Friedrich Parrot, Journey to Ararat (1829) - Part 2

Johann Jacob Friedrich Wilhelm Parrot (1791 - 1841) was a German naturalist and traveller, who spent much of his life in the service of the Russian Empire. Born in Karlsruhe, Parrot studied medicine and natural science at the University of Dorpat and took part in several scholarly expeditions to the Crimea and the Caucasus in the 1810s. In 1816-1817 he traveled to Italy and Spain and upon return to Russia, became professor of physiology and pathology (and later professor of physics) at the University of Dorpat. In 1828-1829 Parrot traveled to south Caucasia, spending considerable time exploring Eastern Georgia and Armenia. During this expedition, he conducted scientific observations in Tiflis and led a scientific expedition to the summit of Mount Ararat. He later published his account of the expedition entitled "Journey to Ararat."  

There is an active export of wine; for the Kakheti wine is duly—unfortunately, sometimes unduly—prized throughout all Georgia as the very best, though it cannot admit of any doubt that the art of making wine is still but very imperfectly understood in this province, the esteemed produce of which is totally destitute of the true aromatic flavour of wine, and will not keep more than five or six years. Stories of ten-year-old wine are looked upon as suspicious by the initiated. However this may be, there is certainly enough of it drunk beyond Caucasus to afford a knowledge of its properties. Their mode of keeping it, not only here, but in every other district of Georgia, seemed to me to be both instructive and interesting. They have no casks, but keep it in earthen jars and leathern bottles. These latter are made of the skins of goats, oxen, and buffaloes, turned inside out, clipped with the scissors, washed, and rubbed over with warm mineral tar, or, as it is also called, naphtha. The openings are closed with a sort of wooden bung, except at the feet, where they are only tied up with a cord. The wine is drawn at one foot merely by opening or closing the noose. It is a very strange and whimsical sight for the new-comer to see oxen and buffaloes full of wine lying in the wine-booth, or about the streets, with their legs stretched out. These skins, however, are very convenient for home use or for carriage; for they may be found of all sizes, some very small—the skins of young kids—holding only a few bottles; at the same time, these latter come very rarely into requisition.

The Georgian who has a mind to enjoy himself, with his family and two or three friends, in a little country party, is not likely to content himself with so slender a provision. The usual wine measure in retail trade is what is called the tunge, which contains just five of our ordinary bottles; half a tunge, however, is sometimes sold; but it is by no means thought, in Georgia, a proof of extraordinary intemperance for a man to drink two tunges of wine in the course of the day. It might be supposed that the naphtha on the hairy side of the skin would impart a strange and disagreeable flavour to the wine, and spoil the vessels. This flavour, however, is partly lost after the skin has been some time in use, which then becomes more valuable than when new; and besides, there are many connoisseurs of Kakheti wine, who maintain that it is this very flavour which renders it not only innoxious, but wholesome.

The other mode of keeping wine in large jars is generally adopted in the country parts, and more especially for the better kinds. Let the reader figure to himself an egg-shaped vessel, narrow below, with an opening above, of a foot and a half in diameter, and thin sides, smoothly and regularly made of clay, and he will have a tolerable idea of what, when it is of larger size, is termed, in Georgia, a kvevri, and when of smaller, a kh'ila; they are both of this shape.

Such a jar as this is firmly sunk in the ground to the brim, and when filled with wine, its mouth is covered with a round piece of slate, and heaped over with earth, which serves the twofold purpose of preserving the wine, and concealing the place where it is buried. This covering must be removed and replaced every time wine is drawn; so that, to avoid this trouble, when the jar is about half empty, the remainder of the wine is poured into a smaller one. These vessels are very lasting, suffer no leakage, although they are not glazed, and do not become soaked, but may be kept in use for twenty or thirty years, as I was assured, if not broken through carelessness. They are made of very large size generally, six or seven feet high, and four feet wide, with sides of half an inch thick or less. Such a one sells for ten to fifteen silver rubles, and, in good wine years, for more. One of the largest that I have ever seen, perhaps the largest kvevri in all Kakheti, was at Yenisseli, in the prince's house, where I measured it - it was 61/3 feet wide and 81/2 high - o high that a servant was obliged to use a ladder to get into it - and held five araba, each araba being 88 chapp, and each chapp 41 tunges, so that its entire contents were about 7000 stoof of Rig [One stoof contained 1.3 litre].

