Note 13 — Chapter III · TO AKHALTSYKH
Reading edition
The old town on the left bank presents a striking contrast to its young rival across the water. You gain the bridge and pause for a moment to follow the many-channelled river threading the banks of yellow pebbles in its bed; flowing through a landscape of wild and bare hills, which streams with the garish daylight of the East. The road mounts the slope of the opposite cliff or convexity, which, a little further west, joins the more abrupt ridge of crag and precipice crowned by the battlements of the fortress. In this cliff, with its swelling shapes, soft soil and irregular hummocks, the Armenians have discovered a burrowing-ground exactly suited to their requirements; the gaping apertures of chimneys and windows threaten to engulf the guileless traveller who walks, unwitting, between the houses up the hillside. No vegetation relieves the monotony of the constant hues of ochre, and the tiers of clay and stone which represent the larger tenements mingle naturally with the stone-strewn surface of the friable earth. We saw two churches; one is administered by the Armenian Catholics, the other, which is situated a little above the first, is a Russian Orthodox church. Besides these larger buildings there are two chapels or prayer-houses, which scarcely attain the dignity of a church. These belong to the Gregorians, and we were told that the Roman Catholics have a small chapel within the precincts of the old town. But what interested us most was the Jewish quarter with its two spacious synagogues. We admired the simplicity of these airy chambers—in the middle the pulpit, the benches disposed around; and we pictured to ourselves the eager faces of the congregation, upturned from those benches to the grave preacher and mobile to every turn of his discourse. The Jew is a rare creature upon the tableland of Armenia; he finds it difficult to exist by the side of the Armenian, who is his rival in his own peculiar sphere.13 There is a saying that in cleverness a Jew is equal to two Greeks, a single Armenian to two Jews.