William Gifford Palgrave (1826-1888) was the British scholar, traveler and diplomat. Educated at the Trinity College (Oxford University), he spent his youth serving in the 8th (The King's) Regiment of Foot in India before joining a British expedition to the interior of Arabia, Syria and the Persian Gulf states. In the 1860s, Palgrave joined the British Foreign Office and was appointed consul at Sukhum-Kale (Sokhumi) in 1866. The following year he was sent to Trebizond where he remained for six years. In the 1870s-1880s, he served as a British consul in the Caribbean, the Phillippines and Bangkok before finishing his diplomatic career as Minister Resident and Consul-General to Uruguay.
In 1887, one year before his death, he reviewed notes that he had originally made during his travels and published a collection of travel essays. One essay, entitled "Turkish Georgia," reflected impressions of several journeys he had made in the late 1860s to the northeastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire.
Of the process by which this numerous, amiable, and fairly intelligent population was severed from Christendom and incorporated into Islam, no record remains. This much is certain: that a hundred and fifty years ago, according to their own statement, and even later, I should think, judging by the comparative freshness of the church ruins in a climate where damp, heavy rains and snow, and a vegetation rivalling the luxuriance of Yucatan conspire to hasten the work of disintegration and decay, they were all Christians. It is equally certain that at the present day they are all without exception Mahometans. No compulsion, no invasion even, is either mentioned in history, or alluded to by tradition; and what is stranger still, no extension of the Turkish Empire was then taking place eastward; on the contrary, it was rather losing ground. Could the dread of Russian encroachment, first felt along the northern Georgian frontier about that time, have driven these tribes to seek closer alliance and protection with the Turks by means of religious union? Possibly their Christianity sat as lightly on them then as their Mahometanism does now. They themselves have a story that a very eloquent preacher and holy man came among them, and converted them all to Islam by his sermons. "Nonsense," said I to a young Georgian beg, who had told me the tale with a very creditable amount of gravity, "that can never have been the cause. You know as well as I do that no Christian becomes a Mahometan, or vice versa, except it be from fear of imminent danger, or hope of material advantage. In the absence of these, the finest sermons would convert nobody; and as to proofs and miracles, you are aware that they are as copious in Christian as in Mahometan story, or more." He laughed, and answered, "Of course there was some motive of the other kind, but of what it was we have no record left."
In fact, for about fourteen centuries, from the days of Chosroes and Justinian, down to our own time, this mountain group has resembled an island, round which the eddying waves of frontier war have raged almost without ceasing, but which they have never wholly overflowed. Byzantines and Persians, Turcomans and Byzantines, Turks and Persians again, Russians and Turks, have all fought around them, retreated, or conquered ; while they, secure in their almost inaccessible labyrinth of ravine and crag, have taken no more share in the strife around, than by making or repelling an occasional foray; and, when victory had declared itself for the one or the other of their belligerent neighbours, paying as little tribute and obedience as possible to their new suzerain, whoever he might be.
To the Osmanlee Sultan, the "Padishah" of the Mahometan world, so long as he was content to rule them after their own fashion, that is, through the medium of their own born chiefs and begs, the Georgian Muslims were at first attached with proper neophytic fervour. Of this they gave repeated proof during the many wars, or, one might almost say, the one long war, which from the close of the last century to the middle of this, burned or smouldered along the land-line, and ended by giving the entire Southern Caucasus, with its fair plains adjoining, to Russian dominion. All this time the Mahometan Georgians further on the south and west kept up a guerilla warfare, less ferocious, but hardly less persistent, than that maintained by the Circassian tribes on the east and north. But when the Ottoman Government changed its type from semi-feudal to bureaucratic, and administration merged in mere organized fiscal extortion, with the governing Pashas and other Stamboolee officials for its agents, the old spell of loyalty was broken, and Georgian eyes are now more often and more longingly turned to Tiflis than to Constantinople.
