In the citadel—a place which might, with great ease, be rendered very strong, but which now is deserted and disused, having, I believe, been knocked to pieces in the Russian war—there are still two or three curious ancient tombs and some other incomprehensible old buildings. The building containing the prison, which was in constant use in the good old times, and the tower, from whence the flag of Turkey is displayed, possessed an old clock, which had been out of order for many years before the Russians carried it away, but which was the wonder and admiration of all Koords, Armenians, and strangers from the mountains, to whom time was “no object,” and who considered this old clock, with its dial and hands, as some sort of talisman beyond the comprehension of ordinary folks. Erzeroom was indeed lifted up in the estimation of those unsophisticated herdsmen and robbers, as the only place they ever heard of where any thing in the nature of a clock was to be seen. It might happen that some few of those who not only were possessed of such an outlandish article as a watch, but who were in some measure initiated into the uses of that strange production, would expatiate learnedly in the coffee-houses on the wondrous properties of the great talisman in the tower of the citadel, which, in all probability, from its great size and exalted position, was considered as the father of all the little watches of the sheikhs and chiefs among the tribes. As for the clock not going, that signified but little. Talleyrand said that speech was accorded to man for the purpose of enabling him to conceal his sentiments. The big clock had doubtless his reasons for holding his tongue, and telling no lies; I believe his reputation was increased by his silence, as is the case among many other distinguished characters besides the clock of Erzeroom. Now it came to pass, once upon a time, that the great Pasha or viceroy of the wide realms of this great pashalik chanced to be a philosopher; he knew that clocks, though they might have been made to sell, besides this very primary quality, also ought to go, but no artificer in the land of Armenia was competent to accomplish this desirable end. Whenever a Frank traveler—not that there ever were any travelers by profession in those days—but whenever a Frank doctor or hakim made his appearance in those regions, he was always received with distinguished civility by the Pasha, who, after the preliminaries of coffee, Kef enis ayi—“may your powers of enjoyment be in good order!”—always ended with an expression of his desire that the Frank would immediately set about the repairs of the clock.

“Sir, your excellency,” said the poor man, “I am a doctor; I am not a watchmaker or a mechanic. I don’t understand clocks; it is not in my power to set the clock right; it is not in my line of business. I am very sorry, but, O Effendim, I fear I am unable to meet your wishes in this point.”

“Dog of a Frank,” quoth the Pasha, “great-grandfather’s uncle to all dogs, more particularly those of Frangistaun, is it not thy base profession to meddle with the bowels of mankind? canst thou not expel ginns, and evil spirits, and other things, which have taken up their abode in the innermost recesses of the bodies of true believers, which thine eye can not penetrate, while, nevertheless, thou turnest their livers upside down, and their souls inside out; and all this by the accursed aid of thy wretched Frankish incantations; shooting thine arrows at them, or rather sending down their throats certain wicked and diabolical contrivances, which are known by the barbarians of thy benighted country by the name of pills? Dost thou pretend to see all that is going on in the stomach of a follower of the Prophet, and wilt thou tell me with the same breath that thou canst not administer to the disorganized constitution of a clock? Hath not a clock a pulse, when he is alive and in good health? Go thou, feel his pulse, and see whether it is fast or slow; whatever thou mayest want, thou shalt have; my hakim bashi shall assist you, only cure the clock. All Franks make clocks: I have it from authority: do not pretend that thou canst not set the clock going again, for surely thou canst restore it to life, and make it strike, and do all that it ought to do. Behold, thou art a Frank! Guards! take the Frank up into the tower, and make him mend the clock; and if the unbelieving dog will not mend the clock, then put him into the dungeon down below till he confesses that he is ready to do as he is commanded by the Pasha of the true believers.”

In this way every audience concluded. The unlucky Frank, having been exalted to the top of the tower, and exhorted to repair the rickety old clock, which had lost half its works, was debased into the dungeon, there to remain till further notice. Having often heard this story of the good old times, I one day proceeded to the citadel to see the tower where the clock had been, and to examine the dungeon, where I should have been sent if I had arrived at Erzeroom fifty or sixty years ago. This dungeon really was a dungeon: any thing so terrible as an abode for a human being I never saw before. The pozzi at Venice were rather pleasant and agreeable places of retirement, compared with the abode of many a poor Frank, in whose education the art and craft of clockology had been unfortunately omitted.

At the foot of that which had been the clock-tower was a range of small low rooms, of which two were particularly belonging to the prison: the outer room of the two was larger than the other; this was appropriated to the guards, who kept watch and ward, and who fed, or did not feed, the wretched prisoners under their care. The inner room was small and low, and had one window, through which the light and air had to struggle with the opposition of heavy crossed and re-crossed iron bars. The window looked into the castle yard, but the room was so dark that I could hardly see my way.

“A horrible place for the poor prisoners,” said I to my guides; “little chance of their escape from these thick walls, and heavy bars, and low, strong roof; they must have been safe enough here.”

“Oh Effendim,” said the kawasses, “this is not the prison. Here is the prison at your feet, down below.”

“Where?” said I.

“Look down,” they replied, “on the middle of the floor; there is the entrance; you can not see the dungeon itself, for it is, perhaps, a little dark.”

In the centre of the floor of this dismal cell was a heavy wrought-iron grating, square, made of great bars, about six inches apart, seemingly of enormous weight, lying on the ground, and fastened down with two or three huge rusty padlocks on one side, and some lumbering old hinges on the other. This iron grate was opened and raised up for my especial edification, and there appeared under it the mouth of a narrow well cut in the rock, perhaps two feet and a half in diameter, which sank down into the darkness far below. “Now,” said my informants, “if you stand on this side, and look steadily till your eye is accustomed to the gloom, you will be able to distinguish something white a good way down; that is a square stone, like a table, in the middle of the vault, upon which the jailers let down the provisions for the prisoners, as they can see on that stone when the things arrive at the bottom.” This was the old dungeon, the common prison not many years ago; but, I believe, since the reign of Hadji Kiamili Pasha, few or none had been consigned to this horrible abode. The shape of it below, I understood, was that of the inside of a bottle; it was between twenty and thirty feet deep; vermin, dirt and filth, and foul air, formed its only furniture; and into this awful hole many and many an innocent man had been let down: some to be brought up again to pay a ransom of all that they possessed, some to linger there for years, and some to die and rot unnoticed if no food was provided for them by government, when their bones, if not their flesh, gave token to the next inhabitants of what they were to expect, unless their interest or their wealth was greater than that of the poor wretch whose remains lay there before them.

An ingenious and horrible species of torture was sometimes added to the discomforts of this dread abode: a large piece of raw flesh was thrown down into the dungeon; the vermin, and the effluvia which it produced, added to other miseries, made the existence of the wretched prisoner almost intolerable.

The modern prison is bad enough: it consists of a number of cells opening on a small paved court-yard. The prisoners, being just shoved through the door, have to shift for themselves inside, where a kind of Pandemonium exists; the stronger Koords bullying and tyrannizing over the weaker felons, who have neither fire nor candle during the intense cold of a great part of the year: so I was told; but I was not there in the winter, and hope these unhappy wretches may be allowed a little tezek occasionally to keep their dirty bodies and souls together.