For Our Boys & Girls

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 458, 29 March 1890, Page 3

For Our Boys & Girls

EDITED BY MRS-FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. [COPYRIGHT.] [All Rights Reserved.] Khurd-Ghouls. A STORY OF STIRRING ADVENTURE IN ARMENIA. By Charles Williams, War Correspondent of the ‘ London News.

During the Armenian Campaign, as in every other campaign, there were intervals of comparative military inaction, during which I got into the habit of riding about the country -right and left, or in rear, or sometimes in front of the positions of the Ottoman army, to which I had the honour to be attached. So long as I had a Christian servant —a cur of a Protestant Armenian, as cowardly as he was lazy, which is saying a good deal—these excursions were generally made alone, in the wildest Kurd country, where I was never in any way maltreated or even insulted, save once when a fellow called me a Kafir and got thrashed for his pains. In the course of a month or so, as the limited vocabulary of the Turkish tongue, which is all that I had.or is indeed necessary in chose regions, came more patly to my lips, I had gained somuch confidence amongthe people, to whom I always paid promptly and amply for the fowls, or eggs, or milk, or bread I needed, that I got rather more careless than I had been at first, and did not always handle my revolver nervously or furtively when I met or crossed a group of rudelyarmed peasants at the corner of a crossroad, or at a curve in the path. Indeed, save where the strangers looked like Circassians I used to give myself very little trouble about them. It is true they were often more anxious about me, and many atimeand oft news was carried to head-quarters of a suspicious-looking stranger who might be a Russian spy and who had been prowling about in all sorts of places. There is reason to believe that, for awhile, I was a source of some anxiety bo Field - Marshal Mukhtar Pasha, who on more than one occassion offered me an escort in my rambles, and even went so far as to hint that he would be easier in his mind if I would be content to sib quietly in my tent door, as Orientals have done in the heat of the day from the time of Abraham even until now. But it was not to be, and in my restlessness I stumbled on a good many things which it was just as well the Commander-in-chief should know. Thus I got in the habit of being a sort of unofficial extra aide-de-camp, and of foraging for information for the Marshal as well as for the journals which I represented. Remonstrance having failed to keep me in camp, toleration of my incomprehensible energy followed as a matter of course, and the man with the grey helmet, by which designation I became known at sight, was in time recognised far and near as a member of head-quarters staff and a person who had the further honour of being eccentric enough to be, like all other people with a screw loose, under the immediate protection, not of Mushir, but of Heaven. A reputation of this sort is of immense value in the East, as the father of Sir Henry Drummond VYolff found out when he safely passed through the most ferocious peoples of Central Asia by virtue | of wearing his college cap, gown, and hood as his regular costume. It was in one of these independent excursions, one morning, after a night spent in a Kurd village, that, riding towards our outposts of the night before, I found them abandoned—not a living soul was to be seen for miles. There were a good many dead, unpleasant corpses between our position and that of the Russians, who had also vanished, so that the only living things to be seen in this section of the Delibaba pass were some carrion birds, a wounded horae, and myself, and my sturdy country cob. While I was asleep—like the man in the parable—the enemy had stolen himself away, and our t fellows were following him up. There could be no doubt that was the right reading of the riddle. There was nothing to do but follow, and in the course of the day I caught up, having the luck to arrive in time to see a pretty bit of mountain-gun manoeuvring in the depths of the pa=s. I have seen many thousands of people killed, vet I have not seen anyone die. If I have it was in this pass. When night fell the Russians continued their strategic movements to the rear, and covered the retreat of their guns with a curtain of cavalry from time to time till light was gone. An hour later I was standing behind one of our mountain guns and languidly watching the effect of ourfire, when I saw ashob burst between the ears of a horse, and, by the light of the shell itself, I perceived thehorsefalling and the arms of his rider thrown wildly np. When we won over to that rolling bib of roadway, I found the horse and his rider lying together stone dead, the latter with the wall of his chest blpwn open, and if I saw him die it was by the shell that killed him at a distance of half a mile, or by the road half as much again. A couple of days after I returned through the pass on my way toheadquarters. It was as though a great besom had swept it clean. Here and there, indeed, lay an unburied body, and once—as I turned to take a good look at Mount Ararat in the mid-day clearness when he had thrown off Tus cloudy robes—a foul bird, closely pursued by a larger one, dropped a piece oi man’s hairy cheek right on to the neck of my nag. But there was not a morsel of tho broken metal visible that had littered roadside and roadway for miles—cartridge cases, full of empty bibs of paper in which they had been wrapped, morsels of shell, splinters of wood, now and again aMartiniPeabody . rifle, or a Winchester .carbine, generally broken or injured, but sometimes whole. Where a corpse lay it was sure to be stripped, if nob always of its clothes, then always of the buttons and the belts and the boots and the knapsack* if one there had been. Friend and foe;-the soldier who had died for Sultan as the soldier who had died for Tzar, had been treated with most grim impartiality. There were here and there marks on the soil as if a huge birch broom or small-toothed rake had been used to clear the ground. On my way up I: had stowed away an uninjured Winchester carbine, which I designed to appropriate, behind a rock whereof I had taken the bearings, bub that was gone. The clean- up was complete. Hundreds of hands must have been busy for the whole time of my : absence, yet never a soul was there to be seen. The bare hills with their brown and-treeless slopes -lay • around in hideous monotony, and the scant and short