Indeed, without a degree of provincial tact which a pseudocentralised government can hardly be expected to possess, this state of things was, sooner or latter, inevitable. From the noblest beg to the meanest peasant there is hardly a Georgian who has not relations, or at least clansmen, under Russian rule across the frontier, with whom he is in constant correspondence of visits made and returned, and from whom he learns the transterminal existence of a state of prosperity and progress which he cannot but feel contrasts bitterly with the poverty and ignorance to which he himself, the Osmanlee subject, is condemned. For, in spite of frontier-guards, passport regulations, and military "cordon," mutual intercourse between Russian Georgia and Turkish Gurjistan is constant and intimate; nor does difference of creed, or, officially speaking, of nationality, much impair the sympathy of a common origin, "Blood is thicker than water" with the clansmen of Asia Minor as with the clansmen of the Scottish Highlands. It is amusing enough to see, as I often have, a Russianised Georgian, in big clumsy boots, long-skirted coat, and dirty forage-cap, enter the rickety but carpeted divan ;of a Mahometan kinsman, who in the much more picturesque, but less civilized-looking dress of Asiatic fashion, rises to embrace him. It is Burns's Caesar and Luath over again; and there is no want of cordiality or respect on either side.
Meanwhile the attachment of the peasantry—the devotion would be an exact word—to their own hereditary chiefs or begs, though shorn of their feudal rank and mulcted of their ancestral lands, is strong as ever; indeed, the measures taken by the Ottoman Government to weaken it, have had a contrary effect, by supplying a new tie between nobles and people—that of common dissatisfaction. Both classes have certainly a sufficiently long list of grievances against their black-coated Stamboolee masters, whose conduct is such that it can often be only explained by a settled determination to alienate the affections of these frontier tribes, and to drive them straight into the arms of Russia, who, for her part, is ready enough to receive them.
A Georgian beg, one of the most influential in the land, and chief of an important border clan, had, after much brave guerilla fighting against the Russians in '55 [1855], at last thrown himself, with several of his followers, into the besieged fortress of Kars, and did his duty manfully in its defence. When, after the events with which all are familiar, the place surrendered to famine, the beg—I purposely abstain from names—and his men became, of course, prisoners of war with the rest. Thus they remained four or five days; but when the time came for marching the captured garrison off to Tiflis, or other secure places in the Caucasus, the Georgians were simply and unconditionally set free; the Russian general declaring, with a polite generosity that might have been a useful lesson to some other generals nearer home, in a more recent war, that his hostilities regarded the regular troops only; and that the beg and his clansmen being irregular, he held them non-combatants, like any other peaceable inhabitants of the Turkish Empire, and consequently not liable to the penalties of war. With this he dismissed them, disarmed of course, but not even under parole, to go home, or wherever else they might think best.
The policy, as well as the humanity of this conduct is evident enough; but it is difficult to perceive either the humanity or the policy of the Turkish Government, which, as soon as the war was over, rewarded the beg's services by a fine and imprisonment, on the ground that he must have been in treasonable correspondence with the Russians, otherwise he would not have met with such lenient treatment at their hands.
"Upon my word," said the beg to me, "had I been minded to betray the country to the Russians, I should have had no need of underhand doings: for there was not a man among the villagers who did not wish it, and I do not think the Turks could have done much to hinder us just then. But after all," he continued, "I have reason to be more satisfied with the Turks than with the Russians ; for the former, at least, by shutting me up in prison, paid me the compliment of showing that they considered me a person of some consequence; whereas, I never felt so small in my life as when the Russian general told me to go free, without doing me the honour of sending me under guard to Tiflis, and evidently implied that he did not care either for my having fought against him, or whether I might not fight again in the future."
Let us pay this very same gentleman—nobleman I mean— a visit, and see how he lives in the meanwhile.
It is mild summer, and the beg has left his winter residence in the thick woods, some twelve miles distant from the Russian frontier, and has gone, as his wont is, to pass the hotter months of the year under canvas amid the mountain pastures beyond the pine range, where at the height of between eight and nine thousand feet above the sea—his winter house is at the moderate elevation of four thousand—he looks after his numerous herds, and holds a kind of open court, much frequented by all the chiefs from the districts around, far and near. We, his visitors, are a large party, begs, aghas, and "delikans," or "wild-bloods," i.e. dashing young bachelors, some pure Georgian, others halfGeorgian, half-Turcoman, by race. As we ride up the steep grassy slopes I notice, at a height of more than seven thousand feet, where even the July air blows keenly, and where no peasant now would venture to winter it from October to April, the ruins, or traces rather, of two large villages, and a stone church, an indication amongst, I regret to say, many similar, that the climate of these regions—as, I believe, of some other longitudes—has gradually but notably cooled during the last few centuries; though whether from a general diminution of solar heat, according to Professor Thomson's alarming theory, to culminate in the realization of Byron's ghastly dream, or whether owing to some transpositions of land and sea in our Northern hemisphere, to take Lyell's more consolatory view of the matter, I do not pretend to decide.
