128 THE PEKSIAX TOST-ROAD. 



modation had been better, we sliould have had no reason 

 to complain. In this, however, lies the cardinal defect of 

 the Russian post-stations ; in no single one of those 

 between Tifiis and Djulfa, a distance of 300 miles, can a 

 mattrass or a blanket be procured for love or money. 

 The eye, in its despairing search for creature-comforts, is 

 met by a wooden framework with a sloping board at its 

 head, representing the pillow of civilised life. This is the 

 couch awaiting the traveller, weary with 100 versts of 

 road, which have given him a horrible headache and a 

 pain across the chest, and made every joint in his body 

 stiff and sore. Stretched on one of these barbarous con- 

 trivances, he shifts himself restlessly from side to side ; 

 and if he is so lucky as to snatch a short slumber, still 

 urges in his dreams the inevitable ' paraclodnaia ' over the 

 interminable steppe. Unwieldy as such an article is to 

 carry, a mattrass of some sort is a necessity in travelling 

 in the Caucasian provinces. 



May 25th. — The morning was clear, and the two peaks 

 of Ararat, now well behind us, and brought almost in 

 a line with one another, looked very imposing. Two stages 

 separated us from Nakhitchevan ; the first of fourteen 

 versts, we accomplished in fifty minutes. The ground was 

 soft, and the disagreeables of jolting were exchanged for 

 the doubtful pleasure of being plastered with mud. The 

 track led up and down over bare hills ; every few miles 

 we came to a Cossack station, one of a chain extending 

 all along the Persian frontier. Nakhitchevan is a small 

 and decayed town, built on a high brow which overlooks 

 the basin of the Araxes ; it boasts of a large but now^ 

 ruined mosque, a governor, a passport-bureau, and a 

 custom-house. We first sought the untidy but not ill- 

 supplied military restaurant, where we got a good break- 

 fast, and a bottle of Allsopp's beer. Wherever there are 



