John Bellows Letters and memoir . mouth. In the dell below were the massive stone arches ofthree boiilaks or fountains—many women drawing waterat them, and shouldering their copper vessels to carry ithome in admirably oriental style. Before I leave Dyk I must mention that its frightfulmisdrainage caused great havoc last summer with thecholera. The people are very ignorant and superstitious ;and someone having suggested that the way to stop itsravages was to bury the bodies of those who died of it,face downwards, they set to work and reopened thegraves, and turned all the corpses over on their
John Bellows Letters and memoir . mouth. In the dell below were the massive stone arches ofthree boiilaks or fountains—many women drawing waterat them, and shouldering their copper vessels to carry ithome in admirably oriental style. Before I leave Dyk I must mention that its frightfulmisdrainage caused great havoc last summer with thecholera. The people are very ignorant and superstitious ;and someone having suggested that the way to stop itsravages was to bury the bodies of those who died of it,face downwards, they set to work and reopened thegraves, and turned all the corpses over on their course the cholera spread fiercely after this. Threehundred died in this one village. It was now a long walk over plains of snow on top ofthe mountains. Emerging from the environing circle ofheights, the landscape opened away on the south to a greatplain, on the far side of which was the magnificent barrierof mountains looking down on the Araxes and Persia. Itis fifty miles away—and before it is a sea of the softest. blue—too ethereal for this world—and yet too real not tobe. It is more beautiful than the clear blue sky above us,more lovely than any painter could paint, or than any poetcould find words to describe. Yet if scenery could givepower to either painter or poet, surely it would be here inthese Armenian mountains and in yonder everlasting hillswhose forms were known to the Assyrian kings as well M2 196 NEAR THE PERSIAN BORDER as to Darius, and daily looked upon by Cyrus through allhis earlier years, and woven into his very dreams. Yes,that Cyrus dreamed of those mountains of the Araxes I amas certain as that I am dreaming here myself, alone. My companion, after asking if I would ride againwhen the horses came up, and finding I would do so,decided to finish the journey on foot, and went on ; and Iam alone on this great plain of snow, quietly walking afterhim when I have finished my little outline above. Sud-denly as I look up I see two figures on horseb
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