The process of forming these vessels out of clay so thin that it is incomprehensible how they are prevented from falling to pieces in the hand, and withal so shapely and so serviceable, would certainly be a very interesting sight for any one who had an opportunity of visiting their potteries, and displays a skill which might astonish many a practiced artist in Europe. The principal requisite is well-prepared clay, which must be perfectly cleared from gritty particles, spread out upon a smooth surface, and slashed with a sort of wooden sword till reduced to an extraordinary degree of purity and uniform consistence. The potter first forms the lower end upon a solid low stool, simply with the hand, without any wheel, and proceeds in this manner as long as the temper of the clay will allow the jar to hang together; he then spreads soft moist leaves over the edge, leaving his work for a while to a gentle evaporation of its superfluous moisture, and passes to another article, of which there are mostly six, eight, or ten in hand at once. When the first jar has acquired a little firmness, he removes the leaves, makes depressions with his fingers all round the edge, and forms a new border on it, about four fingers high, with a long roll of, clay that he holds upon his arm, taking the precaution, now, to proceed in a direction opposite to the one he took in making the indentations before, so that the fresh clay may be more firmly imbedded into the depressions; he goes two or three times round in this manner till the new border is about a span high, when its softness might expose it to the danger of giving way.

Besides the hands, there is nothing used but a small board for rubbing and smoothing the internal and external surface. The nipping of the edge is only necessary after the several pauses in the making, not when there are a number of bands of fresh clay added at once. If the jar should become too high, the workman uses a bench to stand on, and as the lower end of the vessel is very narrow, he props it as soon as it is dry enough with pieces of wood and stones; for, except the shed in which the work is carried on, no farther apparatus or arrangements are thought of. The baking of the jars, after they are dried, is conducted in the usual way; they are laid in pairs in a large kiln of masonry constructed in the earth, where they are managed with great adroitness.

While the native is found to prefer the skins and earthen vessels, such as his forefathers used for centuries, the German colonist in Georgia manufactures handsome casks, of good materials and every size, after the German fashion, in which his wine keeps better and sweeter, at least as far as the skins are concerned.

When the rich drink in their own houses, they are served in goblets and glasses, which are filled from wine-jars of the ordinary form; but when from home, they suit themselves to their ancestral habits, and use drinking vessels of many, and in some, instances quite peculiar shapes, made of clay, wood, or silver...

Friedrich Parrot, Journey to Ararat (1829) - Part 1

Johann Jacob Friedrich Wilhelm Parrot (1791 - 1841) was a German naturalist and traveller, who spent much of his life in the service of the Russian Empire. Born in Karlsruhe, Parrot studied medicine and natural science at the University of Dorpat and took part in several scholarly expeditions to the Crimea and the Caucasus in the 1810s. In 1816-1817 he traveled to Italy and Spain and upon return to Russia, became professor of physiology and pathology (and later professor of physics) at the University of Dorpat. In 1828-1829 Parrot traveled to south Caucasia, spending considerable time exploring Eastern Georgia and Armenia. During this expedition, he led a scientific expedition to the summit of Mount Ararat. He later published his account of the expedition entitled "Journey to Ararat."  

To hear of Tiflis, or to have visited Tiflis, never fails in Europe to excite a degree of interest, which seems neither to be justified by distance, nor any other striking peculiarity which that city possesses; an interest, too, which is so much the more extraordinary, since every stranger in Tiflis is so sure to express himself in the language of discontent, that it becomes at last inconceivable why every other foreigner is not deterred from venturing to visit such a place.

