Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/145

 guarded by two pieces and five hundred soldiers belonging to the two na- tions, Aiurmulu and Koidursha. The Middle Part (B) is inhabited by Persians ; its lower side hath been much devastated, in fact by their own King, Emir Hemze, Chodabende's son, when he received them back from the Turk Mustapha, to whom they had voluntarily submitted themselves.* The Lower Part (E) is two thousand simple paces long; it lieth without any houses ; within it are merely some gardens and fields ; it was inhabited by

It was into this lowest section of the town, as just described by Olearius, that we descended from the parapet ; but instead of being desolate, or occupied by Greeks, it was a flourishing quarter of the Russian town, as the photograph shows.

Here was the place where Peter the Great made his arsenal,^ and here are now located the soldiers' barracks and the parade ground. Not far away, near a sort of market square, is the place where this great czar lodged in 1722 before taking quar- ters in the citadel. It is simply a vaulted hovel of mud or cement, entered by a small door, and now surrounded by an open portico that has, across the front, columns connected by a green-painted railing, and with two wooden fences in the rear. A painted sign over the entrance, now nearly illegible, records the fact that Peter stayed there, and two antique cannons, which have long outlived the time when they were of use, still guard either side.*

The ordinary shops in this quarter do a modern trade and still show evidence of the old-time stock of fruits and vegeta- bles, for which the place was long renowned, as we know from

1 Allusion to this event is made by the two dates (1722, 1848) records the Olearius in the verses he composed to year when the enclosure was built place under his sketch of the town. around the cabin. The cannons, he

2 Olearius, p. 377 ( = Eng. tr. by adds, including a third one in the Davies, p. 403). rear, facing the sea, were brought by

8 Han way (Cooke), 1. 371. Peter, and bear the date when they

^ I have since found that Dumas, were cast at Veronezha on the Don,

op. cit. p. 277, gives the inscription as 1715. For a picture of the structure in

Pervae at dak-novenie Valikavo Petra, 1860-1861 see Dorn, Atlas, pi. 6 b,

' the first resting-place of Peter the and compare the same author in Me-

Great,' and notes that the second of langes asiatiques, 4. 496.

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