70 OFF TO DERBENT
y ond . ^ This fountain is elaborately built of stone in semicircular form, and a millennium ago it had two stone lions (evidently Sasanian) on either side of its steps. We watched the natives coming and going as they drew refreshing drafts from its ever flowing depths, but they seemed to pay little heed to the fine view that was to be had from this point over the city, with the cerulean sea beyond it, nor did they give a thought to the old graveyard so near at hand.
The tenants of this ancient field of bones, which spreads on both sides of the road, are mostly Armenians. The headstones above the graves, all aged, are of a soft granite and present a curious appearance, being shaped like posts or beams, but every one out of plumb and leaning in every conceivable direction. Many of them are marked by inscriptions in Armenian ; some in Syriac, I think ; and a number showed traces of color in the letters, which gave them a weird picturesqueness. I wish I had known at the time (but I came across the statement only by chance later, in a record of three hundred years ago) that an English gunner boy was buried in this cemetery. A letter written by Christopher Burrough to his uncle in 1679 states, in quaint terms : —
- The 5 [of September, 1579] Tobias Atkins, the gunners boy, died of the
fluxe, who was buried the 6. day, 2. miles Southward of the Castle of Der- bent, where the Armenian Christians do vsually burie their dead.' ^
The grave would hardly have been marked at the time, nor could it be distinguished now, otherwise some future traveler might be led to lay upon it some of the wild flowers that grow so prettily near by.
An odd legend is associated with this home of the dead — at least it was current three hundred years ago when Olearius
1 This well is mentioned in the year 2 gge Magan and Coote, Voyages by
903 A.D. by Ibn Fakih, 5. 291, and is Anthony Jenkinson and Others, 2.
referred to by Dumas, op. ct«. 1. 273 ; 460, London, 1886 (Hakluyt Soc),
it seems to be alluded to in the word with a reference to the vol. of Hakluyt
theatro in the description by Olearius, for 1589, pp. 440-463. p. 378 (cf. tr. Davies, p. 404).
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