There is no doubt that Tiflis, both from its geographical and local position, would be one of the most delightful spots upon the earth, were it not that the mountains among which it lies, and which might otherwise contribute the most to render it agreeable, are totally divested of wood, and consequently deprived of those natural treasures, fertilizing and cooling rivers and fountains; for, if we except the flows from one of the western valleys between the warm mineral springs till it joins the Kur [Kura/Mtkvari], there is only one poor rivulet, which trickles down from the Narikaleh [Narikala], or rock-mountain, on the south side of the city, and distributes its scanty store to the vineyards in the town, into which it is only permitted to be turned for an hour or so under the superintendence of the police. The mountains about Tiflis are accordingly of no other use than to concentrate the rays of the sun, which would otherwise be kept off by the cool winds from the north and east, and give rise to those fiery blasts in the valleys, which strike the inhabitants like the air from a furnace, and, in all likelihood, occasion those diseases of the biliary organs which are endemic in the sultry districts of Georgia and Armenia.

The personal beauty of the Georgians would naturally attract the attention of Europeans, and secure a lively interest in their favour, if their intellectual condition were only in keeping with their outward bearing. The Georgian would win the esteem of all the world did he but unite with the symmetry of his person and the energy of his character a taste for useful occupation, and the laudable improvement of the faculties of his mind; while the women of Georgia would be admitted on all hands to have a just claim to the possession of the highest order of female loveliness, did they not prematurely impair the advantages which. nature has so lavishly bestowed upon them by the immoderate use of cosmetics, of apparel prejudicial to their health, and by their reckless licentiousness, instead of directing their thoughts to the regulation of their households, to economy, cleanliness, the education of their children, and the other duties proper to their sex.

It must be confessed that in this, as in all other cases, some praiseworthy exceptions will be found; but I only speak here of the general impressions which are made by Georgian society upon a stranger, and am therefore obliged to aver that there is a total want of industry, activity, and domestic feeling everywhere apparent; and though cleanliness and love of order have, in a few instances, gained a footing among the higher class, it is yet only as objects of imitation and luxury, not of necessity and habit.

The venerable existence of Tiflis in an Oriental form gives it another claim upon the sympathy of Europeans, when we reflect that it has found means to maintain its nationality, by an enormous expenditure of life, for 2000 years, against the Persians, Turks, and Caucasians; and it is only now, and by friendly intercourse with strangers, that that independence is threatened which hitherto has baffled the utmost efforts of Mohammedan and Pagan. Notwithstanding the presence and example of numerous strangers from Russia, Germany, and France, the Georgian still adheres to his own primitive agricultural implements, and defective system of cultivation in the field, the vineyard, and the garden. He is not even so far advanced in the construction of his mills as to supply himself with a good quality of flour: this has to be procured from the Russians. His antiquated wheel-carriages are still as clumsy and rude as they were in the Golden Age. He still, as of old, shaves off all the hair from his head, which he covers, when he goes into the broiling sun, with a heavy cap of sheepskin, well calculated, when aided by excesses in the use of wine, to produce a constant determination of blood to the brain. The native of Tiflis still makes it a daily practice to indulge, as of old, in the use of his disgustingly filthy sulphureous warm bath, where he exposes his body for hours to the heating and enervating influence of the vapour.

Yet all this is national and sanctioned by immemorial usage. What are we to think, though, of the merchant of Tiflis, with his stiff collar and Oriental robes? What of a coquetish Georgian lady, with a French capote instead of the veil of the olden time? Why must the houses of Tiflis, with their well-contrived flat roofs of clay, overgrown with weeds, to which the city is indebted for immunity from fires—though, even here, a violent storm of lightning, occurring during the height of the summer, will occasionally set the dry grass upon the housetops in a blaze—why, I ask, should this roof of the southern Asiatic, the place of his recreation and exercise, give place to the high, sloped tiling of the North? 

But the Georgian will one day have to deplore the total downfall of Georgian customs, under the influence of modern refinement; the main cause of all which changes must be sought in this truth, that no characteristics of a people, unless founded on pure religious feelings, can ever draw down a permanent blessing, or command respect; and this is the basis which the Georgian nationality has failed to establish.