Between the days of arrival and departure of the tatars, or couriers, to Constantinople, and the struggles to keep the peace and explain the simplest transaction with our colleagues, we found time for various expeditions to the neighboring countries on all sides. The most remarkable of these was that to the deep, unfathomable lake of Tortoom, about three days’ journey off. Our main object in going there was to fish, and we encamped for that purpose on the upper streams of the Batoum River and other places. In the valley of the castle of Tortoom the trout abounded, and were of that unsophisticated nature that, fishing one hour in the dawn and one hour before sunset with two fly-rods, we caught every day enough to feed our camp, and to send a horse-load (no small quantity) in the evening to our friends at Erzeroom. This was one day’s march, and the horses, traveling all night, brought the fish, though in the hot weather, in great perfection to the city in the cool of the morning. We were not aware, till it was too late, of the deadly nature of the malaria in these rocky valleys, where the precipice shot up clear and straight to the height, sometimes, we used to judge, of above a thousand feet. On our way through one of these romantic dells, we all rode, bag and baggage, over a bridge, to be compared only to the bridge of Al Serat, over which the souls of the judged will have to pass from the Temple of Jerusalem, over the Valley of Jehoshaphat, till they reach the other world, which bridge is as narrow as the edge of the cimeter of Mohammed. The fright I was in is not to be described when I saw the first horseman, who was at the time filling his pipe, walk his horse unconcernedly over this bridge, which was composed of two pine-trees thrown over a torrent which roared and tumbled thirty feet below. However, being afraid to show I was afraid, I rode over too, and certainly thought myself a bold fellow when I got safe to the other side. To ride safely over such a bridge, a horse ought to be brought up to practice on a tight-rope. I would not attempt to walk over such a place nowadays in England.

We passed a village in one lovely valley, in a grove of peach-trees, where we found that every soul, or rather every body, was dead; only one man survived the fever which had killed the rest.

Of all the strange and gloomy scenes that I have witnessed, none have left a deeper impression on my mind than that of the black, unfathomable lake of Tortoom. Mountains of dark rock fall sheer down in awful precipices right into these deep, still waters on each side. No fish are to be found in this Dead Sea, though perhaps they may retreat there in the winter from the mountain rills. If the lake was a strange place, the boat which we discovered on the shore was in character with the scene. It was the only vessel on its waters, and its builder probably never studied naval architecture in the dock-yards of the maritime powers. It was formed out of the trunks of two trees; but as no description would so well convey a notion of its form, I refer the curious to the accompanying sketch. The standing figure in it represents a valorous kawass, who fired his pistol in the air for the sake of the echo, and, on the smoke clearing off, he found that the entire pistol had evaporated too; nothing visible remained in his hand; it had burst all to pieces. But, fortunately, neither he nor any of the party were hurt by the fragments, which fell into the waters of the dark and silent lake.

October 1, 1843. This day I was riding on the road toward Bayazeed and Persia. Hearing some shots, I turned toward the hills lying between the town of Erzeroom and the mountains, and there I saw two or three tents pitched, and a number of officers, servants, and people attending on Kiamili Pasha, who was shooting at a mark with a pistol.

He is the most wonderful shot I ever heard of: he always fired at a distance of about 250 paces, or yards. Any one who will take the trouble to step this distance in a field or park will see how far it is to shoot with a rifle, and how entirely out of all usual calculations in pistol practice. I went into the Pasha’s tent. He received me, as usual, with great kindness, and, after pipes and coffee, I begged him to go on with his shooting. The way he set about it was this: he sat on one of the low, square rush-bottomed stools which are always found in Turkish coffee-houses, but which must have been brought from Constantinople probably by the Pasha, as those kind of stools are not usually met with in Erzeroom. He did not rest his elbow on his knee, but pressed it steadily against his side, took a deliberate but not very slow aim, and sent the ball through a brown pottery vase filled with water, about fifteen inches high, which stood on the other side of a valley, on a level with the tent, and full 250 yards off. I think the Pasha broke two while I sat with him, and made a hole which let the water out of another. His pistols were a pair of very slightly rifled dueling-pistols, about nine inches in the barrel, made by Egg, Great George Street, London. I was so much astonished at the Pasha’s shooting, that I asked him to give me one of the pieces of the vase, which I took home with me, and talked to my friends about it. I felt perfectly well when we went to dinner, when suddenly it appeared to me that what I was eating was burning hot, and had a strange, odd taste. I believe I got up and staggered across the room, but here my senses failed me, and I remained insensible for twenty-seven days. An attack of brain fever had come upon me like a blow, as sudden and overwhelming as a flash of lightning.

