644 
CHAPPOWS. 
right. On losing it, we descended to a gloomy little plain, 
bounded on all sides by prodigious steeps; at the foot of one of 
which stands the village of Nakshivan, a poor place, inhabited 
by a wretched set of people calling themselves Christians, but 
bearing a horrid character for knavery and thievishness. On 
entering, we found it swarming with the Pasha’s troops; brought 
thither in behalf of a village in the neighbourhood, which had 
been chappowed by a band of Courds belonging to a tribe no¬ 
minally under the government of Erivan. These military am¬ 
bassadors had been sent by the Pasha to the Sardar in quest of 
redress; but that not arriving quite so speedily as the claimants 
demanded, they began to retaliate on the quarters of the of¬ 
fenders, and no small plunder and bloodshed were the conse¬ 
quence. We had been told of the dangers of this road, and we 
now saw one source of them. These border-frays, by continually 
recurring, as constantly sow the seeds of new inroads, ravaging 
of villages, driving off cattle, murdering their keepers ; and, 
while in the utter confusion no one knows who are the robbers, 
persons nearer home way-lay travellers, and often are the most 
certain murderers. The presence of the troops not only in¬ 
creased the difficulty of our obtaining quarters, but gave us little 
hope of getting any thing to eat. Persuasions were vain, and 
neither the threats nor the whip of my Janissary made any im¬ 
pression on the stubborn faculties of the boors. The contract 
of the preceding year, by which they had engaged to supply 
persons travelling on public affairs, had just expired ; and I 
believe if a much greater sum than the stipulated allowance had 
not been offered them, we might have remained there without 
the due relay of horses, even until a new agreement had been 
signed. It ended in our paying five piastres each. During the 
