VIII WHERE THREE EMPIRES MEET 79
above another, and hang like swallows' nests over precipices and abysses. At the foot we pass an old quadrangular fort with, round towers at the corners, and then mount up among knolls and over yawning ravines. A small ridge north of Bayazid now hides Little Ararat, and also threatens to conceal the main peak. It extends farther and swallows up the mountain bit by bit—how vexatious that Ararat cannot be seen from Bayazid ! But I console myself by the thought that from any road I choose I shall behold this holy mountain, whose name is learned by children in all the Christian schools in the world, and on whose summit the pious believe that Noah's Ark rested when the Flood had accomplished its task of drowning all the rest of mankind.
Only the very top of the peak is now visible, and that, too, soon vanishes when we mount the winding curves, between mounds, up to this swallows' nest of a town. Beyond a purling brook stands the valley of the dead, the burial-ground ; we leave the silent gravestones below us and ascend still higher to the dwellings of the living. In a gap to the left the top of Ararat glitters for a moment and then disappears. The road turns in all directions up the slope, and at last we are up in this singularly picturesque little town, drive through the bazaar with its busy movement, tattered, faded costumes, Oriental types, open stalls, and excessive filthiness. A narrow street, an open, terraced road with a view down into the valley below, a lumpy rise, and then Shakir halts at the gate of a fine house, which is the Russian Consulate.
Here I was received with great hospitality by the Russian Consul, Mr. K. V. Ivanoff, who watches over the interests of Russia at this eastern outpost of the Turkish Empire. The Vice-Consul Akimovich, my friend of the strike time in Batum and Poti, had arrived six days previously via Erivan. I had therefore lost a week by going round through Trebizond, but I had acquired much valuable experience, and I by no means regretted that I had not stayed and waited at Poti. After hasty visits to the mutaserriff of the town, the governor of the sanjak or district of Bayazid, and to the discreet Persian consul, I accepted
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