DEPOPULATED COUNTRY. 
179 
passed over. In fact, during our whole march from the valley 
of Kotchivan till we arrived at the caravansary, we had seen 
neither man nor beast out of our own little band; and the dead 
aspect of all objects around, assisted the impression of our being 
in some vast depopulated wilderness. Comparing the tenantless 
vestiges, every where scattered over the country, of a former 
numerous people, with the present utter solitariness of every 
place, I could not but feel it the most dreary way I had ever 
passed over. The wildest steppes of Russia were nothing to its 
desolation. Those desarts are yet to be taken into the use of 
man ; but these have been rifled from him, and, from populous 
countries, have become desarts. Almost the whole of the tract 
I had just travelled, was of this painful description ; proofs 
standing every where, of a once flourishing people, now swept 
from the face of the earth ; the remains of great cities, of towns, 
of villages, all over the plains and valleys ; with the lines of their 
wide communication, marked by numerous watch-towers, still 
existing on the spots whence they had dispensed protection. All 
this was reduced, as we now see it, by the overwhelming irrup¬ 
tions of the Tatars; which, literally, passed as “ the besom of 
destruction” over the whole country. This calamity fell 
upon it nearly five hundred years ago; when Anni, and the 
other cities, were sacked and devasted, the towns and villages 
trampled under foot, and the inhabitants either murdered or 
torn from their homes. Some dispersed into Turkey; others 
fled across the Caucasus, and, establishing themselves on the 
Don, founded the present city of Nackchivan. A succession of 
disastrous circumstances, tended to annihilate the small remains 
of the ancient people, which had been left in its huts and caves. 
All was then abandoned to the waste; and, until the Russians 
a a 2 