At last we have reached the top; the brisk air, so different from that of the heated valleys below, has in a manner intoxicated our horses, who, instead of showing weariness after so hard a climb, are squealing, neighing, rearing, bounding; it is all the riders can do to hold them in. Before us spreads a wide undulating table-land; it reaches for miles and miles away, till it slopes off eastward into Russian Georgia, and westward sinks in the hollow of Showshet, where dwell the loveliest but not the austerest women, and the handsomest but not the most virtuous men of Georgian race. Far north, its downward dip is clothed with forest to the fever-stricken coast of the Black Sea. But right in front of us is a tent, large and black, with three or four smaller tents on a row behind; these are evidently for women, attendants, and domestic life, while the large one is the "salamlik," or general parlour, of the beg himself. Close by a little granite ridge cuts knife-like through the turf; and from under it wells out a spring of water, crystal clear and icy cold.
The beg, whose ancestral possessions equal in extent Lincolnshire at least, and whose word even now, let who may be the official governor, is law over the whole frontier land, rises and comes forward to greet his guests. What a splendid head he has. I have seen something of the kind among the demigods of Greco-Roman sculpture. Advancing age has deprived his form of the supple activity which gave it a grace remarkable even among Georgians in youth, but has hardly diminished his passion for horsemanship and every form of bodily exercise. To this he adds a degree of mechanical skill that a trained workman might envy. For one friend he himself, unassisted, manufactures a beautifully-wrought sabre, blade, and hilt; for another a pair of pistols; for a third a silver-mounted clarionet. Then he sets to work on the construction of a sailing-boat, and when it is finished, sails it on a cruise of discovery all over the great mountain lake of Childer, close by, sounding everywhere to determine what the real depth of the water, commonly said to be unfathomable (but he found it, as he told me, twenty-seven fathoms at most), may be; and whether the traditional city, said to be submerged beneath, is really there. Besides these amusements come farming, building, planting, sheep-breeding, cattle-tending, horse-rearing, and even—in which he has done wonders—road-making: and yet, various as these occupations are, the result falsifies the common saying about such attempts, 1 by proving him master, not of none, but of all. Lastly, he is—be the nominal Governor of Osmanlee creation who he may—the ultimate tribunal of appeal throughout the whole eastern half of Gurjistan; the arbiter of disputes, director of councils, social and political head of the little nation.
Begs and not-begs, noble, gentle, or simple, we are seated in the tent; its hangings are of silk, beautifully embroidered, and still bright in colour, the youthful labour of the chief's aunt, who died a few years since at the respectable age of ninety, or thereabouts. Coffee is served round for form's sake; then wine, spirits, and a sort of fruit-luncheon appear; and with a remark that "a tent is liberty-hall, and there is nothing to hinder our enjoying ourselves as we choose," the beg sets the example of jollity in word and deed. In rush half-a-dozen children, four boys and two girls, one of the latter a real beauty, their ages between fifteen and five; these are the younger ones of the beg's numerous family; the elder sons are looking after the farms elsewhere. The biggest of the boys here present, a fair, curly-headed lad, takes up at his father's orders a book of Persian poetry, and begins translating it off into fluent Turkish: I hope the version is a correct one; if not, I cannot rectify it. Two other pretty boys perform a clarionet duet, on instruments of their father's making, selecting an English air—at least they tell me it is one—in my honour; while the smallest imp turns somersets, stands on his head, and goes through other gymnastic feats. The girls sit on their father's knees, or tease such of the guests as they are familiar with. Other visitors drop in, some on business, some on amusement; the day goes merrily by. But before the last slant sunbeams have died off the height, a huge wood fire is lighted before the entrance of the tent, a necessary precaution against the keen cold outside; a plentiful supper is served, and drinking, with talk and music, resumed till midnight. Georgian Mahometanism is not very deep in the grain; besides, the event, coming sooner or later, of Russian annexation, has already cast its shadow before.
