country
and of the Armenians in the Russian provinces exceeded my
expectations--fringed with doubt as these were by disappointment with
much I had seen in the East. So I passed over the Russian frontier,
struck across to the lake of Van, and spent the winter in Erzerum.

When I came to setting down on the map my routes in Turkish Armenia,
the scantiness of existing knowledge was painfully plain. I soon
realised that it would be necessary to undertake a second journey
for the purpose of acquiring the necessary framework upon which to
hang the routes. Meanwhile the events occurred with which we are
all familiar--the Armenian massacres, and the comedy of the concert
of Europe.

It was with difficulty that I was at length enabled to return to the
country. These later travels were almost exclusively occupied with
the natural features, our tents spread upon the great mountain masses,
whence plain and lake and winding river were unfolded before us like
a map.

Primitive methods were rendered necessary for transferring these
features to paper. One is not allowed in Turkey the use of elaborate
or obvious instruments, and miles of ground had to be crossed in full
view of Turkish officials before reaching the field of our work. But
I was able to transport to Erzerum a standard mercurial barometer,
which was duly set up in that centre and read several times a day
during our absence. We carried two aneroids, a boiling-point apparatus,
a four-inch prismatic compass, used upon a tripod and carefully tested
at Kew; lastly, a rather troublesome but very satisfactory little
instrument called a telemeter, and made by Steward. The measurements
were checked by cross-readings with the compass, and we found that they
could be relied upon. Once we were upon the mountains our operations
were not impeded, and, indeed, were assisted by the authorities.

I was accompanied on this second journey by my friend, Mr. F. Oswald,
who had been helping me disentangle the voluminous works of the great
Abich upon the geology of the Caucasus and Russian Armenia. The varied
talents of Oswald were of the greatest service to the work in hand,
while his society was a constant source of pleasure and repose. He
is now engaged with the geological results of this journey, and with
a well-considered study of the geology of Armenia as a whole.