herbage showed only in patches among the friable soil. The ruins of a village here and , there showed that the district had been once inhabited, and the walls of what had been a church with a central dome springing from the arms of a Greek cross, signified that the people had been Armenian Christians, Bub there was nothing to break the desolation, and the almost total 1 absence of water showed tho mischief that i had been done by the reckless consumption of the forests which once covered the whole region as a part of the range half way from Erzeroum to Kars is still covered by pine and other trees. At last there appeared a little stream trickling down the face of a rock where the pass narrowed, and a * whindyke ’ rose close to one side of it, while on tho other there was a wall of a ruddy rock that was seamed with black lines, very suggestive of copper deposits. Here, too, there was a band of living green, at which my patient stallion cast longing glances. Here, then, I made up my mind bo dine on dritff! tongue, sardines, and a loaf made from flour, which the retreating Russians had left in vast quantity at the tail of tho pass as they skedaddled. They had also abandoned a load of cigarettes, from which I had helped myself. Moreover, there were half - a - dozen pints of champagne that the staff of General Tergukasoff had been in too big a hurry to carry away from Zadikhan, and which I had bought at an absurdly low price from a redif who did cot know what the precious flasks contained. So, having hobbled my horse and relieved him of his bit so that he could eat freely of the tempting grass and drink of the limpid stream, which was the only one large enough bo drink from Chat we had seen since crossing the effluent of the eastern Euphrates early in the morning, I sat down to a refection which was welcome enough, for as ail the sultry heat of one of the last days in June in the latitude of 39° or so, since the freshness of the air at the altitude of some 7,000 feet enabled one to bear a direct temperature that a few days later was found to be over 140 in the sun. Whether it was the cigarette, or the drop of sweet champagne that one bottle yielded, or the fatigues of the morning, or, most delightful of discoveries to a traveller in the Ease, ‘ the shadow of a great rock in a weary land,’at any rate I dozed off, and had been so oblivious for some time, when, being aroused by a touch, I found peering at me the wild but smiling face of my new Mussulman servant, whom I had sent into Erzeroum two days before with letters for home. . The active and faithful creature j had returned without resting in the big town, and had traced me from the Kurd village, where I had rested at his depar- 1 ture. Hussein signified to me, as much by expressive pantomime as by words, that there were bad men nob far off, and that I had better look to my arms, for they were armed, and not likely to stick at trifles. So I fired off a barrel of the revolver just to try if it were in working order, and it might be as a warning to any bad men as aforesaid that I was quite ready for them. Bub bad men or good men I could seen none, though the pass was visible for a mile or more. When we started Hussein fell in behind me on the baggage horse which I had assigned * to him, and we jogged along at an easy pace becoming to the 4 sorry jades of Asia, which cannot go but thirty miles a day,’ as the omniscient Shakspere makes Ancient Pistol remark. We were nob much company for each other. Hussein, though sharp and willing, had no .more Turkish than was necessary bo take him through life, and if his vocabulary was limited it was nevertheless too copious for my comprehension as yet. Now and again I tried to get out of him some particulars of tho ‘ chok fana adami,’ or very bad men, aboub whom he had excited rather my curiosity than my alarm. They might perchance, I mused, be a prowling party of Cossacks to whom he had given a bad character, and so I asked him if the‘adami’ wereMuscovs. But that at any rate they were nob. So by degrees tho listlessness that falls on the jogging traveller when there is nothing to excite his attention came over me, and I may oven have gone to sleep in the saddle, as is very possible, when my trusty nag neighed, and, rousing myself, I saw we had reached the point on the road