Yet our host, and several others now under the same canvas fought bravely, and adventured freely the lives which many of their kinsmen lost, on the Turkish side, fifteen years ago. Now not one of them would draw a sword. "We mean to look on and enjoy the fun," say they, when questioned as to the part they would take were another war to break out between the empires. Perhaps this might not really prove their line of conduct, if put to the test, for men do not always keep to what they have forecast when the crisis actually comes; but there is no doubt that these words do very correctly sum up their present feeling.
Indeed, it would be hard to say why they should think or feel differently. The Ottoman Government has taken away their past, and offers them no hopeful future. Besides, how abstain from comparing their own condition with that of their kinsmen on the other side of the frontier close at hand? The contrast is suggestive and seductive in one.
"Well, about myself I do not care so much," says the beg, as after long talk we sat, surrounded by horizontal sleeping figures in the red glare of the heaped wood embers by the door; "my career has pretty well wound itself up; but what on earth am I to do with these boys of mine? The estate is not much, hardly enough as matters go for the elder ones; the rest would become mere peasants, no better than those around them. Trade? That is not in our line; we know nothing about it; besides, there is none here of any kind. The army? The navy? You know what the average run of officers is in the Ottoman service; besides, my children, because they are mine, would be ill looked on, suspected, kept back in every way. How even am I to give them a decent education? Where put them to school? At Constantinople? I would rather see them dead than exposed to the chance, the certainty, of the taint of Osmanlee vice in that city. And if not at Constantinople, where? You will allow," he concluded, with a kind of laugh, "that the position of a Georgian noble in the Turkish Empire is a pleasant one, very."
As with the chiefs, so with the people, in their degree. And it is for this reason that I have dwelt somewhat at length on the fortunes, ways, and words of an individual; because, with no great modification, they are not merely personal, but general; and one may, to a certain extent, be taken as sample of all.
The Georgians are fond of agricultural labour of every kind, and skillful at it; and with a temperate climate, averaging that of central Italy, and a fertile soil, there is nothing—except the fatal administrative blight, that renders all landed property in Turkey unproductive and almost valueless—to hinder Gurjistan from rivalling or even excelling the corn-bearing fruitfulness of Imeritia and the gardens of Kutais. But what most distinguishes them is their skill in handicraft. Guns, pistols, swords, daggers, embroidery, silver-work, the staple articles of manufacture among a semi-barbarous people—for all these Georgia holds the first rank in the Anatolian market; and the primitive simplicity of the tools employed enhances the cunning of the worker's hand. Pity that it should not oftener occupy itself with more useful objects; but this defect, rightly understood, is not so much attributable to the artificers as to their surroundings. On the other hand, for trade and commerce the Georgians show no aptitude, not even for shopkeeping; and the few shops—I do not think there are two hundred, all told, throughout the villages—in Gurjistan are invariably kept by strangers, mostly Armenians, who come for a few summer months of speculative profit, and then go away again.
Nor have they—and this is of good augury for their prospects of civilisation—any turn for a pastoral life; their flocks and herds are indeed numerous enough on the grassy mountain slopes, but they are invariably tended by hired Koordes. The Georgians have many of the instincts of a settled, none of those proper to a nomad race.
Social, fond of dress and show, of song and dance, of gatherings and merry-makings, of drink, too, and, I regret to say, of gambling, they are but indifferent, though proselyte Mahometans, and the Islamitic "revival," so marked in its increasing intensity among the Arab, the Indian, and, to a certain extent, among the Turkish and Turcoman races, has little or no existence in Gurjistan. Perhaps too they feel the eventuality of reunion under Russian sway to their Christian kinsmen across the border, too near a probability to allow of much zeal for, so far as they in particular are concerned, the decaying fortunes of Islam. "We ourselves shall live and die Mahometans, but our children may become whatever suits them best," is a common saying among them. It is also, so far as I know, peculiar to them among Muslims; certainly, I never heard the like of it elsewhere. The few Mollas, Muftis, and the like in Gurjistan villages are, like the shopkeepers from without, generally from the more serious sea-coast of Lazistan, or the bigoted neighbourhood of Trebizond.
