Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/63

Rh six guards, two large Coordish dogs, and a sheep, seemed to find a comfortable shelter under its roof. The walls were hung with matchlocks, swords, pistols, and other weapons of defence, and the novelty of the scene as well as the good humour and cheerful songs of the weather-beaten soldiers soon made us forget the fatigue of our morning ride.

We left the Derbend at 1, and in two hours came in sight of the lofty Yulduz Dagh, or Mountain of the Star, which rises like an immense pyramid from the surrounding plain. The heavy clouds which were being fast drifted by the wind occasionally hid its snowy summit from our view, and then ever and anon sparkled gloriously in the rays of the sun, which shone forth from an expansive field of blue. Yulduz Dagh is within a few miles of the large Mohammedan village of Ghirkhen, which we reached at 5

Oct. 10th.—Our road from Ghirkhen, from whence we started at half-past 6, lay over a high table land, which stretches almost to the entering of Siwâs. The only object of interest in a long nine hours' ride was a copious spring, six inches in diameter, which literally gushed out of the soil into an adjoining stream. The country around was only partly cultivated, and though we saw some villages in the distance, a solitary Derbend was the only human habitation in the direct road.

The entry to Siwâs we found dirty in the extreme, arising chiefly from the narrowness of the streets and the numerous streams which flow through the environs. A good wall and two citadels built, as an existing inscription informs us, by Aboo'l Fettah, 621, and rebuilt by order of Sultan Mohammed, the son of Moorad Khan, in the year 861 of the same era, once surrounded the town, but like the town itself are at present in a most dilapidated condition. The pasha of the province, who resides here, allotted us a lodging in the house of a respectable Armenian, who received us kindly, gave us a good supper, and gladly chatted with us about the affairs of his church and people till near midnight.

Cabira, the treasure city of Mithridates, and the ancient name of Siwâs, was first changed by Pompey into Diopolis, and afterwards into Sebastia, from whence the modern appellation is derived. At the time of Justinian it became the capital of