Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/100

 38 BAKU, THE CITY OF OIL WELLS

up on a hillside in the distance, back of the city, sleep the dead — the dead of historic and commercial Baku. There in the spacious unwalled plot of ground that is dedicated to their silent slumber, rest Musulmans, Armenians, Georgians, Jews, Russians, English — all in their turn alike, and all made one in death. Far from the turmoil of the city, of whose maddening throng they once formed a part, they repose now in peace. The elevated site of this abode of those who have gone before commands the fairest view in Baku, reaching over the city's busy quarters, over the blue bay beyond. Each morn as the sun sweeps up from the Caspian it touches the cemetery with its beams first, gilding now some stone chiseled in memory of one long dead (most likely a Moslem in creed), or lighting up the mound over some unnamed grave, but ever symbolizing by its radiance the breaking of that day when the Eternal Sunrise shall dawn.

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