Of Georgian morality, in the strict sense of the word, "Least said" is, I fear, "soonest mended." Little indeed, among a people so situated, could be looked for, and little is to be found. While the men are habitually out in the fields, or clambering the tall beech-trees to look after their favourite bee-hives—the honey of Gurjistan is first-rate—niched high up in some forked branch among the pale green shades, the women at home have it all their own way, and it is too often the broad one. Not rarely, too, these what we may charitably term faults, coming in collision with justly aroused jealousy, result in tragic crime. Many instances, needless to repeat here, were told me. In one village an entire family had been exterminated: in another, the brothers of the faithless wife, after fatally avenging the family disgrace, had turned brigands. This feature of Georgian character has, however, not only its black, but, such is human nature, its brighter side; a rank weed crop may give hope of a fruitful soil beneath; a polished marble slab more often covers dry bones only.
Besides, law there is none to speak of, and every man, every man-child even, is armed. Schools, too, except a very few—a dozen at most throughout the whole breadth of the land—of the most primary kind, do not here exist, and there are no teachers in Gurjistan but Need and Passion, no lessons taught but the spade, the sickle, the loom, the forge, the knife, and the overloaded gun. As for Government—the official or Ottoman Government, I mean—it recognises no obligation towards its Georgian subjects, except that of taxing them, and collecting their taxes; a difficult task the last, it must be allowed, in mountains like these, where armed collectors have generally to be sent for the work, a work from which they do not always return.
It is easier to pull down than to build up, to destroy than to restore. Latter-day Sultans have broken the links, clumsy ones it must be admitted, yet effective, which bound society together under the semi-feudal authority of the local begs, and have substituted nothing but tax-gatherers and tithe- collectors in their stead. Only in out-of-the-way frontier districts like Gurjistan, far from Constantinople, and almost inaccessible to the official Effendee tribe, something of the old administration yet lingers on, powerless for good, powerful for evil. Shorn of lands, wealth, title, and except what the habitual respect of the peasants may still secure him, position, a Georgian beg is much too weak to compel order, though often strong enough to excite disturbance; enforce the law he cannot, break it he can, and does. Hereditary rivalries, village feuds, robberies, kidnapping, murders, all have here, as chance or circumstance may direct, almost unrestrained scope; the Ottoman or Stambool Government cannot put them down, and there is no other authorised power left to do it. In fact, when one wanders through these thicket-tangled paths, deep glens, lonely denles, and dark forests, one wonders, not that deeds of violence and blood are sometimes done, but that they are not more frequent; not that Gurjistan travelling is considered venturesome, but that it is possible.
This is, however, chiefly among the natives themselves; a stranger has little to fear, a European least of all. The hospitality given—and it is always to be had for the asking—in one hamlet usually implies a kind of safe-conduct as far as the next, and so on to the end of the journey; and European wayfarers in particular are covered with the aegis of a salutary fear of after-inquiries, and penalties all the more dreaded because unknown.
In fact, during my long rovings in Gurjistan proper, my own personal experience only records one adventure of the robber or brigand class; I mean, in which I fell in with such. It was in the Ajarah region, the wildest corner of this wild land; and if I record it, I do so because the situation, though it was not exactly pleasant at the moment, was intensely picturesque; so picturesque, indeed, as almost to neutralise any disagreeable sensations that the incident might otherwise have caused.
The valley was such a lovely one; high mountain walls towering up to the sky in a mass of fir and beech above, and thick undergrowth below, all in the fullest, brightest leafage of summer, but now darkening with the first transparent shadows of a calm summer evening, and the rapid twilight of the South. The path, narrow and rough, led alongside of a torrent, till it came to a corner round a jutting mass of rock, where another large and deep mountain stream crossed it from the right, while between precipice and water a clump of huge walnut trees spread out their wide branches, and deepened the gloom of the glen. A spot of exquisite beauty; but one in which it would be awkward to fight, and impossible to try running away.
