It was late on an autumn evening that we neared the last stage of our journey thither. We had quitted the plains about mid-day; and our course had lain for some miles along a sparsely cultivated valley, tucked in behind the outermost ripple which the mountains fling down upon the wold. On our right lay this barbican ridge, from the crest of which one might look forth across all the plain of Tigris; while on our left the hills rose higher, more rugged and more precipitous--a second, but still a subordinate, breastwork of the lordly Oberland behind.
Here and there the solitude was punctuated by a squalid Kurdish village whose inhabitants were thriftily using the tents which had served for their camps all the summer, to hood in their stacks of fodder against the expected winter snows. And one of these--Ain Sufni "Shipwell,"--perched on a traverse of high ground which is piled right across the valley is pointed out by Yezidi tradition as being the building place of the Ark. Here the main valley still trends forward; but, as we descended from the village, our guides doubled back to the left and dived into a masked ravine which had hitherto lurked invisible behind a shoulder of the heights.
Wide should be the gate and broad the way which leadeth to--the shrine of MELEK TAÜS; but the glen in question is shaggy and narrow and tortuous, tangled with clumps of tamarisk, and cumbered with water-worn boulders the jetsam of the winter floods. Since noon the sky had been overcast, and now a dreary drizzle had smudged all the landscape into a grey monochrome. Our jaded beasts sprawled and stumbled disheartedly over the wet and slippery stones.
Soon our path began edging up towards a _col_ in the ridge to the right of us, where a little Kurdish village hung limply over the saddle, and a curtain of lowering clouds trailed its ragged fringe across the gap. But just as we started the ascent, we perceived that the true end of the valley lay round an elbow in the opposite direction; and at its head, conspicuous against the dark hillside above the trees which lay matted in the hollow, rose the tall pale cone of a remote and isolated building--the "Great Mascot" of the Yezidis.[43]
How effectively the stage was set for that last mile of our Black pilgrimage! Not the least detail seemed lacking to enhance the eeriness of the scene. The dusk was rapidly lowering, the gorge grew narrower and deeper; and the gnarled boughs which overhung the pathway turned the twilight almost into night. A sodden carpet of fallen leaves muffled the clatter of the horse-hoofs; and no sound was heard but the bubbling of the rivulet, and the steady plash of the bloated raindrops that had gathered on the twigs of the trees. High overhead on our right towered the wan gaunt walls of the Satanic monastery: but not a voice nor a glimmer of light bespoke the presence of any inmates; and as we stumbled up the broken stairs, between crumbling walls and under ruinous arches, we felt like Sintram in his goblin valley or Childe Roland approaching the Dark Tower.