Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/131

 to bartender, street cleaner, bootblack, and tramp — always seeking novelty. After leaving New York, he had passed through the eleven months' siege of Port Arthur at the time of the Russo-Japanese War, had faced death many times, and had been reported dead, but had bobbed up serenely once more, and was now worthily engaged in legitimate business with a repu- table firm in Baku. I met him by chance, and he consented to take a couple of days off from business so as to serve me in the office of dragoman, being greatly taken at the idea of playing a new r6le — that of aiding in the cause of archaeological sci- ence. 'From tramp to professor's assistant,' was his jocular comment when we struck a bargain. His good nature and unfailing humor made him a capital attendant, and the varied lot of his fortune, or lack of fortune, rendered him most valua- ble to me in money matters, for he constantly curbed my ten- dency to be overlavish in distributing rubles and kopeks. His merry talk cheered the hours when we were awake on the train, and by daylight we had reached Derbent. I took care at once to have my official documents shown to the gendarme at the station, so as not to be disturbed or called to account when mousing about the city, where few Americans have been. Derbent is full of romance when one knows its history, and even amid the mist that hung over it I could catch glimpses of the glamor of the past. Its mighty walls are documents in stone from by-gone ages and have solemn stories to tell of the billows of war that have surged in blood below their towering bastions. With giant embrace they run in two parallel lines from the citadel that crowns the height above the town, down to the very edge of the sea, while in the opposite direction a single rampart thrusts its way back to the west for thirty or forty miles through the Caucasus, with sporadic traces, it is thought, as far as the Black Sea.^ This huge rampart was the famous wall of * Gog and Magog,' which Alexander built, according to legend, to shut

1 See above, p. 19, and compare kasus, p. 216, Leipzig, 1888, repro- the outline plan by Erckert, Der Kau- duced on p. 63.

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