We had yet half an hour or so to go before we could reach the village where we intended halting for the night; but, enchanted with the scene around, I was riding slowly, with an armed attendant, a Trebizondian, in front, and a couple of negroes, with a native peasant, to bring up the rear. Just as we turned the rock, the thought struck me, "What a splendid post for an ambush!" and at the same instant my horse—a Turcoman bay—started, snuffed uneasily about him, and would have stopped; I urged him forward, but with difficulty. Suddenly two men, dressed in country cloth of that vandyke-brown colour which of all others is the least distinguishable at a distance among open-air objects, started up right in front, each presenting a shining long-barrelled gun, while two others simultaneously appeared, like toy figures set loose by a spring, from among the bushes alongside, and a third pair as promptly took post on the further bank of the torrent opposite, thus making six long guns, and all levelled, not to mention knives and pistols, of which each man had a pretty little arsenal in his girdle.
One of the men, a fine tall young fellow, as indeed they all seemed, came up to my Trebizondian guard in advance, and took hold of his bridle; another approached me, but observing that I put my hand on a knife in my belt, fell back; perhaps he thought I was going to draw a pistol, which would certainly have been the better weapon, but in fact I had none about me. However, the Trebizondian had, only he was too much frightened to use it, and, like a fool and a coward as he was, began to parley. This of course encouraged the would-be robbers, who now closed in, and matters began to look serious, when my two negroes, who now came up from behind the rock, perceiving that something was wrong, spurred forward, one with a pistol in hand, the other with a large drawn knife, and shouted out so savagely, that the Georgians, taken by surprise, fell back. We were now four—five indeed, reckoning our peasant guide, but he, though armed, seemed inclined to keep out of the way, a friendly neutral, of all characters the most provoking to combatants. However, three of us had arms ready, and appeared to be inclined to use them; the Trebizondian, too, began to pluck up heart, and grow fierce. Hereon our assailants gave it up, and retired into the thicket, leaving the ford open. That they might better see how little account we made of them, I called to them to stop, and asked how far it was yet to such and such a village, and whether we were on the right way. Two of them turned round, with villainously sulky faces, then thought better of it, and saying, "All right, not far on," hurried off after their companions. By this time night was setting in, and in a few minutes more it was quite dark. Fortunately some peasants of the hamlet having heard somehow or other of our approach, came to meet us with flaring pine-torches, and piloted us to our lodgings, which else we might have had some difficulty in finding.
"It was all a mistake; if the lads had known who you were they would never have meddled with you," was the apologetic remark of our host that night. I think he was right: anyhow, though I remained a fortnight more scrambling up and down the Ajarah glens, and fell in with plenty of armed peasant bands, none of them again formed themselves into so scenic a group as that which gave such a peculiarly Georgian character to that wild valley in the still summer twilight.
Too much stress, however, should not be laid on defects which are accidental in a people, and the result rather of circumstances than of inherent disposition. An ill-governed frontier will seldom be found free from brigandage; nor can much respect to law be expected where law is, in a general way, equally unpromulgated and unenforced. To revert, not for proofs sake, but illustration, to a simile already employed, the very abundance of the weed-growth in the Georgian character seems to warrant the hope of a fruitful and better crop, were the soil properly tilled and guarded. Something of the kind—much, indeed, by comparison—has already taken place in the neighbouring and kindred Russo-Georgian provinces of Imeritia and Gourul. And could the great and kindly historian of the 'Decline and Fall' have added personal acquaintance with the inhabitants of Turkish Gurjistan to historical research, he would, I think, while confirming the epithet of " handsome," have, with me, effaced, or at least qualified, that of " worthless."
Indeed, though certainly little disposed to close with the invitation—one so often made in half-savage countries, and to me always most melancholy, because like the vague clutch of the drowning man at less than a straw—to remain and take up my abode among them, yet when I quitted the Georgians and their land it was with something of regret, and more of pity. Fortune has used them hardly in the past, and their future is at best doubtful. In 'Prometheus Unbound' Shelley's Asia is hopeful as fair; and the fairest of her children ought, were the noble day-dream of the poet anything but a dream, to be of right the most hopeful also. But truer, I fear, though sadder is the Spirit that speaks by the same voice in a later dream that has, for the Ottoman Empire in Asia as in Europe, a much wider application than the "Hellas " of which it bears the name.
Oh cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to the dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy!
The world is weary of the past—
Oh might it die or rest at last.
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