On the 27th of October I awoke in the morning, but, as I suppose, went to sleep for a while; in the afternoon I fairly came to my senses, and saw my servant sitting on the scarlet-cloth divan under the window looking at me. I felt something strange, and still, and gloomy in the air, and was rather bewildered with the sensation. This was soon to be accounted for: the servant, seeing that I was alive, came forward toward the bed, while a low rumbling noise made itself heard. This noise became louder; flakes of plaster fell from the ceiling; the room trembled, and was filled with a fine dust, with which I was nearly choked. My man exclaimed, “The earth moves—are you not afraid?” As he spoke, the noise which we had heard increased, and an immense beam, made of the trunk of a whole tree, which was immediately above my bed, split with a report like a cannon. The earthquake shook the house terribly; it creaked and trembled like a ship in a heavy gale of wind; the noise increased to a roar, not like thunder, but howling and bellowing, with a low rumbling sound, while the air was as still as if Nature was paralyzed with dread; every now and then a tremendous crash gave notice of a falling house. The one opposite our house, belonging to a poor widow, was entirely destroyed; and, in the midst of a most fearful uproar, the two rooms, one on each side of my bed-room, fell in, while the air was darkened altogether, as in an eclipse, with clouds of dust. So great was the noise of the earthquake all around, that neither my attendant nor I distinguished the particular crash when the two rooms adjoining us fell in. Some of the minarets, and many of the houses of the city, were demolished; parts of the ancient castellated walls fell down. The top of one of the two beautiful minarets of the old medressÉ, the glory of Erzeroom, called usually Eki Chifteh, disappeared. Those who were out, and able to witness the devastation, and to hear the awful roaring noise, said they had never seen or heard any thing more tremendous than the scene before their eyes. It is difficult to express in words the strange, awful sensation produced by the seeming impossible contradiction of a dead stillness in the midst of the crash of falling buildings, the sullen, low bellowing, which perhaps sounded from beneath the ground, and the tremendous uproar that arose on all sides during the earthquake. I have not met with an account of this strange phenomenon in the descriptions of other earthquakes, and do not know whether it is a usual accompaniment to these terrible convulsions of nature.

The earthquake accomplished its mission: in the midst of terror and destruction, it restored one poor creature to life. I regained my senses and my faculties on the 27th, as suddenly as I had lost them on the 1st day of this month. God give me grace to make a good use of the life which was restored to me under such awful circumstances!

On that day the doctor, who had some difficulty in getting to my room through the ruins of the ante-room, took the ice off my head, and in a few days I recovered sufficient strength to move my limbs, which I could not do at first.

As soon as it appeared that there was any probability of my recovery, my kind friends agreed that the best chance of regaining my health lay in removing, as soon as I could bear the journey, to a better climate. During great part of the year, and naturally in the winter, the cold was so severe that any one standing still for even a very short time was frozen to death. Dead frozen bodies were frequently brought into the city; and it is common in the summer, on the melting of the snow, to find numerous corpses of men, and bodies of horses, who had perished in the preceding winter. So usual an event is this, that there is a custom, or law, in the mountains of Armenia, that every summer the villagers go out to the more dangerous passes, and bury the dead whom they are sure to find. They have a legal right to their clothes, arms, and the accouterments of the horses, on condition of forwarding all bales of merchandise, letters, and parcels to the places to which they are directed.

During the whole month of December the Pasha had caused four mules to be exercised every day with a takterawan, or litter, which he provided for my conveyance to Trebizond. Two mules, led by one man, carried the litter; the other two followed tamely, led by another man, close behind, to be ready to take the places of the others if they were tired or disabled. From morning to night, the men and the mules, and the takterawan, stumped along through the snow, till they dared to face the storm and the immense cold, and could climb up and down the icy rocks like goats. As soon as I was able, I was sent out in the litter to try how I could bear it, and to settle various contrivances for keeping out the cold, and enabling me to bear the motion of the mules.

One day Colonel Williams rode out on the Persian road to see whether it was passable for Dr. Wolf, who was then staying at Erzeroom, and who wished to continue his journey to Bokhara, when he met a number of horses, each laden with two frozen bodies of Persian travelers, one tied on each side of the pack-horse. An unfortunate Piedmontese doctor had been lost in a snow-storm a short time before, and his body was found afterward near a small monastery, three or four miles from Erzeroom, where he had wandered, bewildered with the falling snow; and a whole party, with one or two ox-carts, who left a village in the morning on their way to another a short distance off, never arrived there; they were found huddled together, oxen, horses, men, and women, in a snow-drift, dead, and frozen hard and stiff, some weeks afterward. The cold was so tremendous at this time that the mountains were impassable, and no one was able to move beyond a short distance from the town.