where the Russians had had their camp in rear of the works they had occupier! in the pass, which widened here into a very good, rather grassy, gentle vale, where the round rings still showed where the tents had stood. Here, two days before, there had been plenty of meat tins and other refuse of camp life, but now there was no longer a bit of metal to be seen. Nor was there yet anything visible to account for the interest exhibited by my good Toby. But he was pricking up his cars still and visibly increasing the pace as though he too were rejoiced at something, anything, that would break the monotony. The grassy land, through which meandered a small brook, took a sweep to the right, and when we were turning the tongue of land I was lookiner out for a little cemetery that I had noticed on my way up, but had not then had time to linger over. I had, however, seen that there were at least a dozen graves, all neatly turned ; some of them turfed, while there was one grave much larger than the others, and over it had been erected a good-sized cross of some white or whitened wood. Smaller crosses were on some of the other graves, bub that on the larger one had a wreath of woven grass interspersed with some of the wild flowers chat abound in Armenia in spring wherever water exists, and sometimes where there is none apparent. Now the crosses were strewed about, one of them being actually carried some dozen yards away, and stuck into a rut downwards. The graves were all opened, save one, and at that one a group of men were working with hands and bits of wood, with which they tore at the ground in such eagerness that they nover cared to glance at the couple of travellers who had halted on the roadside, two hundred yards off, to look at them. More on the alert, however, were three or four fellows who had been eagerly clutching at some object lying on the side of the mounds of earth upthrowh from the graves. They looked up and then bent over whatever task they had in hand. I confess 1 did not realise at first what they were doing, till the mountain air carried to my nostrils a stench that was almost overpowering even at that distance. At the same time Hussein exclaimed ‘ chok fana,’ though whether he was alluding'“tp the odour nob of Araby or to the outrage that was going on under our eyes is a mystery. I felt inclined first to be very sick and then to ride away as fast as Toby would carry me oven when ho felt the unaccustomed spur. But both feelings gave way to an overpowering impulse that took complete possession of me. Never but that once in the course of an adventurous life, have I totally lost control of myself, thrown prudence to the winds, and been absolutely at the disposal of the conviction that I must slay or be slain. I had in my hand a hunting crop of Manilla cane, with a heavy head of cast brass, which had been bought at Naples on my way .out to Turkey, and, balancing that in my right and catching up the reins with my’ loft,'l dug my spurs into poor Toby and went straight for the nearest, men around the graves. In that moment I knew * the mighty yearning like the first fierce fmpulso unto crime.’ The ruffians .saw, mischief in my eye, and began

to scatter ; but I was too speedy for some of them, and the nearest went to earth like a log, his turban, or the strip of kerchief that did duty for a turban, alone saving him from doom there and then. The rest bolted, except those scratching at the big grave, and they had just begun to lay bare the uniform of a private, so before they could escape I caught a couple of them swinging blows on the cranium and sent them to mother earth, little recking whether they ever rose from it. The rest of the gang would not have all escaped me but that at the third swish of the crop the head came off and flew into one of the smaller graves. Then I drew my sword—which is in the country parts of Turkey as much the mark of a gentleman, not necessarily a soldier, as it was in England in the days of our groat grandfathers—and was making for a couple of fellows aboub fifty feet off' when I heard, rather sighed than said, ‘Effendi!’ and Hussein, who had dismounted, came running up to me, saying I know nob what. Looking where he pointed, I saw one ol the gang had picked up the solitary rifle they had not removed from the ground, and he was trying to fit into its breech a cartridge. Had he known how to manipulate tho weapon I should probably have been a dead man in another minute, but I was on to him before he could close the breech, in which he was endeavouring to insert a Berdan cartridge that would by no means consent to enter a Peabody rifle, and it was only by doubling back suddenly, and jumping over a couple of the graves, which even by the help of the spur I could not get Toby to face, that he managed to avoid the only sword-cut I have ever delivered in anger. Hatsein picked up the rifle and nonchalantly swung it over his shoulder, and I became once more unpleasantly aware of the putridity of the bodies that lay around stripped of their uniforms, and even of their rags of shirts. They were an awful sight, red and white and blue and green, with the exception of one, which had a wound just over the heart, and the swarthy skin of this one seemed to havo changed in no sensible degree. Removing a little to windward,! dismounted and speedily drank another bottle of my little store of champagne, which I had so carefully packed in my saddle bags. The miscreants still kept their distance, and so I went to look at the fellows I had injured, if not killed. The first of them was just reviving, so I sent Hussein for some water which he brought in the empty champagne bottle, and tho whole three of the injured soon sat up and rubbed their heads in a very dazed fashion, one of them having a little blood oozing from his scalp. But I soon saw no great barm was done. Then I made Hussein understand that I would have the bodies restored to the graves and these filled up. It took a long time and a good deal of flourishing of the revolver to get the order understood ; but when it was the fellows made no difficulty about it, and soon the last Russian was once more consigned to mother earth with so much of the clothing as could be found, for some of it had been undoubtedly removed before we turned up. The evening was well advanced before the graves were again level with the ground, •and then I imprecated the vengeance of the Nushir and of Allah on any attempt to resume the despoiling of the dead. Perhaps I was not understood, but when, after sleeping in my old quarters at Helias, I succeeded the next day in reaching headquarters and reporting the affair to the Commander-in-Chief, he, notwithstanding the anxieties of the advance to the relief of Kara, which had just begun, sent off an officer to examine the whole affair. The officer reported a week after that he had found the graves again opened, the bodies lying about tor the crows and the buzzards ; that he had caused their re-interment, and, finding by the uniforms and buttons, and rifles, and bibs of shell and empty cartridge cases in a village,who had been at work, he had promptly hung two of the head men. But I am sceptical on this point, for our military atbachees, going over the pass later in the campaign, found the few remains of the Russian soldiers lying about, while the officer who said he had hung the villagers was, when we had relieved Kars in July, observed to be very flush of money, and I have little doubt that instead of hanging the Kurds, ho had amerced them in tho last farthing ho could find or hear of in their mountain villages.